The Truth About Vinyl - Vinyl vs. Digital

The humble record does not often receive adequate recognition for the impact its development had on the modern world. At first glance, these records are just consumer products that allow music to be sold to the masses, a concept that only reached the mass market about 100 years ago. The

truth

is that the impact of this technology goes far beyond the consumption of pop music. In some ways, the closest comparison on record is the printing press. The printing press is often considered one of the most important inventions in history due to its ability to quickly and accurately reproduce ideas into written words; which in turn greatly accelerated knowledge transfer and sharing.

The ability to press audio to record and be able to play it back to scale did exactly the same thing for audio. It functioned as a vector for cultural exchange and the revolution in recording technology introduced by electronic and audio engineers who developed the technology is the foundation on which modern communication systems stand. Of course, today most of the music we consume is

digital

. The Internet has changed not only the way we consume music, but also the amount of music and the music itself. Curiously, while this is happening,

vinyl

is experiencing a year-over-year increase in sales.

Even more curious is the fact that half of the people who buy an album on

vinyl

listen to it first. It remains a point of contention whether analogue formats, such as vinyl, are truly superior to their modern

digital

counterparts. Is the vinyl resurgence simply consumers seeing the technology of yesteryear through rose-colored glasses, a longing for a physical connection to their music, or is it that music actually sounds better on vinyl? To understand the differences between these two, we must first understand the commonalities. No matter which format is used, analog or digital, both require a recording device to create audio data.

The simplest of these would be the microphone that converts air pressure (sound) into a digital or analog signal, which can then be played back as an analog electrical signal. This process was first used in 1877 by Thomas Edison. While working on the telephone, Edison decided it would also be worth investigating whether sound could be recorded for later playback. Edison designed a rotating cylindrical disk wrapped in a thin sheet that was rotated by a crank. Attached to the record was a needle, which in turn was attached to a nozzle that adjusted the pressure of the needle on the record.

Edison spoke into the mouthpiece while turning the crank at a constant rate, and as predicted, the pressure of the sound waves created a proportional indentation that was analogous to the sound created by his voice. When he finished recording, he returned the needle to the beginning. The indentations caused by his voice could now be reproduced by rotating the cylinder. Playing audio while showing the phonograph working…. This invention, the phonograph, was the first example of reproducible recorded sound and, for all intents and purposes, the vinyl record is essentially an iteration of this technology. The first recorded vinyl was printed by Columbia in 1948;

Specifically, it was this 12-inch recording: - Record Plays - Mendelssohn Concerto in E Minor by Nathan Milstein on Violin with the New York Philharmonic Vinyl records work on the same basic principle as Edison's Phonograph. A three-dimensional representation of a sound wave is physically pressed onto a vinyl record. A print is first created using a cutting head. The cutting head creates an impression that is a direct analogue of the sound wave. This process creates a master that will create a stamper that will shape each record. When a record is played, the frequency of the wave you will hear will depend on how widespread the wave is in the medium and the volume will depend on the size or amplitude of the wave.

This audio information will be printed onto the vinyl in one of three ways: via horizontal modulation, vertical modulation OR via a 45 degree compromise modulation. Horizontal modulation is always preferable to vertical modulation. This is because vertical modulation produces more distortion and allows for a lower amplitude due to the inability of the stylus to follow the groove and also the propensity of the stylus to go off-wave if the amplitude is too high. But if we run only with horizontal modulation we can only play audio in mono and we do not have sound separation in stereo. Consequently, we use a 45-degree compromise modulation to allow audio separation from mono to stereo.

As the stylus follows the groove, it moves a magnet wrapped in a small coil of copper wire, this causes an electrical current that corresponds to the groove of the vinyl, which in turn corresponds to the physical sound waves that were originally recorded. The electrical current can now cause a physical movement of the speakers that will reproduce that sound quite faithfully. Some vinyl enthusiasts argue that this smooth, continuous analog-to-analog reproduction of sound is more faithful than digital music. Part of this argument arises from the difference in how digital music is played: high-quality digital audio data is typically sampled 44,100 times per second and this data is recorded in binary format.

Close inspection of the wave function produced from the binary code shows that instead of the audio data being smooth and constant as in real life, the audio data is irregular and technically non-continuous. Because there is an infinite amount of data between each second of audio, we have to sample the audio at regular intervals to minimize the size of our digital file. Comparing this to the smooth continuous waveform printed on vinyl, you might think that this would cause some loss of information. Whether there is information loss or not depends on whether the sampling rate of 44,000 is high enough to be functionally the same.

An answer to this was proposed in 1928 in a seminal paper published by the Swedish-American electronics engineer Harry Nyquist, and was subsequently proven by Claude Shannon in 1949. They simply discovered that to recreate a frequency we only need to sample each individual wave at least twice. . Otherwise, the frequency will be digitized at a lower frequency. The maximum perceptible frequency that a human ear can detect is 20,000 Hz, so digital recordings with a sampling rate of 44,000 Hz can capture even the highest possible frequency, so the sound produced by a speaker that uses audio Digital is effectively the same sound as analog recordings. .

In this case, the argument that analog recordings are more “faithful” does not stand up to the scrutiny of science, and in theory, digital and analog music recordings should sound functionally the same if played back on the same equipment. However, the argument doesn't end there: there are some limitations on how sound can be recorded on vinyl. Interestingly, these limitations go a long way to explaining vinyl enthusiasts' preference for the medium and also why some might argue that digital recordings are a superior format for storing audio. The main limitation that affects vinyl is simply its limit in data storage.

This is easy to understand: a 12-inch disk can only hold a limited amount of information in the format we have described. Each disc rotation lasts 1.8 seconds. The next question is how many times every 12 inches can you record rotations. Two things affect this: the frequencies found in the bass notes require the record groove to open wider, just as the speaker also opens wider when it hits the base. Higher amplitude waves that produce a louder sound also require wider grooves. This means that both low frequency sounds and loud sounds consume valuable vinyl space. This, in turn, means that if your record is bassy or loud, like most contemporary music, there won't be much room on the record for your songs.

The net impact of this is that there is a volume and time limitation on vinyl records that does not apply to digital music, which has huge ramifications on the way we listen to music and how it is created and mastered. The limitations of vinyl don't end there. If the frequency is low and the amplitude is too high (high), the stylus can become prone to going off the wave due to the path the stylus has to take to catch the wave at high speed. This can cause the log to bounce and jump if not taken into account.

Consequently, the bass must be centered in the mix and a specific mix must be applied to music recorded on vinyl to prevent this from happening. High frequency sounds must also be taken into account when cutting a vinyl record. The problem is commonly known as the “Wheezing Problem.” Wheeze is that unpleasant hiss associated with s sounds and other high frequencies, which anyone who has watched my older videos will be painfully aware of. High frequency waves cause two fundamental problems in vinyl. High frequency sounds mean that the waves are very close together, the pencil has to surf these waves and turn in extremely tight turns.

When the curvature of the groove becomes narrower than the radius of the stylus tip, the stylus will start to go through the groove and end up with distortion. In addition to this, extremely high frequency waves can cause the cutting head that cuts the disc to overheat. This is simply a matter of the cutting head having to take a longer path and having to do more work to cut these waves. Overheating can cause inaccuracies in the cutting process and, in turn, noise and distortion in the final disc. To counteract the negative effects that extreme low and high frequencies have on vinyl, a group of American engineers developed what became known as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) curve in the 1940s and 1950s.

The RIAA is an equalization scheme that is applied to the sound before cutting the original lacquer. In essence, this curve reduces the bass content and increases the treble on the record. Without this curve, the low frequencies take up so much space that each 12-inch LP would only allow 5 minutes of music. Additionally, increasing the treble greatly reduces the surface noise that the vinyl can produce due to the path the stylus takes. This is also why a turntable requires a special phono preamplifier: in addition to amplifying the small voltage created by the turntable cartridge, the preamplifier applies the inverse curve of the RIAA, perfectly restoring the natural balance of the music and minimizing the size limitations that are intrinsically linked. to the nature of the media.

So we've painted a complicated and bleak picture for vinyl as a storage medium. The real

truth

here is that there is no functional difference in audio quality between digital and analog formats... and studies show that the human ear and brain are not sufficiently equipped to distinguish the difference between the sound produced from analog signals compared to a digital signal. counterpart. At the very least, this is enough to debunk the idea that digital music formats are of lower quality than analog formats. An important question to ask here is why are people who understand these concepts still attracted to vinyl?

There are several simple answers to this question: Part of this is the nostalgia factor: people have positive personal associations with the vinyl format since their youth and these associations invoke an emotional state that induces a sense of comfort; And while there are no discernible differences in theoretical audio quality, vinyl has a specific sound that is imparted due to the mastering process. Mastering is the process by which the final song is mixed for the final device on which it will be stored. Over the past 36 years, due to the removal of the physical limitations of vinyl carriers and the spread of digitized music, songs have become increasingly louder and increasingly compressed.

In essence, this means that the sound wave is compressed, forcing the quieter parts of a song to become relatively louder and the louder parts relatively quieter, with the net effect being a louder, louder song. As a result of this trend, a large majority of commercial music releases have been subject to a somewhat arbitrary volume war that has forced them to increase the volume to keep up. It has also resulted in increased use of music compression, which some would say has resulted in a loss of detail and nuance in the final sound. This development has been criticized by several prominent audio engineers and is part of the attraction to vinyl.

Some people prefer vinyl for this reason, music properly mastered for the medium is to some extent immune toeffects of music volume wars and, in some cases, this can mean that more nuanced parts of the song are easier to distinguish. a trained ear. In reality, since this same information can be recorded in a digital format and played back exactly the same, the answer to this question is that digital and analog formats are functionally equal in the quality of the sound produced and in any preference for one medium over the other. , it's really just that, a preference. However, the longevity and iconic status of the vinyl record as a music format cannot be ignored.

Despite the shortcomings we've described, it's an incredibly durable and elegantly simple medium. Probably the best example of this is the gold-plated disk sent on Voyager 1 in September 1977. It's hard to believe, but 12 billion miles away this disk is floating in space. Its cover contains simple playing instructions based on certain universal constants, and the disc itself contains a high-resolution snapshot of 200,000 years of human culture. Unless Voyager 1 suffers a direct hit or encounters heat that could melt the record, this record should, in theory, outlive even our species. Just as the technology for storing music has advanced, the technology for mixing and mastering music has never been easier to get into music production, thanks to programs like FL Studio and Ableton that give you a virtual production room with all the tools you need. you need to create your own song.

There has never been more information available to learn how to use them either. With introductory classes like this one on Skillshare for FL Studio and Ableton, and many more classes to teach you the nitty-gritty of music production like this one from Grammy-nominated DJ Young Guru. These days you can teach yourself almost any skill online, and Skillshare is a fantastic place to do it. With professional, understandable classes that follow a clear learning curve, you can dive in and start learning how to do the work you love. A Premium membership starts at around $10 a month for unlimited access to all courses, but the first 1,000 people who sign up with this link will get their first 2 months free.

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