Do we all have this friend who’s  like super into vinyl records?

Maybe they turn their nose up at digital  mp3s and insist that the only “right” way to listen to music is the warm  analog tones of a record player. Some of you are that friend.

But is analog music really superior? It is true that sound waves are stored  differently in analog and digital recordings. And music definitely sounds a little different depending on the technology  you use to play it back.

As it turns out, scientists have studied this! And depending on which kind of  listening experience you prefer, their findings may or may  not be music to your ears. [♪ INTRO] Alright, before we get to  records, let’s talk about sound. It’s just vibrations, whether they’re  coming out of your vocal folds, or a violin string, or a set of speakers.

These vibrations can travel through  lots of different materials. But when we’re talking about music, we mostly care about vibrations  being transmitted through the air. As air molecules wiggle back and forth, they create tiny pockets of  more compressed molecules and less compressed molecules.

And these changes in air pressure  ripple outward as a sound wave. It is happening from my mouth right now. Physically speaking, all music that  reaches your ears is the same thing: it’s air molecules vibrating.

So the whole analog versus digital  music debate is actually about what happens when you record sound  waves and play them back later. Analog recordings collect continuous  information about a sound wave. And the graph of an analog recording  is sort of like a roller coaster track.

There might be some really tall  peaks or basically flat sections, but there aren’t any missing  pieces where the car would derail. On the other hand, digital recordings  are discrete rather than continuous. They are made of snapshots of  a sound wave called samples.

For example, a digital file with  a sample rate of 44.1 kiloHertz captures 44,100 samples per second. That’s a lot of information! But it is not continuous like an analog recording.

The graph of a digital recording  is more like a staircase, where each stair step is a sample. You can use these data points to approximate that smooth, curvy roller coaster track. Which is basically how digital  recordings get translated back into sound waves that you can hear.

But there’s gonna be a tiny amount  of information lost no matter what. Some audiophiles argue that this  information loss is part of what takes the “fullness” out of digital music. And things do sound pretty weird pretty  fast if your samples are low quality.

But when you have good equipment  and audio engineers who know what they’re doing, the benefits of  digital might outweigh the charm of analog. Because plenty of bad analog music exists too! This SciShow video is supported by Ground News, a website and app that lets  you compare how major events are being covered so you can see  more sides of more stories.   Like the new Space Race.

The merging of space exploration  with defense objectives can bring up questions around government-approved  media, factuality, and propaganda. That’s where Ground News comes in. Ground News gathers news from  50,000 news sources around the world and can help you read between  the lines of media bias.

You can go to ground dot news slash sci  show to see how it works for yourself. Recently, China’s lunar mission returned  to Earth with samples from the Moon. And Ground News has over 200  sources covering that story, with 40% from the political left, 42%  from the center, and 18% from the right.

When looking at the headlines, coverage  is similar across the political spectrum, with outlets focusing on the Chinese  probe bringing samples back to Earth. Keeping up with the latest  science news can be tough with all the different narratives out there,  and it takes some serious fact-checking to feel confident about what we're sharing. You can go to ground.news/scishow  or click the link in the description to get 40% off unlimited  access with their Vantage plan.

The earliest sound recording equipment and playback devices were, of course, all analog. The recorders captured  vibrations of sound waves and carved wiggly grooves into physical media. In the 1880s and 90s, there were a  couple of different inventions that could store and play back these analog recordings.

Phonographs mostly used cylinders made of wax, while the early gramophones  used an acid-etched metal disc. In either device, you could put a needle  into the groove of the cylinder or disc as it spun, which would reproduce  the recorded sound waves. And this same basic idea is how  record players still work today.

Here’s the thing, though: if you listened  to one of these old analog recordings, you probably would not be saying, “Now THIS was the golden age of music technology!” They’re going to be staticky and  quiet, and they could only be played a few dozen times before  the wax or metal wore down and the sound quality would  keep decreasing over time. As technology advanced, though,  these clunky cylinders were replaced with higher-quality analog  recordings made with microphones. By capturing continuous sound  waves as electric signals, we could make magnetic tapes or records  pressed into sturdy polyvinyl chloride, which are the vinyl LPs that delight  the ears of audio hipsters today.

But even those degrade over time. Digital recordings started becoming  mainstream in the 1980s and 90s, and suddenly we could make high quality recordings that were easy to edit and never wore down. These days, musicians have to go out  of their way, and take on the expense, to record their songs using analog technologies.

In fact, most vinyl records that were  made in the past two or three decades were probably created from a digital recording. Or at least using a mix of  analog and digital tools. So they’re not even analog all the way through!

But here’s the thing: if you started watching  this video as a lover of analog music, knowing that your Olivia Rodrigo  vinyl is playing the same sound waves as her digital mp3 files probably will  not change how much you love vinyl. According to a May 2022 study, the  expectations you have around music have a measurable effect on how you experience it. If participants were told that they  were listening to a song on vinyl, they reported the sound had more “fullness.” And if they were told that they  were listening to a song on mp3, they reported the sound had  more “clarity” and “smoothness,” regardless of what format they  were actually listening to.

In another study from 2000, 40  participants listened to analog and digital recordings made at the  same time with the same microphone of the same orchestral performances. Without knowing which versions  they were listening to, they rated the digital  recordings as higher quality. But the researchers noted that many  of these participants preferred CDs over cassettes, so the study results might  just match their initial preferences.

To explain audiophiles’ love of analog  music, some researchers think nostalgia for past technologies plays a role; the  physical experience of putting on a record, or the imperfections you hear that  don’t show up in digital music files. Others point to the community  aspects of music appreciation. Now that most music is digital,  vinyl records are collectible objects that can be expensive or rare to  come by, so loving the way LPs sound might make you feel  connected to other audio nerds.

While there is a technical difference  between analog and digital recordings, how we enjoy the music can  be influenced by everything from what we grew up with to  what we expect to sound good. So if you take one thing away from this  video, let people like what they like! It will probably be hard to  change their minds, anyway. [♪ OUTRO]