Does vinyl only make sense if they're pressed from analog tapes?

I can certainly relate to this. I definitely have a tendency to channel surf when listening to digital...either CD, or ripped, or streaming. I guess because it’s so easy to listen to 30 seconds and then move on. When you pick out a record and put it on, you’re really making a commitment to listen to it. I still struggle at times in staying focused, and in fact, was thinking about starting a thread...when you put on a piece of music, are you solely focused on listening to that music, or are you on this forum screwing around at the same time, checking your phone, etc. I’d like to get back to focusing on the record more while it’s playing (and shopping on Discogs less).

 

I think this depends on whether you're an analog purist or not. If you're not an analog purist, then it wouldn't make sense to "be" an analog purist - under any circumstances.

To put it another way: "Records sound better" ≠ "Analog sounds better". The former is an observation, the latter is a (debatable) conclusion.

I suppose the question in the original post assumes as fact that analog is superior to digital. Is that your position?

I disagree - about the part about the whole point of a record, that is. I also doubt there's any practical usefulness to the "no loss"/"some loss" theoreticals it's based on.

 

I find that participating in the "listening threads" on this forum help to keep me focused on music. It's a bit like when you were a kid and friends would come over to listen to music with the added advantage of silence. I almost never post on the hardware or music forum while playing music.

 

The best threads on here IMO.

 

I think rather than let these type of threads be created every other day......SHF should make two sticky threads that remain open for these conversations, this way members have two threads to go to for review and posting.

Analog vs Digital

Vinyl vs CD

 

nah, they need to be killed after 10 pages.

 

Ha! Perhaps not a bad idea.

 

make. it. stop.

 

But we're so close to a consensus here.

 

Probably worth a try. As other threads are created (and they will be), merge them into the sticky threads.

Mono vs. Stereo would be another good candidate.

 

I actually wound up with a lot of them in storage when I did a home reno some years ago, and many are still there. I'm getting to the age where I'm actually looking at downsizing and that's definitely going to me letting go of a lot of LPs and CDs for that matter.

 

I can think of a few reasons to buy a digitally sourced album:

1. The mastering is uniquely better on LP.
2. The LP has a digital source that is hirez not otherwise available.
3. The digital source is low rez but the analog process benefits the sound (example would be The Nightfly One-Step MFSL).

 

I have quite a few classical records that were digitally recorded. The funny thing is I treat them as any record, I listen to them.

 

I never buy vinyl that has a digital source somewhere in the chain. If I wanna listen to that music I'll buy the CD. I want my analog vinyl to be mastered from an analog source I don't want any loss from digital. That's why I buy vinyl because it's the closest I can get to original source without being in studio with the musicians or listening to original master tape.

 

On the Nightfly point. It's not only the process, but the higher speed that gives a decided advantage.
I have purchased some digital LP titles that were released at 45 rpm. I just feel it gives it a more robust soundstage and an edge over it's CD counterpart.
Just IMO.

 

Where did you find original master tapes to listen to?

 

New Vinyl Albums...Digital or Analog?

Since @Stone Turntable isn't showing up for this round, I have to link to him.

That whole thread might be of interest to those who have inexplicably never seen this kind of thread before.

 

Is a person listening to vinyl, primarily, because he feels that it provides the best music listening experience? Handling LPs is a physical process that requires a bit of care and attention, static removal, dust removal and so on, from time to time. An LP side plays for a limited about of time, after which physical engagement must be initiated by the listener. The turntable must be manually engaged too. Stylus wear must be checked from time to time. A stylus must be cleaned from time to time. The point is that listening to music on LPs is most often more involving than streaming or playing CDs. It's demands a pace, some regular application of patience, and care and attention for and to the medium. A digitally sourced/mastered LP is nothing unusual, but it is at least psychologically not the purest analog experience. By definition then, the use of LPs as a preferential music source also means that the experience is mostly the music but also partly the physical engagement with the music playing process.

A thread of this kind will always trend toward a discussion of one or more specific albums that one or more members have discovered sound(s) great no matter how it was mastered, or sounds great only in the purely analog mastering, or sounds great only in digital mastering. But I think that experience, expressed by individual members about a relative tiny handful of albums, is too narrow to be applied to the OP's broader question. The reason is, I think, because a lot of the LP listening experience is intertwined with the process of caring for and playing LPs. It is, inevitably, a different experience from handling CDs or streaming sources, and that's where any sort of general comparison breaks down.

I'm lucky - an enormous amount of the music I personally prefer was recorded, mastered and pressed to LP long before CD came along - jazz and classical recordings from the '50s through the early '80s. However, 100% of the contemporary jazz and classical recordings I buy or stream have never been anywhere near a multi-track tape deck of any kind. The contemporary recordings are, by and large, superb - the music listening experience is therefore potentially superb too, with the only possible letdown being poor performance or poor arrangements. To me, jazz and classical of a certain age and of certain periods will always be an analog experience. The number of digital remasterings of older tapes that end up as truly stellar CDs or high resolution files or HiFi streams on TIDAL is getting enormous, the musical experience being so absorbing that any thought of the LP analog listening is in my thinking simply blasted away by the truly wonderful recordings.

In the contemporary rock, pop and indie LP racks at the record stores in Toronto (e.g., Tonality, June Records, Rotate This, Sonic Boom, Play Da Record, Quixotic Records, Cosmos, etc., etc., etc.) basically everything has been mastered from digital recordings. LP production is a paean to the fact that LP has been resurging for 15 years or so. All that LP production in these specific genre - with the exception of the remasterings based on old tapes that reach back to the è80s and earlier; really, not the contemporary scene at all - meets a lifestyle and marketing trend head on.

Suggesting that, technically, a contemporary digital source recording cannot be turned into a superb master to produce a great LP is just plain wrong. Whether or not the labels are actually taking the time and spending the money to do that often enough is a whole other discussion. With the tools on-hand today, startlingly great recordings and LPs can be - and are - made. When some of these musicians, recording engineers, producers and mastering engineers from time to time put their minds to engaging in a well coordinated effort to produce a great, new LP today, magic happens. It is amazing.

 

Moot question really. The fact is that you will find that reissue vinyl sourced from a digital master file can sound better played back on vinyl than the direct hi-res digital file (used to make the vinyl version) on your consumer grade digital player.

 

Huh...you sure about that?

Wynton Marsalis ‎– Hot House Flowers

Recorded May 30th and 31st, 1984 at RCA Studio A, New York.
Recorded Digitally on Sony 24 Track PCM 3324 Digital Recorder.
Mastering: CBS Recording Studios on the CBS DisComputer System.

Wynton Marsalis - Hot House Flowers

 

Vinyl makes sense to me , only if it's got a more engaging mastering , which quite a few of them do have.
I wouldn't recommend vinyl if the alternative cd sounds just as good , I don't see the point.

 

This thread has turned into another generic vinyl v digital thread, which isn't what the original post was asking. People seem to be talking at cross purposes. For me there is no point to digitally sourced vinyl providing every else is equal (i.e. the mastering and the equipment used). All you are doing is introducing noise when playing the LP which makes no sense to me.

Of course it is impossible to use identical equipment to compare the same mastering between digital and vinyl. Perhaps this explains why people think the LP is better when in reality it is their equipment that is superior.

 

The premise of the thread is analog vs. digital, which isn't too far remove practically from vinyl vs. digital. But if you're going to say it's a hard and fast rule that digitally sourced LP's "make no sense", then I'd like to know if you have taken various digital media such as CDs or DVDs or SACDs and compared them to equivalent digitally sourced vinyl and discovered that the vinyl sounded worse for being digitally sourced. The whole premise seems like a foolish attempt at fastidiousness, driven not so much by practical experience but by a strange desire to reason something out of all relevance on a technicality.

 

I think LPs make sense (regardless of AAA or not) especially for albums released before the CD era. That is the format they were designed for back in the day. So if someone wants to replace a worn-out album from the LP era with a new, affordable, nice sounding (but digitally mastered) version, go for it.

Things got a little funky when albums started being designed for CD. A lot of 50+ minute albums were squeezed onto 2 LP sides...that does not make sense to me. I'd be inclined to stick with CDs for those.

Of course, I am sitting on the sidelines observing this since I have no more real LP collection.