What albums, in your opinion, sound unquestionably better on Vinyl rather than Digital?


So this is not an effort to start a medium-war thread, rather in my view some records just seem to be mastered better on the vinyl record version than the digital version. Three that spring to mind from my record collection:

  • Henri Texier - Varech
  • Tom Misch - Geography
  • JLin - Black Origami (this very surprisingly to me)


I know everyone’s system is different, everyone’s ears are different and everyone’s tastes are different, but for the purposes of this discussion let us assume that YOU are the final arbiter of objective reality!
corvaldt
U2's "The Joshua Tree" is a whole new experience on the 180 gram LP versus the CD.  So alive, open and clean, tight bass. The upper midrange glare of the CD is Gone!
@tooblue  I'd agree as far as anything pre 90s goes. Just as the studios started getting the hang of transferring analogue to digital transfers some smart person realised they could employ digital compression to make CD sound 'louder'. Bang went dynamics and in came the 'loudness wars'.

I have learned to live with digital but it is a shame to see a great technology abused by the demands of the market in this fashion.

I still believe it could be great in the hands of an artistically free mastering engineer...


As of 2018 I believe that no digital versions of the following albums match their original vinyl predecessors. Even the so-called prestige original Master tape remastering are regularly compromised.

All of the Beatles albums 
All of Elvis Presley
All of the Stones
All Hendrix
All Sex Pistols
Most of the Kinks
All of the Smiths
The Pogues first two

Astral Weeks
Kind of Blue
etc etc






Where to start? Too many to note a clear example off the top of my head as I just recently demoed to a friend to demonstrate vinyl’s appeal, Nancy Griffith’s "One Fair Summer Evening", a live club performance.
Some great ideas here, plus some bands I haven’t heard of (and am now, faintly ironically, going to check out on Spotify...)!