[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by Conan46

Here is a site to check an album's dynamic range:
http://dr.loudness-war.info/
As someone who has listened to Rush and am a fan, beginning with them on Vinyl all the way back to their Fly By Night album. I definitely notice the noise and mess of a song like this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wLNfkVsW1Ck
here is the dynamic range chart of the song
http://dr.loudness-war.info/album/li...m=vapor+trails

And there you have it: one of the reasons why people sometimes think vinyl sounds better than CD's.

Is vinyl superior to CD? No. If they are both mastered the best as can be achieved on each medium, the CD is *much* superior. However, it is very easy to greatily **** up a CD or digital file (see the crap DR of even the HDTracks file), while it is very hard to crap out vinyl in the same way. At some point, you can't get the vinyl to compress the range more and become louder; it just distorts. Going louder just becomes physically impossible without doing damage to the record.

Also, sometimes vinyls are mastered better/more correctly and with more care than the CD to create a collector's item.

So many people who are claiming that vinyl sounds better than CD's are listening to badly mastered music. It's technically impossible for vinyl to outperform a perfectly mastered CD.

Please note that this does not have anything to do with someone preferring the sound of vinyl, which can be different to the CD. That is taste. I'm talking solely about the technical capabilities of the two media.

Also see the great DR of the Unmasters version. I wonder why artists and producers seem to still master at the highest volume possible. It makes no sense, because everything is brought back down again by volume leveling such as ReplayGain, so one just ends up with a crap record instead of a loud one.