Is New Vinyl Exempt from Loudness Wars?

Speaking as someone who masters for production, I can tell you that, broadly, everything said above is true. Essentially, it is all in the mastering, and there is no reliable way to tell if a given LP has been mastered appropriately for that medium. Proper LP mastering is distinctly different from CD mastering in nearly all cases. With LPs, there is no absolute 0 dBFS ceiling to compress up against, as well as a number of other aspects of LP production that require very different mastering considerations. (That’s why LP vs. CD "shootouts" of the "same" recording are, in nearly all cases, simply bogus.) But none of that means that the same, highly compressed, CD master can’t, with some exceptions or minor modifications, be cut to an LP. The LP in that case will likely sound like crap, quite possibly worse even than the "identical" CD, but there is no way for the buyer to know that in advance.

I work with both LPs and digital media a lot. As far as I’m concerned, except as an artifact and as still arguably the best archival media, LPs should otherwise be obsolete. There is no theoretical reason why Redbook CDs, respectfully and properly mastered, shouldn’t in all cases sound as good as or better than any LP. The fact that they often don’t speaks more to the irresistible temptation to abuse the remarkable power of digital technology than to some intrinsic sonic superiority of the LP.

In short, I’m sorry, but, as a consumer, there is no reliable and consistent answer to your question. Good luck and more’s the pity.

Really good info.   Thanks so much. 

The Dynamic Range Database is a good resource for comparing new vinyl and CD releases, at least in terms of raw dynamic range:

http://dr.loudness-war.info/

The vinyl releases aren't always there, but are listed enough such that I use it as a resource when buying new vinyl.

It's also interesting to look at older releases and compare the CD and vinyl versions.

Historically vinyl gets high marks, but no format is completely exempt from overly agressive dynamic range compression. Not vinyl, not SACD, not Japanese SHM CDs, not even hi res downloads. 

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.