Records are big, fragile, unwieldy, and generally inconvenient. Digital alternatives like MP3s and CDs are, on the other hand, small, portable, durable, easily reproducible, and generally convenient. Plus, you look totally trendy with your iPod (keep telling yourself that). So, why would anyone bother with vinyl? Why not melt all your records down into some kind of crazy sculpture?

Digital vs. Analog Sound

Any good vinylholic will tell you that analog recordings sound better than digital ones. In principle, this is true - provided you take care of your equipment and clean your records.

What Is Sound?

Sound, as you hear it, is analog by definition. It’s a waveform [fig. 1] that hits your ear, vibrating the eardrum. Any analog recording - a vinyl record, for instance - duplicates the waveform of the sound that was recorded in full. Every point on the wave, of which there are infinitely many, is reproduced by the analog recording.

Digitizing a Sound

A digital recording samples a certain finite number of the infinite points to reproduce a likeness of the original (analog) sound [Fig. 2]. There are plenty of reasons to do this. Most notably, the amount of information involved is much smaller, so it’s easier to manipulate, store, transfer, etc.

However, no matter how good your sample, it will always be missing some data points, and this will (theoretically) always affect the sound. The human ear’s ability to distinguish is finite, and at a certain point a digital recording will sound indistinguishable from the analog version, but the level of sampling fidelity required for this is so high that it eliminates most of the aforementioned benefits of digitization.

Compression

In order to produce a digital sound that isn’t totally unlistenable, you need to have a pretty large file. Rais your hand if you store your music in .wav format. Nobody? Hmm…

The reason, of course, is compression. There is a veritable cornucopia of competing data compression formats, and different ones are best for different applications. Compressing data, in short, allows you to produce those nice, compact audio files, so you can have a dozen albums on an MP3-CD in your car instead of one on a conventional audio CD (which is uncompressed).

You hear a lot about “lossless” audio compression (the FLAC format, for instance) these days. A lot of people think that this sort of file hasn’t lost any fidelity from the original recording (as opposed to an MP3, which is a “lossy” compression format) - but that’s not true. What “lossless” means in this context is that no fidelity has been lost from the uncompressed digital recording, so your FLAC file still might not sound as good as an analog track.

Recap: The Bottom Line

All other things being equal, a digital recording typically doesn’t sound as good as an analog recording because parts of the sound are always missing.

Still with me? Good.

The Listening Experience

This is where I get all philosophical. Hang in there.

I’ve alluded elsewhere to the powerful aesthetic vinyl holds for the true enthusiast. There’s something ritualistic - religious, almost - about sliding a treasured LP out of its jacket, laying it on the platter, dropping the needle, and just listening.

Listening to an LP is an active experience [Fig. 3] that simply can’t be duplicated. Don’t get me wrong: I own an iPod, and use it extensively. But beyond the pure sound of a properly cared-for record on a high-quality sound system, the reward to be had from being present in the moment, engaged with the music, is very real and very powerful indeed.

So, what are you waiting for? Dust off the old LPs and get cracking!

Cross-posted to Newsvine.com.

Read more articles in the “Diggin’ the Crates” series.

Read more articles in the “What’s the Big Deal?” series.

© 2008 Evan Mix for Listen In. Some rights reserved.

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