LP made from a digital master recording...


The digital vs. analog thoughts, even debates I can understand...when the analog LP is from analog masters.  When an LP is pressed using a digital master recording as the source, does that LP still have an analog advantage?   
whatjd

Showing 4 responses by mijostyn

Yes, the euphoric qualities of vinyl still pervade the experience. Depending on the recording sometimes it is better sometimes not. Vinyl is always noisier so on very quiet recordings digital has an advantage. Older analog recordings, anything before 1980 I tend to buy the vinyl unless I know for a fact the digital is better. David Bowie's first three albums were digitally remastered, an absolutely amazing job so I got the high res digitals of those. Newer digital recordings I tend to get hi res versions unless it is music I really want and only the CD is available then I will buy the vinyl if it is available. 
I think every audiophile should have at least a few vinyl/digital duplicates.
It is fun to sync them and switch back and forth. Sometimes it is surprising how much alike they sound and often dragging a rock through a trench sounds better even if the music was recorded digitally. One caveat, better is not necessarily more accurate.    

ebm, never say never. It will come back to bite you. A good digital master is going to sound better than a bad analog one. What a recording sounds like is more a result of the way it was mastered than whether or not it was digital. 
Nandric, that is a common miss understanding. That is not how DACs work. DACs recreate the analog signal from digital data. If I show you both an analog 100 Hz waveform and one from a DAC they will look exactly the same. There are no on and offs, no steps. 
Digital has some significant advantages over analog. Once the signal is in digital form you can manipulate the data any way you want without adding distortion whereas in analog every time you pass the signal through another device there is always added distortion. 
Two recordings stand out in my mind as extremely special. One is Tower of Power Direct on Sheffield records and the other is Chick Corea's Chinese Butterfly which I down loaded in 96/24. One totally analog with minimal intervening steps and the other straight digital from the microphones and instruments to the inputs of my DACs. Frankly I have more digital downloads that reach this level of performance than records.
It is much harder to damage a digital signal. It is also a shame that more recording is not done direct to disc.