Does Vinyl Last Longer Than Cd

About 2 percent in 2014.

Does vinyl last longer than cd. Vinyl didn t die when jimi hendrix did. Vinyl records play an analog recording while cds play a digital recording. A digital recording is a snapshot of the analog signal at a certain rate. The rate for cds is 44 100 times per second and the accuracy for cds is 16 bit.

Cds reflect exactly what the artists recorded in the studio. Modern classical cds tend to be more true to life than lps ever were even those direct to digital lps. The cd player or nowadays usually the dvd or blu ray player hides the sound duplication process much more than the record turntable does and pretty much hides the magic too. And you can always make as many perfect copies of them as you like.

Comparing compact discs cds to vinyl or gramophone records is the musical equivalent of comparing digital photography with film photography. Cd s and hard drives degrade over the years and eventually will not be able to work do to scratches data corruption cd rot etc. By contrast cds will sound the same essentially forever unless you leave them on your car dashboard on a sunny day. Vinyl and cassettes should they be stored proprely.

Vinyl is back no doubt about it. There are built in problems with using vinyl as a data encoding mechanisms that have no cd equivalent. On the other hand cassettes and vinyl can last for an extremely long time should they be stored verticaly and in the dark when not used. Sales of vinyl records have been soaring although they still represent only a tiny fraction of the music industry s revenues.

On a theoretical level there s just no reason it should be the case that vinyl sounds better.