New LP's made from analog or digital masters

Most people can easily tell if the master used is analog. Rarely is it not better then the digital production that was used to create the cd. A great example of this is Steve Hoffman's mastering from the analog masters of Eva Cassidy's Songbird lp. It blows away the CD versions. I have many analogue reel to reel tapes, most done at 7.5 ips. Some of these are the Barclay-Crocker product done from second geration master tapes, which provides a professionally duplicating process. I've compared a few to the CD issue. Analogue rules. So, if an analogue master is avaiable, and put in the hands of a master like Steve, it is the best of the best.

I wonder about this too. I noticed that MoFi recently released Beck's Sea Change on vinyl. I have Sea Change on CD, DVD-A and regular vinyl. I wonder how the MoFi was produced and how it will sound compared to the CD, DVD-A, original vinyl and the MoFi gold CD.

To directly answer your question, most new LPs are made from digital masters. I'm talking specifically about new releases. Not new vinyl releases of old material.

In most cases, the vinyl will still sound better because the digital masters are likely hi-rez digital. To produce CDs, the hi-rez digital must be down-converted to 16bit/44.1khz which is where the big loss of fidelity occurs. This process obviously doesn't occur when mastering for vinyl. (Or I should say it SHOULDN'T occur... Remember the Norah Jones album whose SACD and Vinyl versions were cut from the 16/44.1 CD master? Oops.)

Cheers.

Thanks Tfkaudio. I am considering going vinyl but was wondering if records from digital masters would sound just liket there cd counterparts. Sounds like the vinyl would still have higher fidelity over the cd's in most cases.

It's not uncommon during the vinyl master cutting session for there to be an analog to digital and back to analog conversion stage. This conversion is not really necessary, but many mastering houses use it to add a delay to monitor the input signal in order to prevent cutting head overload and to maintain proper groove spacing.