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


So this is not an effort to start a medium-war thread, rather in my view some records just seem to be mastered better on the vinyl record version than the digital version. Three that spring to mind from my record collection:

  • Henri Texier - Varech
  • Tom Misch - Geography
  • JLin - Black Origami (this very surprisingly to me)


I know everyone’s system is different, everyone’s ears are different and everyone’s tastes are different, but for the purposes of this discussion let us assume that YOU are the final arbiter of objective reality!
corvaldt
All other things being equal, which they are usually not, I’d say vinyl.

Some disks are available only on CD. Since my vinyl collection is ten times larger than my CD collection, I’ve spent 10 times more on the vinyl playback equipment than the CD player.
Carly Simon's Anticipation sounds better on vinyl than MoFi SACD.
I've got a supposedly audiophile Japanese import of Bobby Darin's "That's All". The "Mack The Knife" cut has a lot of over-modulation or some such gunk. The best version of the song I've found so far is on a CD collection, probably because the gunk is less obvious in lo-fi. Other than that, the only albums that I have both a CD and vinyl version of are because the vinyl has been abused.
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?