I purchased Roberta Flack's album "First Take" in the early 70s. It has been one of my favorite albums and after 50+ years I wore it out. It was unplayable and I threw it away, not wanting anyone else to purchase it from Goodwill or wherever. To replace it, I purchased the reissue not bothering to check that it was from a digital source. Although the digitally based album sounds "good" it bothered me.
Perhaps out of sheer nostalgia, I purchased a mint- copy of the original album from an analogue master tape. I spent the morning comparing them and here is what I heard.
Many, perhaps most people, will like the digital-based vinyl album better. Everything is clearer--the attack of the guitar, the percussion, piano, and Flack's voice is right there big and bold in the middle. At first, I liked it better than the analogue-based original recording.
The analogue recording immediately sounded more muted. I wondered if perhaps there was groove wear that made it sound that way. After listening to certain cuts a few times, I realized that the clack of the drums and clang of the symbols were not muted, they were just more in the background. Flack's voice was clear but not quite as "clean edged" as the digital-based recording.
I did, however, begin to feel that something was missing in the digital recording. Although, I must mention that there was a tape hiss on the last cut on the first side, "I Told Jesus," on the orginal analogue-based recording. And to my surprise, the digital-based recording retained that hiss. i guess they didn't want to dolby away musical artifacts with the hiss.
I had a chat with chatgpt to find out how the album was recorded. It was done in a small studio with all the instruments together as they would be in an intimate jazz club. In my mind this is a jazz album, although I am sure that more than one or even ten people on the Jazz Afficianado's forum would disagree. Anyway, it was a small, intimate recording session done in ten hours, mostly saving first takes, which is why it is called "First Take."
That made sense to me and also informed me as to why I was leaning toward the original analogue-based album. On the digital-based album, the band did not sound like a group in a small recording studio. Because each instrument was engineered seperately, there were no cues that they were in the same place.
On the orginal analogue-based recording, it sounded like instruments in one room, like any number of jazz clubs I have gone to. The drums and/or guitar, bass, etc. were sometimes drown out by other instruments, exactly as they are when you hear live music. Still, I could hear that they were all together in the same place.
The deliniation of each note was much more apparent on the digital-based album, but that is not the way real jazz sounds. When you hear live music it arrives as a kind of musical soup, all the instruments affecting the sound of the other instruments.
Some people might say there was more "air" between the instruments on the digital-based reissue because each instrument was distinct. What was between those instruments, placed in various spots in soundstage, was blackness. And I have read reviewers who praise music coming from black space. I don't agree with them. I have heard a lot of live music, symphonic, opera, jazz, and even Joni Mitchell in a small club when she was just getting started. There is no black space between live instruments unless perhaps if you are as close as a conductor is to an orchestra. As an audience member, the music blends.
What I did hear on the analogue-based original recording was music traveling on air, and the air is kind of a halo around everything. It's not a distinct sound like digital-based music, but it is a relaxing, enjoyable sound because it feels real.
I think that my conclusion to this experiment is that I and other analogue music lovers would prefer the analogue-based music over the digital. Many people, however, who are not accustomed to analogue music, or simply do not know the difference--have never been educated on the subject-might very well prefer the digitally-based recordding. So, as I said at the beginning of this forum, this subject is in muddy waters.