IKEA presents the turntable in collaboration with Swedish House Mafia – Image and sound – News

Both articles focus more on experience than theory behind them, both are good as a starting point, but it is important to consider which one to choose when assessing the quality.

In terms of experience, IMO vinyl is the best, quite clunky too which is why I don’t always use it. In terms of measurable (not necessarily audible) quality, digital is superior. Since MP3 is a completely different discussion, I’ll take CD as an example:

A CD can contain music at 44.1kHz, which produces a nyquist frequency of approximately 22kHz, 2kHz above the best possible human hearing. A CD can therefore reproduce any frequency audible to humans. With vinyl, that limit is higher (because it’s analog) but that adds nothing to the audible quality of the sound.

The dynamic range of a CD is 96dB at 16-bit and 144dB at 24-bit, with vinyl stopping at around 70dB. In terms of dynamic range, CD is actually superior.

So you could say that a steady stream of information on a vinyl sounds better than the samples that need to be restored (see story rod 44.1kHz). Even if that were the case, it would only work if you do both the recording, the mixing process and the master process completely analog (as soon as you go digital you introduce a sample rate), but basically everything is digital somewhere. in these days. The only benefit is that vinyl can be printed at a higher sample rate, but keep in mind that above 20kHz adds nothing for human listening.

By the way: both formats require processing on the playback side where differences between equipment can occur.

So this was the theory, but in practice there are multiple factors, such as: Was the recording, mixing or mastering process done for a general audience or for audiophiles? The same song may have been released differently on CD than on vinyl, where the latter sometimes receives better treatment.

And then it could be that vinyl can introduce nice effects to try, or simply the experience of setting up the record can add to the experience.

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