Psean wrote:+1X-rated Bob wrote:
I do think there is a sonic difference - but it's not necessarily about quality. There's physical constraints when you master to vinyl. A while back I posted about the Them Crooked Vultures album and how all the compression made it a most unpleasant listening experience. I bet they didn't add all that loudness to the vinyl - simply because they couldn't. That was a record that I wanted to like, think I could have liked but it was so damn tiring to listen to on CD. Maybe if I'd got the vinyl my experience would have been different.
Same with some White Stripes stuff. Many others too I'm sure.
Then there are others that I've A/B'ed good vinyl pressings against well mastered digital stuff (WYWH 2011 remaster) and my ears tell no difference. I'm sure better trained ears would notice though.
Yup.I do think that the experience of listening to music has changed with the transition from vinyl to CD. My mates and I used to carefully remove the disc from the sleeve (we knew how), put it on the turntable. 22 minutes or so later you'd have to flip it. That would be a useful pause for a cup of tea, some comments about the guitar playing or the sax solo... There was more of a ritual to it. We listened harder, I think. Maybe because you knew you had to maintain the concentration for a relatively short period of time. And the records, the good ones, were sequenced to flow pleasingly over two sides - so maybe you got more loud and soft, more fast and slow, more contrast.
Also, having the artwork and liner notes so much bigger is a huge bonus to me.
Depends on what pressing you get. We have listened to a South African copy of Love over Gold, and to my ear the LP sounds a lot warmer and more distinction of the instruments. But the System we played it through was over 100k