[bernds74]

Do they maybe put different mixes on vinyl? I find most of today's music unlistenable purely because of the production and the focus on loudness, and I've been wondering whether vinyl has been growing in popularity because there are actual differences in the content. Does anyone know for sure?

[bayindirh]

Vinyl needs a different normalization and has its own pre-cut/pre-amp normalization curves [0]. So, you can't stone-wall normalize a vinyl for constant, at your face loudness.

As a result, most vinyls have better dynamic range than stone-wall mastered CDs and digital releases, and this is one of the reasons why vinyls sound the way they are.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RIAA_equalization

[Tade0]

They do put different mixes on vinyl due to its technical limitations.

One significant difference is that vinyl recordings are de-essed, because the medium has trouble dealing with high-slope sounds such as loud white noise.

Distortion from slope-limiting is actually more pleasant to the ear than say hard clipping, but sometimes you really don't want to have it at all.

[dale_glass]

Yes, vinyl is sorta immune to the loudness war because you can't do it on vinyl -- the stylus would jump out of the groove.

It's a bit of an ironic use of a technical limitation of vinyl. Its dynamic range is lower, and it doesn't allow doing what digital can, so it's been spared of this particular sin.

Still, properly mastered digital will be even better.

[izacus]

It really depends on release - they do tend to have better dynamic range (mostly because vinyl listeners don't listen on AirPods), but it's really a very inconsistent crapshoot on what you're getting.

There are plenty of vinyl releases where they just dumped the Spotify mp3 on the plate.