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Are Digitally mastered LPs any better than CDs?

It seems to me a vinyl album that was mastered digitally would be the worst of both worlds - the digital effects would still be present,overlaid with surface noise, dust pops, no convenience features (remote control track skip, etc). I suppose if you don't have a great digital front-end, the record could sound like a CD playing on a much better CD player than you have. Or maybe if the digital master was a hi-res format, your record could sound like an SACD playing on a very high-end player, overlain with surface noise. Am I missing something?
honest1

Showing 2 responses by radknee

radknee
25 posts
 
I read somewhere that good engineers never downconvert high-rez digital masters directly to 16/44. What they do is record the high-rez master to analog tape 1st, then transfer the tape to 16/44, eliminating distortions that occur during downsampling.

Of course, going to vinyl directly from hi-rez digital should sound better than 16/44 digital.
radknee
25 posts
 
>> 09-01-08: Mothra
>> don't be too sure vinyl is hi-rez. Much of it is not, call some pressing plants and see what they usually get, you will find a lot of vinyl comes right from a cd master at 44.1.

It'd be great if there was a way to trace a particular vinyl album's recording lineage to see if the master was analog, hi-rez, or 16/44. Could devote a whole website to the topic.
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