Is there a problem with Decca's new packaging for vinyl records?

I am not sure about the price equivalency comment…SACDs seem around 25% higher on Amazon.

The OP stated he purchased the CD simultaneously.  Were they sold together?

@richardbrand 

I don’t mean to be snarky here but somehow you have imbibed the propaganda that vinyl is a higher resolution medium than bog standard CD.  You also seem to a priori believe that multichannel SACD is superior to CD.

   I am more sympathetic to the second assumption as I have 2 multichannel systems in my home and a substantial number of SACDs, Blu Rays, and DVD-Audios.  There have been a few SACDs-not many- where the multichannel version was inferior to the two channel incarnation.  The Hyperion label, for example, made poor sounding SACDs and stopped issuing them.

  However the assumption that analog is a priori superior to digital has always just been nonsense.  For me there is no competition for the black backgrounds and extended dynamic range of digital, particularly in Classical Music.  
  LP has been remarkably successful in its Resurrection and promotion of myth.  People are just in love with artifact and willing to shell out buck bucks to enjoy sonic sludge and then crow about it.

  My LP is listening is reserved for those few favorite albums of yesteryear that were never reissued digitally (or only as mp3 or part of a huge box).  Since pretty much every thing is now available as a FLAC download, it’s been a few months since I felt the urge to lift the dust over , clean the record, and settle in for a pop and click filled 18 minutes of music 

I bought the Petrenko/BPO Shostakovich from Berlin PO site.  The Blu Ray was good but the High Res Nelsons/Boston recordings of the same, from DG, blew it away.  Different halls, different orchestras so who knows what it means.  For the price of one of their releases one can buy an Ormandy reissue box of 60 CDs.  Oh well I buy all of it, reissue and hot shot high resolution material, and probably will until I croak

I buy a lot from Presto, and it’s there specials where the bargains are to be had.  However if you compare their non special CD vs SACD you will find that they charge more for SACD.  And who knows what tariffs we may ultimately have to pay?

I was generically comparing CD prices vs SACD prices at Presto.  There won’t be individual records available as CD vs SACD because these discs are now universally dual layer. 
 

Are the new Decca LPs recorded with analog equipment?

@richardbrand 

I just have to shake my head at people who crow about the superiority of vinyl when recordings are used that were either recorded digitally or digitally mixed in a remastering process.  This was a big deal when many of the recommendations from gurus such as Fremer were shown to be made from DVD-Audio preservations of older recordings in which master tapes had begun to deteriorate.  Once an analog recording had passed through a digital phase, it’s digital, and it doesn’t matter how many times it’s been embedded in vinyl afterwards.

  It would have been interesting if Decca had simultaneously used analog and digital recording equipment.  This is more expensive to do obviously.  I suspect that if they had used analog equipment, they would have advertised this quite loudly , to enhance the credibility of the end product to prospective buyers.  The fact that they are mum about this suggests that they recorded digitally and are vinylizing (is that a word?) digital files because they wish to sell to people that shell out extra money because “it sounds better “.

Decca isn’t ignoring the audiophile community.  If they were ignoring us they wouldn’t be issuing vinyl.  It’s more correct to say that they are exploiting audiophiles who are willing to shell out extra cash in the belief that vinyl is a superior playback medium.  
  They are ignoring nay sayers such as myself that argue that a digital file-, even if embedded in a slab of petroleum and requiring a needle scratching that petroleum to cause movement of that needle and it’s housing and then convert that movement into analog sound wave- that this is still digital.  However why should they care what I think since people like me won’t be interested in their product.

I agree with you.  A few years ago I had a nephew buy an LP because he swallowed the vinyl propaganda and he was chagrined to learn that he couldn’t play it on his laptop.  One of my son’s gfs has an all in one turntable speaker/usb gizmo that cost about $120 US.  She has several LPs purchased for around $30-$40 and states they sound better than any stream of CD.

  One would hope that Classical Music lovers would have one more brain cell than this, and that Decca is borrowing a marketing strategy based on pop music, but I would love to see the sales numbers and learn the tastes in playback of the purchasers