Why does new vinyl sound digital?

[AmericanConstellation]

I love this guy...but it took a long time to just say..."It's a digital recording, cut on vinyl"...

[SAerror]

Loudness wars is the real problem here, digital mastering done properly has little to no impact on what you hear.

[vinylordie]

When releasing my album last year, we had to master the thing twice. Once for digital mediums, and again for the vinyl record. Two different listening experiences!

[benkrake]

This is exactly why only collect vinyl for the music I listen to that was released before the digital revolution, or just as CD’s were just coming out in the early 1980’s when CD players were expensive, and most people still couldn’t afford them. I personally think that music after the digital revolution, especially music post 2000 is going to sound the same on vinyl as it would digital. Unless it was separately mastered in analog for vinyl, it’s going to sound exactly the same. I don’t fancy paying 3 times the price for a new aged album on vinyl that was mastered digitally.

[thegood]

This is why i've quit buying new vinyl. They are actually taking digitally remastered data and dumping to vinyl for sales. It pissed me off, and I'm done.

[publicdomainscience]

Funny thing is, that a CD and especially a SACD could have a higher dynamic range than most LPs actually had. But almost no recordings take advantage of that. Except eg some recordings of classic music today.

[chriscutress]

"BRING DYNAMICS BACK" In the spirit of Bob Katz I'd put that on the back of my truck !

[leonarddaneman]

You have to look for the code, like AAD, on the CD. Analog master recording, Analog mixed, Digital format. This should be required on 'new' lp's as well. Like, AAA.

[SpeakerBuilder]

The best sounding vinyl records I own were produced in the 80's, and of course they all originate as multi-track tape recordings. The combination of tape recording/mastering and vinyl pressing provides that warmth we seek. If we want to go back to vinyl, lets go back to multi-track tape and two track tape mastering. Otherwise, pressing vinyl records from digital recordings seems silly. I have lots of CD's that sound fabulous, not quite as warm as the best vinyls, but a bit more dynamic and certainly cleaner. If you have a really clean recording, either medium is fine.

[hirambright]

What I found is that a vinyl record sounds great if I use a great and relatively expensive sound system. CDs on the other hand will give you a clear sound with any device.

[csilt]

I'm glad you mentioned Daft Punk at the end because I have their albums Discovery and Random Access Memories and they both sound phenomenal on vinyl. They sound so much better than most modern vinyl.

[themarcinmm]

Oh, I hate the loudness war. I mean, I hate it. I’m so happy I got some old vinyls from my parents. And there’s eBay :) But even if I play a CD from 1990, my ears relax :)

[BrianBoniMakes]

Hi Paul, Here’s something you’re not considering. In the 80s I was working in the industrial testing equipment industry, we supplied to the very largest manufactures and testing labs and I engineered systems and worked calibrating instruments. At that time the record industry was a major customer of the companies who made the vinyl and they paid top dollar for first quality materials, by the train car load. The companies who made the raw materials made and gave the best materials to the largest customers who would pay the most which was for records, they had testing and labs at each stage of production. There’s just no way that the dribble of record vinyl being made today get this treatment.


I was also in the record pressing plants, there was networks of them and they all ran labs of their own, the new shipments of vinyl were tested before the containers were unloaded and if it was off for some reason it went back. The people who ran these plants were highly educated and very skilled as at this point the industry was over fifty years old. This network is gone and the people retired, you just don’t open up a record plant and make the same quality that people who have been doing it for fifty years did. Today the vinyl industry is busy making siding and window frames with record vinyl being way down the list if it is on the list at all, the biggest suppliers aren’t fighting for the business anymore.


Let’s face it records are dead, they had a great run but all you’re spinning today is nostalgia. You talk about CD mastering for loudness but you didn’t mention that mastering was really introduced to keep the needle in the record groove and to compensate how that groove changes from the lead in to lead out. I’ll never forget when I got my first direct to disk copy of the 1812 Overture and saw how the groove spacing was manually adjusted to keep the cannon bursts from entering the adjacent grooves, this started me asking question about mastering and it was then that I found about all the limits placed on records. Are we not romanticizing the faults of records and calming limitations as features?

[TheMirolab]

Agree Paul!!….. If you record a modern LP to your computer and look at the waveform, you can see that many record companies use the same heavily limited digital master that they used to make the CD. Go to the Dynamic Range Database (dr.loudness-war.info) & look up your favorite recordings. Most new records are in the 5-7 dB range, but music from the 70s-80s (rock, pop, jazz) will have a range of 12-16 dB. That's just not allowed today. SOME new artists will press their LPs with more dynamic range than the CD counterpart. Just one example is Tame Impala's Currents LP. the CD has a DR=5 and the LP has a DR=9. I borrowed the CD first, and then purchased the LP when I found out it had a higher DR. The LP sounds better, in this case.

[andershammer]

If you want good vinyl you have to buy Mobile Fidelity or Analogue Productions re-issues. The regular vinyl you find a stores like Target are mostly just copies on CDs on Vinyl.

[vcp]

So in a nutshell, it's the "content" that's the problem, not the "media". Pick up one of those Blue Note Tone Poet series or their 80th Anniversary LPs. They sound amazing. There are many, many other examples, but the point is to start with quality content and your 75% the way there. Cheers! 👽🖖"Na-nu"

[MrNicknayme]

Here’s why:
Most vinyls have music that is mastered for CD and streaming, but adapted to vinyl. So you get the CD quality minus some lows, essentially.

[bassmandudge]

This is so utterly true... I'm 53 my daughter is 16. Each payday we get a classic album and a modern album... floyd Wish you were here vs Sam Dan Aja vs Wombats .. it is clear that mixing and mastering from the days when vinyl was the main media is miles ahead of modern production. Personally I blame a lot of it on home recording..artists who think they can produce their own albums not realising what a black art mastering really is...understanding instrument separation and soundstaging... I am a fan of all of the above bands but some of the sound quality on the newer artists is truly dreadful. I have a pretty good system and I bought The Resistance by Muse on the weekend but it was soooo bass heavy and muddy in the midrange that it was almost unlistenable... and I played bass in a Muse tribute for 5 years so I know their stuff...it was so disappointing as I really thought their huge orchestral pieces would blow my mind on vinyl.... whereas Aja...well that really is special on my I guess the current crop of mixers..sound engineers and producers need to go back and listen and learn from those that really knew their stuff.

[EddieJazzFan]

The loudness wars have also made FM radio very poor sounding.

[justanotherguyfromthenorth]

Just found your channel a week or so ago. I love your enthusiasm and no nonsense approach. Keep up the love of the sound.