Would music lose quality if I transfered vinyl to CD?

Question

I Want to transfer vinyl records to CD as vinyl is pure sound and I think transferring vinyls to cd would be better than buying a pre made album CD might sound a bit stupid but would the music lose its quality if I transfered vinyl to CD

Answer 1

No.

It lost it's quality when transferred to vinyl and reproduced from that.



The absolute best dynamic range for LPs (vinyl) is in the region of 70 - 75db or so; the noise floor is just not good, no matter how good the equipment.

Most recent "vinyl players" are nowhere near as good at good as that anyway, they are just gimmicky toys.



CDs have a dynamic range of 96db.



The mechanical limits on LPs wipe out all the really low level detail, it's just lost in the background noise.





I have a very high end turntable from 40 years ago, and many LPs - I keep the turntable maintained as a piece of history, but never use it, as CDs are far better and newer digital formats such as blu-ray audio vastly better again.



If you enjoy playing LPs, good for you - but don't get taken in by ludicrous claims that they are in any way technically better than CD or higher quality digital audio, it's just not true.



[Professional electronics designer for over 40 years].

Answer 2

A commercial Compact Disc will generally be made from a master recording or tape, not from a fifth pressing copy of a vinyl record that has likely seen better days.



So the digital copy will be made from a better source recording. Really, that's all there is to it.



Also know  that many records are pressed from recordings captured by digital Soundstream recorders in the first place. They were then transcribed into analog, cut into a master, from which molds were made. From these vinyl record copies pressed.



Now, you want to copy it back, from analog vinyl to digital. You can do that, but the CD made from the original, or closer to the original source, will obviously be better. There are of course, other factors that affect any particular case or recording.

Answer 3

The thing to remember is that every time you play a vinyl disk you degrade it a bit, even with the best equipment. Once you convert the sound to digital you have a permanent good copy. And that's before you consider the risk of mishandling the disk. IMHO a "ripped" vinyl sounds just as good as the original.

Answer 4

Well very good question. The short answer to your question is Yes. Analog is analog and it has a unique sound that only analog recordings can reproduce. Once it is transferred to a digital format the magic that analog sound has is gone. That is why you still and always will see a debate about which is the better sounding format. For most good engineers and true audiophiles analog is still the king.



There is something lost when music is converted or recorded to digital. It is why many say it sounds sterile and lacks the tonal qualities of analog.



With that said if you are careful and have good software you can convert to digital with good results. The Analog to digital converter for recordings, and the digital to analog converter for digital playback, have a huge effect on the quality of the process. If your strickly converting it to cd then the maximum digital conversion will be 48khz 24 bit. ( redbook being 44.1, 16 bit ) If its being transferred to being played on a computer based digital playback system depending on your converter you can then choose a higher bit rate. Which contrary to many does make a difference in the sound. Significantly !

Answer 5

In theory yes but, in practice, not if you have the equipment and the skill to do it properly but the results will be the worst of both worlds - the surface noise, wow and flutter etc. of the original record plus the loss of the per advantage of an analogue recording - the CD will be a digital recording.



You'd be a heck of a lot better off buying a commercially produced CD.



Added, if you want an evaluation of the shortcomings of records compared to CDs then read Robert's answer. He's correct.

Answer 6

What makes you think you transferring music to a CD is better than the studio making a CD from the masters? Do you really beleive that you have better equipment to handle this process than a huge corporation who job it is to do this? And what does "pure sound" mean?



But yes, anytime you make a copy (from one format to another) of anything you will lose quality. The quality of the source, type of copying, and equipment used to make the copy (and other things) will determine the quality of the copy.



You will not make a better CD recording of the same album than the pre-made CD.



By the way, there are a lot of crappy vinyl recordings also.

Answer 7

You are converting analog data to digital data and you always lose quality doing that, regardless of how the process is done.