Why does analogue sound better

Wider tape allows for a higher-quality recording. However, tape width can be utilized to record more tracks rather than improving the audio quality of a single track. This allows several sources to be recorded and played back independently. Vinyl records are the standard consumer medium for analog audio recordings. In an effort to distribute audio on a large scale, recordings can be copied from analog tape onto vinyl records. Compared to tape, vinyl records are less vulnerable to the elements.

Whereas tape can be destroyed by magnetic exposure, vinyl records are immune to magnetic fields because they use a different means of audio storage. Rather than magnetic charge, the textured grooves on the surface of vinyl records store the audio information. As a vinyl record spins at a specific rate, a stylus travels through the grooves on its surface. As the stylus moves back and forth with the grooves, it creates an electric current in a wire which connects to an amplifier to be played through speakers.

The amplitude of the audio signal is correlated with the intensity in the movement of the stylus. You can see an animation of how a vinyl record works by Animagraffs. Animagraffs is a website that creates amazing animations of various technologies. Vinyl records are used only for playback in the modern world.

Analog recordings are made with magnetic tape. The tapes are used to create casts for pressing the information to vinyl discs. Of course, most modern music is recorded using digital technology. PCM, or Pulse Code Modulation, is the standard method for encoding audio signals into binary information. In analog audio recording, a model of the sound waves is created using magnetic charge.

However, PCM creates a model of the sound waves by storing a sequence of numerical values that represent the amplitude at various points along a wave. These values are represented by groups of binary bits, called samples.

Each sample represents a numerical value within a predetermined range of possible values. This process is called quantization, and is performed by an analog-to-digital converter A-to-D converter. During playback of a digital recording, the samples are converted back to electrical signals and sent to speakers. Each sample represents a value within a range of possible values. The range of possible values is determined by the bit depth.

Bit depth is the term that describes how many bits are included in each sample. Each bit can represent two possible values. Recordings which utilize more bits per sample can represent a larger range of values and have a much lower noise floor than recordings with less bit depth. Each time a bit is added, the number of possible values is doubled.

Whereas one bit can represent two values, two bits can represent four values, three bits can represent eight values, and so on. The standard bit depth for CDs is bit, allowing for 64, possible amplitude values. The professional standard is a bit depth of bit, which allows 16,, possible amplitude values! Most professional studios record and mix using bit floating point.

The sample rate determines how many samples are taken of a sound wave per second. Sample rate is measured in Hertz Hz. Recording at a higher sample rate allows higher frequencies to be recorded. The Nyquist Theorem states that digital sampling can only faithfully represent frequencies less than half of the sampling rate. This means that if you want to capture 20kHz, the highest frequency audible to humans, you must use a sample rate greater than 40kHz.

For this reason, Professional audio for video utilizes a standard of 48kHz. Many recordings greatly exceed these standards, with sample rates of 96kHz and beyond! The resulting audible bandwidth of a The audio files produced by recording studios are very large, due to the amount of information they contain. Digital ought to sound better than analog, and I have no idea why it doesn't. But even the most devoted digital disciple will have to concede that analog hasn't shriveled up and died in the nearly three decades since the CD debuted in There's a never-ending stream of new turntables and phono cartridges from mainstream and high-end manufacturers on the market.

Somebody's buying this stuff. If analog's naysayers would like to think vinyl's appeal is strictly limited to aging baby boomers living in the past, they're in for a rude awakening. Sad to say, only a small minority of the people who grew up in a nearly all-digital world are turned on by analog's sounds.

So if you really love listening to music--not just as background sound to accompany work, exercise, or driving--but if you love music enough to give it your undivided attention, then analog ought to be worth checking out. Sames goes with recording. Learning to record with analogue machines is very tedious. Horn thinks a lot of the younger generation would do well to learn how to record on analogue machines because of the demanding nature of optimizing on tape. Transferring those skills to a digital recording could only help their production skills.

Before we get into the technical differences of the two recording methods, let's briefly explain what we mean when we say "analogue" and "digital" in the realm of recording music. Analogue audio is called just thins because the pattern of an electrical or magnetic pressure audio signal is analogous to the original pattern of changing air pressure. What we hear, the audio, is analogue until our inner ear converts it into an electro-chemical signal which we then perceive as music!

Digital is very different. Digital audio is a series of mathematical descriptions reflecting the pattern of the pressure. Before the age of digital recording, everything was done using an analogue machine.

However, using analogue machines hasn't been completely erased from production studios. Let's take a look at some of the early analogue machines and see how they paved the way for digital equipment, and eve more advanced analogue machines.

And, like all technological advances, there are unavoidable advantages and disadvantages to both digital and analogue machines. A definitive disadvantage to recording on analogue machines was the cost of production. It's easy to see how recording a full-length album was expensive! An analogue machine like the Sony JH could punch like no other and sounded great, although the alignment was a pain and the remote wasn't very functional.

Therefore, it can move to a higher and higher resolution without losing its original quality. Why does bandwidth matter? Digital recordings can have a greater signal-to-noise ratio depending on the bit depth of the recording. What the hell is bit depth, you say? Think of a sound wave in a digital recording format to looking more like a set of stairs, rather than smooth hills. The digital wave must walk up and downstairs, as opposed to smoothly roll over hills.

This jump in elevation can create a digital noise. The smooth analog signal matches the recorded sound wave better than the steps of a digital recording.