Skylab
Reviewerus Prolificus
I freely admit that might very well be the case
I feel sorry for these young folks that did not get their brain wrinkles from live sound.
Unfortunately, it's extremely difficult to compare vinyl and digital masters because they're almost always treated differently in the mastering process.
It would be great if a ridiculously high end record player were fed into a Lavry Gold analogue to digital converter. Then people could compare the vinyl version with the high res digital conversion. Of course, the playback equipment would still be a bit different, which might confuse the results.
Better yet, get access to the source tapes of the recording. Convert those via a Lavry Gold AD. Play the digital version back via a Lavry Gold DA. Keep the amp and speakers/headphones the same when monitoring both versions. If the analogue version still sounds noticeably better, I'll buy into its superiority.
One of my teachers in college, James Boyk, is a professional concert pianist and has his own record label. Around 20 years ago he released his concert album of Mussorgsky's "Pictures at an Exhibition" on both LP and CD. On the output of the microphone preamp he had 2 recorders: An analog and a digital tape recorder. Both were considered state-of-the-art at the time. From the analog recording he cut the LP; from the digital recording he cut the CD. In the music lab at Caltech we had a live feed so you could hear the piano directly through the microphones and then switch between the LP and CD. To me and my colleagues, the all-analog LP sounded more like the direct feed than did the CD.
You can buy the albums and listen for yourself.
http://shop.performancerecordings.com/
"Why is it that even digitized vinyl sounds so good?"
The sound of the bands is often referred to as "colorful" and "musical".
Its all in the mastering, only a few people in the world are good mastering engineers with digital (Steve Hoffman), when you transfer to digital if you use a good preamp and ADC you are getting the Lp mastering which 9 times out of 10 is better than the compression they over use on CD's.
Agreed. I wish I had time to needle-drop all of my MFSL LP's. I have some real classics, where there simply isn't a CD mastering anywhere near as good.