fleschler
But I love it and will always choose to listen to a vinyl recording over a digital one.
My theory for which I have no real evidence whatsoever is that the format stops the mastering engineer from compressing the hell out of a track. It's well known that if you play a song through a hi-fi and then play it again a fraction louder e.g. 1/2 -1 dB then subjectively you'll prefer the second listening. I believe this trick has been used by many an unscrupulous snake oil salesman in listening tests. So when the mastering engineer comes to master for digital then he/she knows the song will end up back to back with some other artists work in a playlist. The temptation to increase the compression (and subjective loudness) to make the track 'pop' will be hard to resist.
A recording needs to be specifically mastered for vinyl, if it weren't then a lot of digital masters would make the stylus pop straight out of the groove and skid across the surface. And no vinyl lover minds turning up a bit to compensate for a quiet recording, so there's no motive for the mastering engineer to go mad with the compression.
Even if I'm wrong, I can't help liking vinyl with all its flaws... as the British radio DJ, John Peel said 'Listen mate, life has surface noise'.
The mastering of the format is generally the key to great sound.You've hit the nail on the head for me. As an engineer I know that vinyl is a hugely outdated and compromised format that requires electronic acrobatics just to get a flat frequency response before you even think about minimising the noise getting 200µV up to a healthy line level.
But I love it and will always choose to listen to a vinyl recording over a digital one.
My theory for which I have no real evidence whatsoever is that the format stops the mastering engineer from compressing the hell out of a track. It's well known that if you play a song through a hi-fi and then play it again a fraction louder e.g. 1/2 -1 dB then subjectively you'll prefer the second listening. I believe this trick has been used by many an unscrupulous snake oil salesman in listening tests. So when the mastering engineer comes to master for digital then he/she knows the song will end up back to back with some other artists work in a playlist. The temptation to increase the compression (and subjective loudness) to make the track 'pop' will be hard to resist.
A recording needs to be specifically mastered for vinyl, if it weren't then a lot of digital masters would make the stylus pop straight out of the groove and skid across the surface. And no vinyl lover minds turning up a bit to compensate for a quiet recording, so there's no motive for the mastering engineer to go mad with the compression.
Even if I'm wrong, I can't help liking vinyl with all its flaws... as the British radio DJ, John Peel said 'Listen mate, life has surface noise'.