Vinyl Vs Cd Dynamic Range

Digital got its act together but not until the death of the cd.

Vinyl vs cd dynamic range.

Pcm of any flavor has a flat response to fs. Vinyl records typically yield 55 65 db. Yes you have heard all the arguments before and you are probably sick and tired of it. It wasn t long before vinyl recordings of the same content often had better sound quality at normal listening volumes simply because they had higher dynamic range.

The dynamic range of vinyl when evaluated as the ratio of a peak sinusoidal amplitude to the peak noise density at that sine wave frequency is somewhere around 80 db. In practical terms this means that cds have more than 10 times the dynamic range of lps. The dynamic range of a direct cut vinyl record may surpass 70 db. Maybe it was coincidence but vinyl began its resurgence at around the same time as recordings started this trend.

Vinyl has greater resolution than cd because its dynamic range is higher than for cd at the most audible frequencies. Consumer analog cassette tapes have a dynamic range of 60 to 70 db. Lp s difference between maximum to average is around 11 56db compared against the cd recording at 11 11db and even the digital rip at 11 35db. 16 bit cd digital audio has a technical dynamic range of 96 db though many argue the perceived range is higher when taking dithering into account.

Lp vs digital is a religious war that has been played out by various audiophiles ever since the cd format was introduced in the. When i cut a master for vinyl and a cd master from the same digital master tape they sounded pretty much the same except for the noise floor. Dynamic comparison of lps vs cds part 4. Dynamic range is the difference between the loudest signal and the noise floor.

Cds can handle over 90 db. Yes vinyl was noisier. The data is read by a laser and then decoded to produce audio playback. With the above in mind i began exploring why some vinyl records have greater dynamic range rightly concluding that mastering lay at the heart of the issue.

Vinyl s dynamic range is dependant on frequency because vinyl doesn t have a flat maximum output curve. The difference between the loudest and softest sounds an lp can play is about 70 decibels db. Analog studio master tapes can have a dynamic range of up to 77 db. Analog fm broadcasts rarely have a dynamic range exceeding 50 db.

Dynamic comparison of lps vs cds part 4 by chris tham september 02 2004.