The hipster trend of owning a vast amount of vinyl isn’t going away anytime soon. Because of the popularity of new artist releases on vinyl, companies have begun offering services for mastering vinyl. Vinyl recordings become a staple piece in artist pre-orders, offering a limited run of a physically beautiful piece. Some songs are naturally better to hear on vinyl than they are on a CD.
Why Does Vinyl Sound Better Than a CD?
EPs, LPs, and standard albums all are fighting to incorporate the most texture into their songs. In return, this compresses the quality and the sounds of the song, causing it to sound overwhelming and not as great. Added texture on songs are what give the music their depth, but when there’s too much becoming compressed, the quality of the song fades away. Fortunately, vinyl is much different.
In fact, songs with more depth and texture excel on vinyl prints. The reason behind this is that vinyl relies on depth and texture within a song in their particular format. This reasoning may be why the human ear enjoys the finished product more organically. When a song specifically has vinyl mastering, it may sound exceptionally better than the mastering of the CD version since it has more room to expand and breathe.
Why Mastering on Vinyl Sounds So Great
According to a professional mastering engineer, when a human’s ear listens to a song on vinyl, the sounds are as close to the real thing as possible. Your ear composition and physical makeup allow you to pinpoint how organic a sound is naturally, and vinyl comes as close to the actual sound as the listener can reach. The noise of a guitar on a CD versus a vinyl is completely different to the human ear, even if it is the same song.
You may think you know every minuscule sound a song has to offer, and you’ve memorised every line, every guitar note, and background drum pattern. Unfortunately, you’re still not seeing the bigger picture – or hearing it, for this matter. Physical CD’s and MP3 tracks are extremely hyper-compressed, disabling you from understanding the real depth and texture that the song has to offer.
The delivery format of a mastered vinyl is also quite different than a CD, which also says a lot about how you hear the depth. For vinyl, the mastering comes from two files: a left and a right file. With physical CDs, delivery is usually in a single DDPi file. The delivery methods say a little bit about the compression involved in delivering polished tracks.
Listen from a Different Perspective
To experience the real depth a vinyl has to offer, head out to your local music store and grab a newly released album that you also own on CD. Play the vinyl record first and then pop on the CD. Upon doing this, you’ll be able to hear a world of difference in the sound. You may still prefer the CD version because it’s easier for you to take in the car, but there’s no denying the rich sound of a beautifully engineered vinyl record.
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