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This should be objectively true, but the limitations on vinyl prevent some of the abuses in the production processes (the loudness wars). Often vinyl is better anyway just because the engineers had to go back to make a good mix (mostly this is mastering not mixing) for vinyl - if the vinyl mix had been put on CD the CD would be objectively better.

Vinyl does theoretically have a better s/n ratio, but you can only see this in perfect setups, including a new needle in your player. Even then after just a handful of plays and vinyl is worn enough to be worse (I've heard of laser based vinyl plays which don't wear the media - I have no idea if they are real or how they compare to CDs, but I need to acknowledge them because they might be different enough to matter)



I don't think the S/N ratio of vinyl approaches that of CDs. If you give vinyl a perfect literally flawless $10 million dollar setup and freshly carve a new disc from a fresh press plate and play it, even though analog has no reasonable bounds on how loud it can get from a physics perspective, there are dozens of things that in reality will get introduce noise into the system that are not present in CD Audio.

It will likely sound at least just as good as a similarly treated CD, but I doubt that it will approach the S/N ratio of a properly mastered CD.

CD has by default a perfect 0 noise floor, whereas vinyl will never have that, and typically has a pretty high noise floor, meaning that even a good vinyl press will never have the same noise floor as the same recording placed on CD.

I said all of that to say, to me vinyl is appreciable for its flaws compared to CD. Vinyl is mastered to a different spec than CDs are (when its done properly), and it can sometimes add to the experience because the mastering and pressing process focuses on different frequencies.

Aside from that, the fact that each time you listen to a vinyl record it changes in subtle ways, bits of dust get moved around, atomic scratches get worn into the surface, meaning that every listen is completely unique, ever so slightly different than any other time that album or any other similar pressing has been played.

That is one of the thoughts I enjoy when listening to vinyl that makes it likeable, a little more special to me when it crosses my mind.

Digital is almost always the same. Analog is always different.




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