Quote: Rik Jackman wrote in post #25

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Digital is not my preferred format but it is not the route of all evil - I'm pretty sure most of the vinyl I buy nowadays is from a digital.

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Off topic, but the only vinyl I buy is vintage. To be perfectly frank, I have no issues with digital music per se, when done right. The issue is not the format, but the ham-fisted audio engineers who change the EQ, try to remove tape-hiss, try to remove surface noise (when the source is 78s), etc., etc., etc., when they remaster the music for release on CD, flac, mp3, etc. They suck the "breath of life" out of vintage recordings.

Similar to film from a digital source, I see no point in buying vinyl made from a digital source unless for some strange reason it is not available for purchase at all in a digital format -- which is so unlikely that I would venture to say that that possibility is nil. (The music I like is all vintage, anyway.)

Digital music has the deck stacked on its side, similar to digital movie formats, in that there is no loss of fidelity when making copies, and you can make a digital "copy" directly from the original source, which in the case of music, is the session tapes. In their infinite wisdom, however, today's audio engineers, when they remaster the music for release, love to play with all the virtual knobs on their new toys/software.

Another thing that I discovered is that, for vintage music, usually the best sounding CDs are the earliest releases, which often go back to the 80s. All this "No-noise" and "Cedar" technology hadn't been invented yet.

Even more off-topic: I have improved several CDs I have with some simple manipulation in the free Audacity software. Sometimes, a simple EQ change can make a recording sound much better if they messed it up to begin with. If your playback system has decent EQ controls, you don't need Audacity. I find it better to rip the CD to disc, make the changes with Audacity, and use my laptop to play back the music. Another use of Audacity is to remove digital echo that may have been added to mono recordings. The difference is ear-opening. The limit of Audacity, or any audio software for that matter, is that you can't restore what has already been removed. E.g. music that has been removed as part of de-clicking or tape-hiss removal.

Quote: Don Cunningham wrote in post #28

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There is a "warmth" of analogue master to analogue finish. Digital, even tweaked, brings a coldness to the aura. This is why I don't have an issue with a turning Eastmancolor print...just add a filter for color correction :)

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My listening equipment is extremely modest, and all else being equal, I really could not tell the difference between analog and digital.

That being said, I do notice the difference in mastering on vintage vinyl, or well-mastered digital, compared to ill-mastered digital or vinyl.

Much of what I listen to was originally recorded on wax, and the difference in mastering from one release to another is extremely noticable.

Even further off topic: if you are into 78s, archive.org has many raw transfers. I've played around with them in Audacity, and dare I say that some sound better than what is currently available on official digital releases. I've stopped short of trying to collect original 78s, which I'm told sound better than any digital representation of the same music, provided you have the proper equipment to play 78s.

Regarding film vs. digital -- I'll take a worn film print that was made as close to the camera neg as possible over any DVD/Blu-ray/4k version.

For me, I am more sensitive to visual differences vs. aural differences when it comes to digital vs. analog.