[otabdeveloper4]

> It's largely driven by a kind of retro nostalgia

Incorrect. The reasons why vinyl specifically is still relevant (as opposed to any other "retro" audio format) are technical.

Vinyl avoids compression issues by design. (Compression both in the computer science sense and in the audio engineering sense.)

[kmeisthax]

You are correct that you can't lossily compress a vinyl, but you absolutely can master a vinyl for maximum loudness. It's harder to do, and some of the techniques are different, but it can be done, people did it, and this was actually where the loudness war started. And notably, unlike digital, vinyl does not impose a maximum loudness wall. If you find a way to make the groove wobble more than before, the player will absolutely produce a louder signal than before, whereas with digital you have a strict limit to your levels at +/-32768.

To make matters worse, people aren't doing separate masters for audiophile formats anymore, so vinyl is getting the ultra-compressed, low-dynamic-range master anyway. That is because the vast majority of people buying vinyl were doing so as merch, not so much as a way to buy better-mastered albums.

[carlosjobim]

The music is digital before it gets pressed on vinyl. They're not recording directly from microphone to vinyl.

[tclancy]

Maybe you aren’t today, but buy my Monster Cable Golden Wax Cylinder and a set of titanium needles and you can too!

[mghackerlady]

Give me a break. CDs aren't compressed and sound flawless if the mixing is good. it also isn't dependent on things like the quality or age of the disc. And sure, a bad player might sound a bit worse than a high quality one, but that mostly comes down to the DAC in it, whereas with vinyl depends on the player a lot more by virtue of being a mechanical format

[marysol5]

All audio is "compressed" to an element, there are frequencies that aren't reproduced

[bugufu8f83]

This is complete bullshit, sorry. Digital is more capable of faithfully reproducing sound than vinyl is. Vinyl does not have technical advantages when it comes to faithful sound reproduction. I mean, it literally degrades over time, for chrissake!

I don't know what kind of "compression issues" you're talking about but I strongly suspect you'd be well served by learning about the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem.

[otabdeveloper4]

> Digital is more capable of faithfully reproducing sound than vinyl is.

That's exactly the problem that makes digital unsuitable.

Theoretically digital can reproduce sound faithfully, but if the medium allows sound engineers to compress the hell out of music, then they will abuse the opportunity.

Vinyl is a very limited format and you can't really do any sort of "creative" audio optimization bullshit with it.

[account42]

Compression in the audio waveform sense has nothing at all to do with the medium. You can absolutely press the same compressed masters on vinyl or release the uncompressed masters digitally. It's a matter of what the customer base is looking for. Digital music is made for the mass market where "louder" means standing out and thus more success while contemporary vinyl is made for the enthusiast who can afford high-end equipment and clean listening environments.

[otabdeveloper4]

> You can absolutely press the same compressed masters on vinyl

Nah, there's physical limits of the needle-in-a-groove medium that prevent this.

> or release the uncompressed masters digitally.

Technically yes, but nobody is gonna do this and risk not "standing out".

> who can afford high-end equipment

The average vinyl record player nowadays costs less than $150. The market is absolutely flooded with low-end Chinese turntables.

When a modern person listens to vinyl records for the first time, the immediate reaction is "how the hell do I make this louder so it pops out more".

And the answer is that you can't, the medium just doesn't work like that.