Is New Vinyl Exempt from Loudness Wars?

LP mastering is almost always different from that of CD, even if made from the same digital file.

The reason is you don't have to compress LPs because there is no intention that they will be played in a car.

When the vinyl is cut from a digital master the engineer must TONE THIS DIGITAL MASTER LOUDNESS FACTOR DOWN. He/she has no choice on this because of actual physical limitations with the cut grooves on the record, and noise itself.

This statement does not sound right. We've yet to encounter a digital master file that we had to 'tone down'; what you are dealing with here is simply that you have to find the right level to get everything in the groove (so this could be simple semantics), but IME you don't have to limit or compress the signal going into the grooves to do that. You don't have to limit the bass either. You do have to be on the lookout for out of phase bass, which can occur in multi-tracked recordings; this can be dealt with by a passive process that senses the out-of-phase bass and makes it mono below a certain frequency for a few milliseconds. But if you are careful and spend some time with the recording, quite often even that process can be avoided simply by changing the groove depth and perhaps adjusting the overall level by a db or so. One or 2 db can have a huge effect when mastering an LP; -3 db means half as much power in the cutterhead- half as much excursion. So reducing the level by only a db might be all that is needed to make the project work, and in the end result that db is hardly audible.

It really comes down to production- if the producer is smart they won't send the LP mastering house the same file that was used to master the CD (which often has limiting, EQ and compression), instead they will send the master digital file with the understanding that the LP mastering engineer will deal with it as needed.

But in all cases the LP is being mastered with something very much like the master digital file, whereas the CD likely is not. Further, people do still master with analog tape, which is great when it happens. This is why the LP usually sounds better- its closer to the source if nothing else.

and if you analize the RIAA curve you can see that exist a significative compression in the bass frequency range that latter on the phono stage  have to be " restablished " through another RIAA eq. degradation mechanism.

This is absolute nonsense. The RIAA curve has nothing to do with compression!

"they will send the master digital file with the understanding that the LP mastering engineer will deal with it as needed. "

Isn’t that pretty much what they sent the CD mastering engineer as well?

Yes, it is. And when the CD mastering engineer gets a hold of it, at the very least it will get normalized (which is actually a good thing), but will likely also get compressed and may see some EQ. It has to work in a car! So this is why you see the LP showing greater dynamic range.

while the cutting lathes are truly magnificent machines and properly maintained stand the test of time beautifully… The format itself was not made to reproduce the kind of loud and often distorted music we have today.

Vinyl is an analogue format and sounds great. But with that come some physical limitations. Digital formats like CD and MP3 can reproduce anything where as vinyl is more unforgiving.

What Physical Vinyl Limitations ?

Well the very nature of the cutting act itself by the person and the machine (cutter). The person doing the vinyl master cut needs to be careful when cutting vinyl. Extreme signals can damage the equipment and also put grooves in the vinyl that are too big, which will prevent 20 mins of music a side. Go over 20 mins results in smaller grooves which leads to distortion and other problems like tracking.

This is incorrect.

First and most important, we should all keep in mind that **all** recording gear is designed to record whatever is thrown at it- it does not have taste of its own and would have no idea if the recording is ;music we have today' or something older. The simple fact is that vinyl easily records 'the loud and often distorted music of today' with no worries. Ask me how I know.

Here is another fact I discovered after we set up our LP mastering operation: The mastering amplifiers typically have about 10X more power than the cutterhead could ever handle. This is so its impossible to overload the electronics. The cutterhead itself, which indeed fragile by comparison, can cut undistorted grooves that no cartridge/tone arm combo could ever hope to track. So with any music that can be recorded at all the cutterhead is in no danger whatsoever, unless the mastering engineer does something stupid (again, ask me how I know...). IOW, the limit to LP dynamic range is in **playback**, not record!

The simple fact of the matter is while the LP likely falls a few (and I mean just a few) db short of the dynamic range of Redbook, in practice that dynamic range of Redbook is never exploited (the same with MP3) due to the fact that the media has expectation to be used in a car. Since LP does not have this expectation, usually it will in practice have greater dynamic range in the grooves that you will see with any commercial digital recording.

Going over 20 minutes on a side really is not a problem and you see it all the time. But that is a good side length as it can accommodate any kind of music without dynamic compression or tracking problems. 

there is still the problem that very few people have the playback equipment needed to track it well much less not have the stylus jump the groove.   So it only makes sense to produce such a product at higher cost and profit margin since only a few will be able to benefit.

The rule of thumb I use is a Grado Gold mounted on a Technics SL1200. If you can't track it perfectly with that then you have a mastering problem. No-one is cutting in such a way that only a top-end arm/cartridge combo will work!! Lacquers for mastering are 14" in diameter; if we want to test something we will often cut a test track outside the 12" diameter and then play it back on our SL1200 to see how well it works. That way we know we are getting a good cut when we proceed with the recording.

At extremely large/fast cutting head excursions, the cutting head coils may physically burn up, much like how a speaker's voice coils may be destroyed by an excessive current. Also, the diamond cutting head stylus may prematurely wear or break. This places important constraints on the maximum levels that can be recorded to a record.

This is another example of a statement made by someone that has no clue as to how the mastering process occurs.

In actual real life, this won't happen. You can't burn up the cutterhead by cutting a trackable groove! Anyone who thinks that hasn't been around one.

Further, the stylus typically has about a 10-hour service life before it has to be replaced. **Diamond** is usually used for dub plates (which are plastic custom one-offs made for DJs and the like, being harder than lacquers you need a different stylus). So most styli are actually sapphire, not diamond!! Additionally, they are heated so they can make the cut without noise. The reason they only go about 10 hours is they start to make noisy cuts. At 5 hours its often a good practice to check and see if you need to raise the stylus temperature slightly to compensate for wear to the stylus. 

The stylus isn't going to break or wear prematurely without abuse- that is pretty much just bunk.