What albums, in your opinion, sound unquestionably better on Vinyl rather than Digital?

@tooblue  I'd agree as far as anything pre 90s goes. Just as the studios started getting the hang of transferring analogue to digital transfers some smart person realised they could employ digital compression to make CD sound 'louder'. Bang went dynamics and in came the 'loudness wars'.

I have learned to live with digital but it is a shame to see a great technology abused by the demands of the market in this fashion.

I still believe it could be great in the hands of an artistically free mastering engineer...


As of 2018 I believe that no digital versions of the following albums match their original vinyl predecessors. Even the so-called prestige original Master tape remastering are regularly compromised.

All of the Beatles albums 
All of Elvis Presley
All of the Stones
All Hendrix
All Sex Pistols
Most of the Kinks
All of the Smiths
The Pogues first two

Astral Weeks
Kind of Blue
etc etc

@ieales, great information there. To compound matters there was also the widespread switch to Ampex recording tape which had unforseen implications for the whole industry. 
 

"In the mid 1970s, Underwood says, most tape manufacturers adopted polyurethane as a tape binder. Unfortunately, the polyurethane absorbs water and releases an acid. ‘You then get gummy residues on the tape, which resemble heavy oils.’

‘We live in a perishable world’, says Underwood. ‘The way to keep tapes
is cool and dry . . . People don’t realise it but the UK has a high humidity,
often up to 85 per cent.’

Underwood is adamant that it is not just Ampex tapes that are affected,
and not just professional tapes either. All analogue audio tapes of around
ten years old, between the mid 1970s when polyurethane was first used as
a binder, and the mid 1980s when stabilisers were improved, are at risk."

Barry Fox, New Scientist, 1990

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.newscientist.com/article/mg12717352-700-technology-master-tapes-c...

The affected tapes can often still be played after 'baking' at low heat but it's a drastic solution. 

Thankfully tapes from the pre mid 1970s have better chances of surviving intact.

All the evidence does seem to suggest that sound quality has never been a priority for the industry. People like Michael Fremer have championed better sound for years, so has Neal Young. 

There were also rumours knocking around that Steve Jobs was an audiophile, ironically a vinyl man no less. It would probably take someone of that stature to sell the concept of audiophile sound to the masses now. 

Perhaps we should all write to Tim Cook.

From a practical point of view it can be useful to know which albums sound better on which format, especially if those are your favourites. But surely even the most diehard vinyl aficionado (Michael Fremer excepted) wouldn't argue that vinyl always sounds better, or vice versa, digital is superior technically so must always sound better.

Perhaps it's more helpful to acknowledge that all formats have potential, yes all the way from the original wax cylinders, 78s, LPs, Cassettes, FM radio, CDs, Minidisc, DAT, DAB, SACD, HD, streaming etc.

All we really need is a change in attitude trickling down all the way from the artists themselves to the suppliers. It would be nice to think that this is starting to increasingly happen. Pink Floyd, Steely Dan, Dire Straits, Kate Bush amongst others have expressed a desire to have their work issued in as high quality as possible.

Sure they all have to also pay the bills, but it is difficult, at least for me, to respect a recording artist that seems to pay little regard as to how their work is presented. But of course it's the performance that counts, and as that line from Pulp Fiction once said, "personality goes a long way".

Some of the issues with digital releases have just recently been highlighted with the much anticipated release of the Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society super deluxe box. Some fans were hoping to finally get a digital version that at least matched the original UK vinyl release for sound.

Instead they got a 5CD box with frustratingly similar compressed sound to previous recent CD releases. Even last years Sgt Pepper remix, which sounded good otherwise, was afflicted in this manner.

For whatever reason, the industry just cannot bring themselves to delivering top quality sound on prestige re-releases. Either they can’t or else they don’t want to. When you consider how often certain titles have been re-issued you might think they would eventually get it right, but no.

A cynic might argue that if they did then that would end any potential for future exploitation of that particular title.
But of course, there’s nothing cynical about the music industry, is there?

What matters most? Here's Peter Aczel's take -

2.The principal determinants of sound quality in a recording produced in the last 60 years or so are the recording venue and the microphones, not the downstream technology. The size and acoustics of the hall, the number and placement of the microphones, the quality and level setting of the microphones will have a much greater influence on the perceived quality of the recording than how the signal was captured whether on analog tape, digital tape, hard drive, or even direct-to-disk cutter; whether through vacuum-tube or solid-state electronics; whether with 44.1-kHz/16-bit or much higher resolution. The proof of this can be found in some of the classic recordings from the 1950s and 1960s that sound better, more real, more musical, than todays average super-HD jobs. Lewis Layton, Richard Mohr, Wilma Cozart, Bob Fine, John Culshaw, where are you now that we need you?


3.The principal determinants of sound quality in your listening room, given the limitations of a particular recording, are the loudspeakers not the electronics, not the cables, not anything else. This is so fundamental that I still cant understand why it hasn't filtered down to the lowest levels of the audio community. The melancholy truth is that a new amplifier will not change your audio life. It may, or may not, effect a very small improvement (usually not unless your old amplifier was badly designed), but the basic sound of your system will remain the same. Only a better loudspeaker can change that. My best guess as to why the loudspeaker-comes-first principle has not prevailed in the audiophile world is that a new pair of loudspeakers tends to present a problem in interior decoration. Swapping amplifiers is so much simpler, not to mention spouse-friendlier, and the initial level of anticipation is just as high, before the eventual letdown (or denial thereof).

https://www.hifivision.com/threads/legacy-of-peter-aczel-aka-the-audio-critic.59014/#js-post-658450