Why vinyl?

Ojgalli writes, what's to gain on a digital lp? I'd take a digital lp any day over the same CD, at least for orchestral music. Presumably, the Lp is cut directly from the master digital tape, which preserves the hi-rez. The tape is "number-crunched" when transcribed to CD with "flattening" and harsh results. I still like analog, (or at least the better, more tasteful recording technology that came with it), but digital lps work for me too.

Jdaniel: Not sure I follow you. Are you saying that IF the original master is 24/96 or higher, the LP is cut directly from that master through a 24/96 DAC, and that CDs are pressed from a downconversion, 24/96 to 16/44? What if, as is the case most of the time, the original recording is 16/44? And can an LP handle all of the information on a 24/96 recording without loss?

And a related question that goes out to all.

Do LPs from an analog master sound better than LPs from a digital master?

It is hard to compare LPs from analogue to digital masters as the masters are one or the other. So engineering during process will be different. In other words take say Steely Dan, Gaucho, it is an analogue mastered disc, there is no digital recorded version made at the same time so to notice any difference is impossible. I will say that IMO a high quality analogue master will produce a better LP copy than a digital master will BUT! some LP's made from digital master such as Donald Fagen's, Night fly and Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms both sound great as LP's. Other LP's made via digital masters sound thin and lifeless for the most part, maybe not as bad as their CD counterparts but not as good as if they were to have been mastered from analogue. It all comes down to the technicians, the gear and the resulting production chain.

I think LP's still sound better than the CD counterparts from digital master only because again the stylus tracks a groove even if that grove was cut from an original digital master. The additional harmonics the stylus may give can lead to a warming up of the sound.

Conversely same goes if you record an LP onto a CD and play it vs. a commercially made version the Home made one seems to hold onto the added dimensions and harmonics the commercially made one often lacks.

But what would be needed is a good engineering crew running a high quality analogue master setup and a similar digital setup to record and produce the masters of the artists at the same time and after such each master needs to be equally and carefully mixed down and made into production master for LP's to be made from. That is not likely to happen as there is no financial need to nor wanted to devote to such in a commercial way.

So, Les,
you are saying that the vinyl version of a digitally recorded event sounds better because of the 'added' distortion inherent in analogue playback?
I agree, but this does prove, of course, that analogue doesn't sound better because it 'preserves' or 'records' better the original sound, but because pleasant euphonics are added.

03-14-08: Ojgalli asked:

"And a related question that goes out to all.

Do LPs from an analog master sound better than LPs from a digital master?"

Generally I think the answer is "yes" so long as we're talking hi rez digital, such as 1-bit DSD @5.6mHz. Some early digital cannot be rescued, but the good stuff, with good mics and good mastering are incredibly good. Even the best analog tapes have tape noise and or tape compression. However, there are so many great, historic and well done analog recordings that just can't be ignored.

Some of the very best recordings I have are DSD-mastered SACD or DVD-As in two-channel. These rival my very best D2D analog LP, which tend to blow away most, but not all, of my analog tape mastered LPs. We I make DSD archives of my D2D LP at 5.6mHz, I can't tell them from the original disc.

Dave