Which format reproduces music most accurately digital or analog?

Question

Basically, what i'm asking is though C.D.'s are the standard format for reproducing music today, all things being equal, how does the quality of sound produce measure up to that of vinyl records? I understand the difference between digital and analog sources. Laser and lense VS. Stylus and Cartridge.

Answer 1

Jolly's answer (above) is a good one.

My feedback from a professional sound engineer on this issue was that 'analogue is warmer' is a complete myth (I had to endure a half-hour technical lecture on this!) BUT...the evidence of my own ears suggests that there's something about vinyl that just sounds better. I don't know why or how.

Answer 2

Vinyl through a tube amp sounds "fuller" and "richer" because it is injecting a type of interference that the human ear finds pleasing. In other words, it may "sound better," but it isn't technically an accurate reproduction of the sound.

The way digital sound works is by sampling at a rate far greater than the human ear can hear. The human ear can discern sounds greater than 20KHz in frequency, and if we sample at least twice that often, we won't be able to tell the difference between analog and digital sound. This is why a good MP3 is sampled at a rate between 96 times/second and 128 times/second (any higher than that is a waste of CPU time and hard drive space).

The main advantage of digital sound is that it is recorded digitally, and digital recorders make exact copies each and every time. If you tape a record to cassette, and then that cassette to another, and the second cassette to a third, after a while the last cassette is going to sound terrible (and over time, it will degrade). Digital copies are identical no matter how often they are copied, and CDs last for a very long time without fading. Commercial ones do anyway - recordable homemade ones may fade after a while, but I don't remember how long it takes.

Answer 3

You'd get arguments from both sides of the issue. Digital fans say the music is "cleaner" and has better sound. Analog fans would say that the music sounds "fuller" and "richer" with the natural sound that gets picked up, similar to listening live to a concert in a music hall. One thing seldom mentioned in these debates is that as we get older, often our hearing is affected so that even though a recording is producing very high or very low frequencies, our ears may not even hear those sounds. For me, I just find that CD's are a lot easier to handle and use for music than the hassles with cleaning up vinyl records to remove dust, etc. But, it's basically an individuals choice.