Jimi Floyd
Active Member
Dear Leporello, it all depends on which music we are talking about. If we are talking about albums recorded digitally and released in the last 30 years or so you are totally right, digital is the only correct way to listen to it. I have "recent" music on CDs and digital files.Which one is able to reproduce the original master recording more faithfully? Hint: it is not vinyl.
Your post illustrates nicely how the fascination with vinyl is mainly about things that have very little to do with appreciation of music. Vinylphiles seem to prioritize the stylistically correct act of listening to music over music itself. A fine hobby of course.
BUT
The music I like most, the one that I listen to the most, the music stored in 95% of my vinyl records is albums recorded and released in analog equipment from 1962 to the late eighties. Blues, Rock, Psychedelic Rock, Progressive Rock, Krautrock, Funk, Post Punk, Reggae and some Jazz. Practically all the LPs in the picture I attached to the post you quoted have been produced in a time different from today. In music, it was an era in which all the recording, production mastering and pressing chain was totally conceived and setup in function of the final product, the work of art, which was the vinyl record. The producer and the artists could hear of course the proposed master tape in the studio but they didn't decide listening to that. In order to check the final result they required test pressings on acetate records, to be played on turntables. The multitrack tapes, the mixing tapes, the mastered tapes were nothing but intermediate steps, all functional to the only sound that mattered, and still matters, the vinyl LP in his glorious jacket or the 7" single.
You are asking me: Which one is able to reproduce the original master recording more faithfully? That does not matter at all for the music I like most, for which the right question would be: "Which one is able to reproduce the sound the artist and the producer intended more faithfully? and the answer is of course: vinyl, because that was THE intended final form of the production process.
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