Funny how in the turntable forum at AudioKarma, the consensus opinion is that today's vinyl is mostly crap pressings on 40-year old record presses that are barely working.  Ordinary workaday pressings from the local record stores in the 1980s constitute a large part of my collection, and most of...

The waveforms plot the raw voltage excursion that is the measure of the sound vibration in the recording, after conversion to an electrical signal.  The voltage is then plotted on a "normalized" scale where the maximum allowed peak excursions are from -1 to 1 volt.  This will be the clipping...

It's not really one crescendo.  Basically it appears that every loud passage after the 280 second mark is a good bit louder on the vinyl, in relation to the previous part of the movement.  It's almost as if the mastering engineer for the CD release said to himself, "gee, it looks like Karajan...

That has never been my question in this or any other thread, because I understand that CDs are a technically superior format.  My question has always been, can we exhibit a recording whose vinyl release *sounds better*, meaning *provides a nicer listening experience*, than the CD release of the...

Awesome, so the 3rd time's the charm.  Literally 3 tries to get CDs that beat the records from the 1970s.  I'm not that in to Zep that I'm going to blow my dough on new CDs.  I'll just drag out the perfectly awesome-sounding records whenever I get the urge.  My CD box set is destined for the...

Excuse me but I posted waveform plots of the two masters which showed plainly that the CD version had its musical dynamics altered.  Only the vinyl version preserved the crescendo in the last part of the movement, the CD version had its loudness "equalized" artificially.

I think that debating the superiority of vinyl in general was not my intent.  I do believe that many vinyl records can provide a superior sound and listening experience over their CD counterparts, particularly in the rock/pop/electronic kind of genres.  What I would say is that someone who...

This I agree with.  There is no way I would attempt to "prove" the superiority of all vinyl over all CD.  But it does seem distressingly hard to *find* the CDs that are actually engineered correctly.  In classical it is not hard, although as I've shown here you can get trouble with "remasters."...

Well, for what it's worth, I agree that the CD track here sounds almost ludicrously bad.  I apologize about the "noisy" vinyl but I have a very modest setup consisting of a new Sota Moonbeam (entry-level solid table with a decent Rega tonearm mounted) using the cheapest MC cartridge money can...

Yeah, it's not *clipping* exactly, but it has some nasty harshness during loud string passages.  Not sure what they did to ruin it, but I was very surprised when I heard the vinyl and all the nasty edges had been removed.   As far as noise, the spectrum analysis shows that the vinyl has plenty...

My intensity measurements show the CD track has about 15 dB less noise floor; the noise there is due to tape hiss.  So overall the vinyl has only about 30 dB dynamic range in practice from loudest peak to noise floor -- pretty amazing that that is sufficient to get an impression of great sound.

My bad!  Wasn't reading my instruments correctly.  You're right, the vinyl is 3.4 s less in overall length.  But since you can't hear the difference why would it bother you?  It seems strange to lead with your logic when we're concerned about subjective sound.

With you on the clipping!  I thought those loud parts were too loud.  But the waveform does not show "digital clipping" so I'm not sure how it got introduced.  This CD is labeled "ADD", which was supposed to mean that it was digitally re-mixed from the multitrack masters.  Anything could have...

Yes here are the waveform plots of the entire movement, CD on the top.  You can see that it doesn't preserve the crescendo toward the end, it has all been "ramped up" to equal volume throughout.  

Arny can you tell me how you did the spectrum?  Because the long-term average spectra I'm seeing look like this here.  This shows the power spectra of the first 6 seconds of music, essentially the first 'da da da duh' .   Which spectrum is which in your viewpoint?  As you can see here they...

I thought that what is "a well known fact" is simply that some people prefer vinyl because they like to play records, or they have dumb ideas about digital sound, etc.  I don't believe it is established what proportion of people, when confronted with a forced choice, would actually assert that...

The vinyl is faster -- an interesting subjective impression because it's incorrect. **Edit -- the vinyl is indeed 3.4 seconds shorter**   I don't hear any wow an flutter; obviously if there is flutter it is due to the mastering process since a belt-drive turntable cannot introduce flutter.

OK now, since I'm actually interested in knowing people's preferences and why they turn out that way, I've decided to turn from the theoretical arguments about why vinyl might sound superior to digital, and start up a little contest and see if it actually does sound better.  Some folks around...

While I agree that "new pressings" are not all they are cracked up to be, and are often inferior to the regular records of yore, I think it is actually very common for records of new albums to be pressed from a different master than the sound files.  The Taylor Swift example that was shown at...

Well that's exactly the point of this whole thread.  As stated in the cited article in IEEE Spectrum, it's ridiculous that audiophiles have to resort to an analog technology that should have died out long ago -- but it survives as the ironic home of the best masters. So we're faced with an...

Your assertion is duly noted, but is unfortunately just that -- an assertion.  The thread contains data points and references, which will no doubt prove much more edifying.

The article has some technical misunderstandings.  But the parts about compression/limiting on vinyl vs. CD are worth reading and are peppered with interview anecdotes from industry engineers.  The important points are that CDs and digital sound files are much more likely to be clipped.

Getting back to the points in the start of the thread, here is an article from IEEE Spectrum making the same points in a more authoritative way:   http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/software/the-future-of-music

Right, I see what kind of individual you are.  I've proven something you don't wish to know, so now it's all bollocks.

I provided a comparison with the CD version of the recording, using a segment (a single note) which was not loud enough to suffer the compression that affects that CD master.  So the black spectrum is the reference, the red is the vinyl which compares to it.  You can see that the high frequency...