Audio frequency range of LP vs. CD

In a nutshell, CDs chop off all the audio content above 22 kHz, while LPs roll off smoothly up to 60 kHz and beyond. Considering that the upper limit of human hearing is commonly agreed to be only 20 kHz, it is up to you to decide how much of a difference this actually makes. But the use of high digital sampling rates lets us record and visualize these upper frequencies which even the current 96 kHz/24 bit standard for professional audio cannot fully capture.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• audio
• frequency
• range
• response
• bandwidth
• hz
• khz
• 22
• 44
• 44.1
• 48
• 96
• 192
• analog
• digital
• sampling
• sample
• rate
• lp
• vinyl
• records
• phonograph
• turntable
• cd
• player
• upper
• limit

[longde]

The guy who made this video is not looking at actual audio content beyond 20KHz. What he is looking at is at the 2nd and 3rd harmonics generated by the distortion of the cartridge and needle. Any vinyl mastering engineer knows that. FAIL.

[vwestlife]

@longde All audio, analog or digital, contains distortion. The fact is, LP has a wider frequency response than CD. It can easily handle the 45 kHz bandwidth of a discrete quadraphonic CD4 recording, while CD cannot.

[longde]

@vwestlife You are clearly unaware that (1) even the best cutterheads like the Neumann SX74 can't get past 25KHz, and (2) even the best cartridges like the Dynavector XV-1 can show more than 1% of 2nd harmonic distortion. Your inexpensive turntable has a conical stylus which can generate up to 10% 2nd harmonic distortion, and that's what you are looking on the spectrum graph. Sorry, but that's the way it is.

[vwestlife]

@longde Look up the specs for CD4 and Shibata styli. It proves you dead wrong! If you still dispute the truth, I'll gladly made a video demonstrating the spectral graph of playing a CD4 LP.

[Tormanoid]

Actually, 20 Hz is the "maximum point" of the human hearing. Generally, the hearing starts fading from 16 Hz to 20Hz The point were it starts fading and its maximum will depend on your age and if your hears suffered of loud sounds (best examples: concerts and night clubs, very loud music).

BTW, don't confuse sampling rate (or sampling frequency) with frequency.

CD = 44,1 kHz (sampling rate) = 22,05 Hz (frequency).

Some say CD freq. is 20 Hz, but it's exactly 22,05 Hz. Don't mix up the numbers.

[vwestlife]

@Tormanoid You mean kHz, not Hz. And most CDs have their audio "brickwall" filtered at 20 kHz, to prevent the aliasing distortion that would happen if they let it go all the way to 22.05 kHz.

[vwestlife]

@pihlbus Human hearing doesn't cut off sharply at 20 kHz, like the CD does. It has a gradual rolloff of sensitivity above that point, like vinyl does.

[vwestlife]

@giraya5 My Pioneer PL-990 turntable may be cheap, but it does use a good quality Audio-Technica AT3600 magnetic cartridge with an elliptical stylus. And if you want to pay me thousands of dollars for one of those "audiophool" turntables, I'd be glad to repeat the experiment!

[sriramraghavan]

I usually buy an LP only if I like the music a lot since they are expensive. So this means, I buy the CD first. Because of this, I have a lot of CDs and LPs of the same album. When I listen to both by flipping each other, I surely surely surely find a decent difference. My wife has been critical about the whole LP thing since she doesn't want me to spend so much and even she finds the difference.

[donpalmera]

@soundofreis78 Wikipedia: Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem

[tetsuma4l]

Now run a high-pass filter and set the cut off at 22050 and have a listen to what CDs are 'missing out on', lmao.

[longde]

@vwestlife (3) and you're unaware that to be able to put up to 45KHz on the Quadraphonic CD4 records (which i own), the JVC engineers had to cut at 1/2.7 of the speed (11.1 RPM) so those 45KHz frequencies were cut as 15KHz on the cutting heads. And even then, the 20-45KHz range had to be cut 19dB lower than the 20-20000Hz range. That is, my friend, is about 1/80th of the power.

[AceTechHD]

HAHAHA cd's suck but im still not throwing out my cd's