Vinyl for Digitally Recorded Music - ?


I love my vinyl and I love my well mastered cds. But, I have started collecting vinyl versions of digitally recorded and mastered music and find that the quality just doesn't compare with the older analog recorded stuff. And, then I started wondering about the point of it all...

Obviously, analog recordings produced onto analog / vinyl media makes sense. Same is true for digital recordings produced onto digital / cd media. And for convenience, producing analog recordings on cds makes sense.

But, why should us "audiophiles" bother (other than the novelty and perhaps taking advantage of the studio's high quality D/A) to purchase vinyl versions of digitally recorded music?
poonbean

Showing 1 response by jpearce1b

The mastering process for vinyl is so different than CDs resulting in a way different (not necessarily better) sound. I for one prefer that vinyl sound, but I am pragmatic about the fact it's my personal preference, and someone else may prefer the sound from Red Book CDs.

Plus, ironically, with Digitals wider dynamic range CDs are often (especially in the case of Rock music) mastered to be as loud as possible, zipping the dynamic life right out of them. I tend to listen to Rock music mostly, so for me, this is a big deal.

And... A lot of those huge Studer 24 track ATRs out there are being pulled back into service (Rock, again): Record onto multitrack Tape, Send that to Edit in Protools (Digital), Send output of edited tracks in protools back to Tape, Then send final, analog summed mix (i.e. 2 track) back to high resolution digital recorder. My point being even on digital recordings there's more analog stuff being part of the modern recoding process than you might think.