There is a never ending debate on what sounds better, analog or digital. Digital fans love the clean sound of mp3s, lossless audio or even CDs. Analog fans love the warm sound of vinyl.
Let’s set aside that argument for a minute and try to answer the question, “Do vinyl records sound better than Spotify?”. As with anything, it’s a personal preference, but as someone who has grown up listening to all formats of music from records to cassettes to CDs to mp3s and now streaming, I do have some thoughts on the differences in sound. Below are my top three reasons why I think vinyl sounds better than Spotify.
1. Spotify’s audio signal is lossy, with information removed during playback.
What does “lossy” mean, exactly? Mark Harris at Lifewire, explains, “The word lossy is used in digital audio to describe a type of compression used to store sound data. The algorithm used in a lossy audio format compresses sound data in a way that discards some information. This signal loss means that the encoded audio isn’t identical to the original. The lossy audio produces a lower quality sound and has a smaller file size.”
Imagine someone served you a piece of apple pie with ice cream on top. If Spotify were serving you the pie, it might remove the bottom crust and the top layer with the ice cream, leaving you with a lot of baked apples. It’s not the worst piece of pie you’ve ever had, it’s just missing parts that make it taste great.
Audio signal compression isn’t really an issue with vinyl record playback. You are hearing what the artist intended when they recorded, mixed and mastered their album. Vinyl playback is a much better representation of the actual sound the artist recorded in the studio.
2. Spotify audio files are mastered differently than vinyl records.
Mastering is the final step in preparing an album for mass production, be it on a physical good or a digital stream. Greg Majewski at CD Baby sums it up perfectly, “Once the mix is finalized, it’s time for the last step: the mastering. The mix is handed to a mastering engineer (or some mixing engineers double as mastering engineers) to put on the final touches. The song is 99% done by this point. The mastering engineer’s job is to listen to the final mix and adjust the overall volume of the song and, if necessary, add any post-production effects or additional compression. In the audio world, this is called ‘sweetening’ the song. It gets the song ready for commercial release and makes it more appealing to listeners.”
In short, because vinyl is a physical object that you own and keep, it will be mastered differently than an audio stream that might be distributed to different outlets (i.e., radio stations, streaming services, etc.).
Jonathan Wyner, in the video below, does a great job explaining why mastering is different for vinyl vs a streaming service like Spotify.
3. Vinyl doesn’t have to be played as loud.
The first few years I started using Spotify, I was in love with having all of my favorite songs and artists at my fingertips. However, I started to wonder if my hearing was getting worse with age as I would often have to turn Spotify up loudly to hear the music as I remembered it.
I thought maybe it was just me, so I did a little research and found a great article from Jason Heffler at edm.com that shed some light on research from Beat Spot, “According to Beat Spot, in order to foster a safe and consistent listening landscape that is devoid of potentially harmful effects to the ear canal, Spotify automatically renders its music to an average volume of -14db integrated LUFS (loudness units relative to full scale). If a submitted song doesn’t meet that standard, Spotify simply turns the volume up or down until it meets its slightly suppressed benchmark of -14db integrated LUFS. They also point out that the platform has a normalization setting in its preferences, which allows you to listen to songs at the actual loudness the artists intended.”
This led me to Ben Stockton’s article at howtogeek.com explaining how to set the volume settings in the Spotify app.
As you can probably tell from my review on this turntable and my Marantz 2270 receiver, I’m a fan of analog music and have spent several years building multiple stereo systems with turntables for optimal playback.
When playing a vinyl record, I only need to adjust the volume setting once on my receiver when the music starts and let it play through the rest of the album.
Because listening to a vinyl record is one representation of an artist’s songs being played in order, I don’t have to worry about different sound levels bouncing around during a Spotify playlist and I don’t have to normalize the volume overall to keep it all in check.
What about vinyl records popping and clicking?
A lot of people remember listening to beat up vinyl records, with annoying pops and clicks throughout playback. Digital audio, in the form of a CD, removed the annoying surface noise and some music fans never looked back to analog again.
With the resurgence of vinyl sales, many niche labels are taking time to press high quality vinyl LPs now. I think of Acoustic Sounds, Tone Poet, Mobile Fidelity and Half Speed Mastering techniques.
These vinyl records sound amazing and play quietly without any pops or clicks. These are the vinyl records I think of when comparing sound with Spotify.
Hi-Fi Streaming is Coming…
In February of 2021, Spotify announced a Hi-Fi streaming service coming soon that will stream music in a lossless format (instead of lossy) which will have a quality close to listening to a CD. I also subscribe to Tidal, who streams in a lossless format and can hear a big difference over Spotify’s current stream.
So, some of the points mentioned above may not prove valid if Spotify’s Hi-Fi service is made available, but I have a feeling it will cost more to subscribe to it. If you decide against upgrading to the Hi-Fi service, then the points above will still apply.
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