Many people should listen to music to relax and enjoy after returning home, and most of the modern times are based on the "digital sound source" of CD or Internet music, but the sales of "analog sound source" such as vinyl records have gradually climbed. Let's take a look at why this trend is happening.
Features of CD recordings
A CD is a digital recording of sound. The sound waveform is first cut at very short intervals and replaced with numbers 0 and 1 (Figure 2), and the above steps are simply reversed for playback. The CD records this information on a concave and uneven crater on the dish surface and reads it with laser light (Figure 3)
The CD will use 0 and 1 to correspond to whether there are potholes, so the sound quality of the recording can be reproduced during playback. CDs do not have the noise (rustling, also known as fried beans) that can occur in vinyl records, nor the sound quality changes caused by rotational fluctuations, and of course, not to worry about the sound quality changes caused by the difference in rotation speed between the inner and outer rings of the turntable.
Features of vinyl recordings
Vinyl records first use a thin needle connected to the sound collector to engrave the sound on a lacquer plate. A paint disc is an aluminum disc with a layer of lacquer. Fine needles engrave patterns on the painted surface to record vibrational changes in sound.
Since the paint disc records the sound directly, both the treble and the bass are basically reproduced in the original sound. However, in order to reduce noise, the low and high ranges are deliberately adjusted when the master is carved. Although the high-frequency ultrasound recorded on the master disk will be a little more than that of CD, it still cannot reproduce 100% of the original sound.
These recorded sounds go through several processes to make vinyl records, which can be reproduced by placing the stylus on the surface of the record.
Why are records trending again?
When CDs are sampled audio, they cannot completely solve the problem of missing some audio, so the sound quality of CDs is always considered "hard" compared to vinyl records. In particular, sounds with large amplitudes are unlikely to be retained, and these truncated sounds will make people feel that the sound quality is hard. However, the high-resolution sound quality with higher sampling frequency has been sampled, which makes up for the problem of some audio being abandoned.
In addition, the sound of all frequencies of the record can now be preserved intact and without interruption. Of course, this also includes audio that would be truncated on the CD, which can be reproduced on the record, so the sound of the record will sound "smooth".
In addition, the record has characteristics that CDs do not have, that is, resonance between machines and surface noise. After detecting the vibration of the disc surface, the stylus will transmit it through the tonearm to the enlarger. Resonances are formed in many places during the process, and it is generally believed that such resonances can give the record "good sound quality". In addition, the surface noise of the record itself is thought to make the sound more clear.
Digital audio sources are currently the mainstream, and a large number of music files are uploaded to the Internet. However, many of them think that the texture of digital sound sources is "hard", so these people return to the embrace of records, pursuing the "smooth, soft, comfortable sounding, and healable" sound quality that only analog sound sources have.
*This article is excerpted from "Life Science Questions", published by Maple Leaf Society.
From Upmedia