[cc439]

>I love my record player but when audiophiles say 'it sounds better' than the raw mix-down digital masters, in terms of the amount of audible audio content objectively this isn't the case. It sounds different from what you're used to.

There is a case to be made that CERTAIN albums will produce an objectively better sound in several respects when compared to the CD/digital version of the master. This is an effect of the "Loudness Wars" that began in the late 80's and still continues, albeit at a lower intensity, today.

The analog nature of the vinyl format places a hard limit on how "hot" one could make the sound by tweaking/compressing the dynamic range. Eventually the mastering would exceed the physical ability of the needle to track the groove which is obviously untenable for everyone involved. CD's on the other hand, can push the range as far as acoustically possible and people who want their new rock album to really ROCK are going to be more impressed by a master that somehow sounds louder than any other album at a given volume setting. Thus, the Loudness Wars began and have progressed to the point where the dynamic range has been pushed into the realm of guaranteed acoustic clipping because it still sounds louder and the loss of fidelity won't matter when the song is blasted from an iPhone speaker.

Obviously, this is an effect limited to specific albums. Even if you buy one a pressing of one of these albums, you aren't guaranteed better sound as the vinyl boom has led to some really half-ass remasters that can be as half-assed as passing the borked digital master through conversion software to ensure it works without making any further effort.

Aside from this one outlier scenario, a song/album/whatever mastered attentively to the CD format will always deliver objectively better sound quality.

Source: http://www.soundmattersblog.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness-...

[elektronaut]

Spot on. Mastering for a wider dynamic range on vinyl makes sense. Not only because of the inherent physical limitations, but it's also reasonable to expect the listener has a decent sound system to go with the record player. It's also common for level to vary between records. Wider grooves allow for more loudness, so it's a tradeoff versus running time and playback speed.

Fortunately, the shift from CDs to digital as primary target has brought an end to the Loudness War. The various services have standards for perceived loudness, so there's no incentive for the mastering engineer to squeeze a few extra decibels out of the mix - past a certain point you're accomplishing nothing but killing your headroom margin.