Speaker 1: Welcome to brain stuff front House, stuff works dot com
Speaker 1: where smart happens. Hi. I'm Marshall Brain with today's question,
Speaker 1: is the sound on vinyl records better than the sound
Speaker 1: on c d s or DVDs. The answer to this
Speaker 1: question lies in the difference between analog and digital recordings.
Speaker 1: A vinyl record is an analog recording, and CDs and
Speaker 1: DVDs are digital recordings. Original sound is analog by definition,
Speaker 1: so a digital recording takes snapshots of that analog signal
Speaker 1: at a certain rate. For CDs, it's forty four thousand,
Speaker 1: one hundred times per second. It also measures each snapshot
Speaker 1: with a certain accuracy. For CDs, it's a sixteen bit number,
Speaker 1: which means that the value must be one of sixty thousand,
Speaker 1: five hundred thirty six possible values. This means that, by definition,
Speaker 1: a digital recording is not capturing the complete sound wave,
Speaker 1: it's approximating it with a series of steps. Some sounds
Speaker 1: that have very quick transitions, such as a drumbeat, will
Speaker 1: be distorted because they change too quickly for the sample rate.
Speaker 1: A vinyl record, on the other hand, has a groove
Speaker 1: carved into it that mirrors the original sounds wave form
Speaker 1: This means that no information is lost. In theory, the
Speaker 1: output of the record player is also analog and it
Speaker 1: can be fed directly to your amplifier with no conversion.
Speaker 1: So the wave forms from a vinyl record should be
Speaker 1: more accurate and that can be heard in the richness
Speaker 1: of the sound. But there is a downside. Any specks
Speaker 1: of dust or damage to the disc can be heard
Speaker 1: as noise or static during quiet periods and songs. This
Speaker 1: noise can be heard over the music. Digital recordings don't
Speaker 1: degrade over time, and if for digital recording contains silence,
Speaker 1: then there will be no noise. The main ways to
Speaker 1: improve the quality of a digital recording are to increase
Speaker 1: the sampling rate and or to increase the accuracy of
Speaker 1: the sampling. The recording industry has a standard for DVD
Speaker 1: audio discs that could greatly improve the sound accuracy. There
Speaker 1: are more than four times as many samples on a
Speaker 1: DVD audio disc than there are on a c D,
Speaker 1: and the samples are twenty four bit instead of sixteen
Speaker 1: bit like on a CD. But the DVD audio format
Speaker 1: has never really taken off. Apparently, CD quality sound is
Speaker 1: good enough for the vast majority of listeners, do you
Speaker 1: have any ideas or suggestions for this podcast, If so,
Speaker 1: please send me an email at podcast at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. For more on this and thousands of
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