Vinyl Dynamic Range Vs Cd

The dynamic range of music as normally perceived in a concert hall doesn t exceed 80 db and human speech is normally perceived over a range of about 40 db.

Vinyl dynamic range vs cd. The maximum dynamic range we can put on a vinyl record is around 60 db. The digital music format of cds and increasingly mp3s is the dominant choice today for professionals and consumers alike. In practical terms this means that cds have more than 10 times the dynamic range of lps. Dynamic comparison of lps vs cds part 4 by chris tham september 02 2004 yes you have heard all the arguments before and you are probably sick and tired of it.

Cd 16bit on the other hand can achieve 96 db dynamic range. The difference between the loudest and softest sounds an lp can play is about 70 decibels db. Here lp actually wins over cd. 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.

Vinyl s dynamic range is dependant on frequency because vinyl doesn t have a flat maximum output curve. 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. The cd audio is digitally encoded and read by a laser while analog vinyl audio is physically read by a needle. It has less dynamic range is extremely fragile and can sometimes add distortions called wow and flutter because vinyl requires physical objects to store the music on instead of just streaming it from a server you ll need to be able to buy and store hard copies of every album you want to listen to and that space and pricetag adds up fast.

Cds can handle over 90 db. Vinyl has greater resolution than cd because its dynamic range is higher than for cd at the most audible frequencies 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. Dynamic range is the difference between the loudest signal and the noise floor. 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.

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. A theoretical lp made out of perfect diamond has an atomic feature size of about 0 5 nanometer which with a groove size of 8 micron yields a dynamic range of 110 db while a theoretical vinyl lp is expected to have a dynamic. The dynamic range of human hearing is roughly 140 db.