What are the best places to listen to music?

(CNN Español) – Debate has been going on for years in online forums or in friends’ gatherings, and vinyl fans say that this format offers the best production quality. supporters flow – or digital audio in general – they say the music played on the platforms is high definition. But who is right?

The answer is not so simple and both may be true. The key is coordination.

JC Losada, Venezuelan sound engineer and producer Zona Pop CNN That there are differences, and even within the different platforms of flow.

Differences between vinyl sound and flow

“Yes, there is a difference. The quality of the vinyl is very good, the CD is HD, the file flow You start to lose quality and dependence on the platform…because every platform flow Losada, who has worked with artists like Ricky Martin, Shakira, and Carlos Santana, explains that it has its own algorithm.

“Vinyl has the great sound quality we all know, but it has its limits in terms of frequency range and dynamic range, which means volume,” Losada says.

If you take the vinyl in your hands and examine it, you will see that the record has grooves, or channels, where the songs are located. These grooves are crossed over the record player with a needle that “reads” that information and reproduces it.

“The tiny channel that that needle travels through inside the vinyl is so thin that only the needle can move a certain amount of motion to reproduce the frequency. If the frequency is too low, too high, or too intense, the needle should move faster or it should move more physically,” Losada explains.

The first difference: continuity in the sound

To understand digital audio, that is, what we listen to on platforms like Spotify or Apple Music, it is necessary to think about the concept behind video.

“When you talk about digital audio, you imagine the same concept of a 35 or 30 frames per second movie, and these frames go by so fast that your eyes join them and create the movement. In digital audio it’s the same. In one moment of the audio many pictures are taken. On a CD, for example, you can take 44,000 images of a sound wave in one second,” he explains.

Those images, in digital format, are known as samples. According to the Wazzada, when one is placed behind the other, they create a sound continuity.

Something completely different from what happens with vinyl productions. “On vinyl, the sound is continuous because it is an electrical signal. So, because it is an electrical signal, there is no interruption,” Losada says.

According to the Venezuelan producer, the second difference is when we talk about quality vinyl versus quality. Digital audio is in question: for what format was the production intended?

The second difference: recorded productions of certain formats

“The problem is that before, when you would go and buy vinyl, the sound would be the same anywhere in the world. But now the same song I made depending on which store you buy it from, which is flowIt will look different. So there is always the challenge that since each platform has its own algorithm, it looks different,” explains Losada.

For example, recordings like “Abbey Road” by The Beatles were intended and produced to be played on a record player. For this reason, it lacks frequencies that cannot be reproduced in vinyl records.

«Much of the music heard today has been recorded for this format. We’ll talk about Bob Marley and we’ll talk about the Beatles, we’ll talk about Quinn, Pink Floyd, Michael Jackson, La Vania… (that) music was created to be reproduced like this. It was recorded and captured using technology that matches this format,” Losada says.