USB-C v 3.5mm: Which one offers better audio quality? | Hacker News Reader

USB-C v 3.5mm: Which one offers better audio quality?

engadget.com

4 pointsbookofjoe4 comments

I’ve never had any luck getting digital music to sound as good as my vinyl collection. Noticeably not even close. Tried everything you can imagine up to the point a friend brought over his $1000+ DAC and even he saw a massive difference in quality.

Streaming and digital music is very convenient but there’s a massive trade off in quality. As someone who was stung by low quality MP3s in the Napster days, I cherish my vinyl collection.

Don’t let audiophiles put you off. If you truly love music, investing in a record player and decent sound system is well worth it.

Any perceived difference isn't due to any technical superiority of vinyl though, more often it's the other way around: you can't dynamically compress audio as much and still have it playable from vinyl, so there's often a different, more dynamic, master/mix going onto the vinyl.

Sighted testing and different audio levels are other common sources of perceived vinyl superiority.

Many people enjoy the ritual of grabbing a vinyl and setting it up for playback, having physical access to coverart and maybe lyrics, which are entirely valid reasons to prefer vinyl, but that isn't audio quality.

I found the deficiency that bothered me most was the analog portion of the ADC. Once that has muddled through the capture process there's not much that can be done regardless of DAC upon playback.

Besides that, the original engineers, working closely with the classic rock musicians (or scrutinizing conductor) during the original recording & mastering of their potential smash hit record, were probably paid about 10x relative to a digital mastering re-engineer decades later. Or if the artists were not established hitmakers, worked about 10x as hard to try and make it come true. Sometimes both, since you need to improve the odds all you can technically if you want to better leverage the fundamental popularity contest.

Naturally the analog section on playback can also be a nasty issue for both digital and vinyl sources.

Not that endgadget in recent years has been a bastion of tech blogging, but ever since the got sold to Static Media a few months ago it feels like there has been a huge growth in the amount of filler content they're posting.

"How to tell if your ethernet cable is slowing you down", "how to clean your iphone", "how to wipe your ass", etc. On a slow week, sure. However when it's the majority of their content now...?

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