Why does vinyl sound better?

“If you can't explain it to a six-year-old, then you don't understand it yourself”― Albert Einstein

Like most kids, I was always asking why.

Inquisitive by nature and, to the delight of my parents, superficial answers were never enough.

I recall watching The Hunchback of Notre Dame at the cinema with my mum when I was 8.

Mummy, why is his back like that?

As a (now retired) philosophy teacher, my mum would always encourage my inquisitorial pursuits.

Because, sadly, he was born with a problem.

But why does he walk like that?

Well, the problem is in his spine, so it affects the way he walks.

Source: Kingdom of Hearts Wiki

She was whispering her answers, trying not to disturb the other viewers. Every two minutes I followed up with another question:

“Why are his hands…” “And his legs…”

Mummy, and his face? Why is his face like that?

Because he’s deformed!!!

Patience has its limits. Now that did shut me up for the rest of the film, but importantly, it made me think.

I figured this big, scary word was a whole new concept. A complex condition encapsulating other, perhaps secondary, symptoms or ailments.

It was something I needed to digest before I could attack again. (Philosophy teachers do have their tricks, I guess).

Photo by Diego PH on Unsplash

If you love vinyl, you must have faced the question (at a dinner party or inside your own head) of why vinyl sounds better.

If poor old Quasimodo is deformed, we can say vinyl is analogue. This generally does the trick: it brings a whole new concept to the table, something your average dinner party guest may not be entirely familiar with.

You send them off to do their homework, so to speak.

But you know the story doesn’t (fully) end there.

What is analogue?

Analogue comes from the word analogous, i.e. similar.

An analogue recording uses signal or information represented by a continuously variable physical quantity. An analogue signal represents (is analogous to) another element.

The grooves of a vinyl record mirror the waveform of the original sound. Vinyl is essentially a copy of sound made in the shape of the original sound wave.

Photo by PerfectMirror on Unsplash

Contrast this with a digital recording, whereby samples of the original are encoded into a series of digits (0s and 1s) and then decoded to recreate the original sound.

Example: Imagine a guy playing fetch with his dog on the beach. With vinyl, you get a clip of the actual scene: the lifting of the arm, the dog’s grimaces, the catching of the ball, the waves lapping in the background. There’s continuous movement.

Photo by Stephanie Buffington on Unsplash

Digital sound, in contrast, is a collection of images (samples) taken every few seconds, which are then assembled to recreate the scene.

Even with so-called “lossless” audio files, some information is lost, courtesy of this sampling process.

This is why vinyl sounds better: put simply, because there is more to hear.

Thanks for reading/listening. Happy spinning!