LP = Long Play. I never had an awesome TT like you guys do but I used to buy roughly half of my music as 12" 45 RPM in the old days. Some of the best sound I EVER heard was from these 45 RPM's (perhaps I am being nostalgic). Part of the benefit is that a 12" single 45 is INTENDED to be played back on an awesome Dance Club system costing many tens of thousands of dollars more than average Joe at home, and more importantly, this soudn is never intended to be heard in a car (where most music is heard these days). This is partly why the sound quality was so good.
There is plenty of dynamic range in a dance club at 105 db SPL because there is little to no masking problem and the amplifiers and speakers can actually handle a large dynamic range without distorting. A lot of stuff mixed to sound good on radio anticpates that it needs to sound good in a car where you get terrible masking from background noise....not as bad as listening to music in the shower but nevertheless a compressed crap sound will be more audible in your car than a high quality recording.
Recently, I have confirmed that the "production and target market" does indeed mean that recording quality is very different. I have found that 12" singles made for dance clubs also sound much better on CD (where in theory there is absolutely no dynamic range advantage over the regaulr album CD like you get with a Vinyl 45 RPM versus the compressed LP, Long Play)
There is plenty of dynamic range in a dance club at 105 db SPL because there is little to no masking problem and the amplifiers and speakers can actually handle a large dynamic range without distorting. A lot of stuff mixed to sound good on radio anticpates that it needs to sound good in a car where you get terrible masking from background noise....not as bad as listening to music in the shower but nevertheless a compressed crap sound will be more audible in your car than a high quality recording.
Recently, I have confirmed that the "production and target market" does indeed mean that recording quality is very different. I have found that 12" singles made for dance clubs also sound much better on CD (where in theory there is absolutely no dynamic range advantage over the regaulr album CD like you get with a Vinyl 45 RPM versus the compressed LP, Long Play)