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Are Digitally mastered LPs any better than CDs?

It seems to me a vinyl album that was mastered digitally would be the worst of both worlds - the digital effects would still be present,overlaid with surface noise, dust pops, no convenience features (remote control track skip, etc). I suppose if you don't have a great digital front-end, the record could sound like a CD playing on a much better CD player than you have. Or maybe if the digital master was a hi-res format, your record could sound like an SACD playing on a very high-end player, overlain with surface noise. Am I missing something?
honest1
mothra
110 posts
 
don't be too sure vinyl is hi-rez. Much of it is not, call some pressing plants and see what they usually get, you will find a lot of vinyl comes right from a cd master at 44.1. There are not rules of course, but i think this idea is being spread around and quite often it is not the case. This is no comment on the sound quality, of course.
radknee
25 posts
 
>> 09-01-08: Mothra
>> don't be too sure vinyl is hi-rez. Much of it is not, call some pressing plants and see what they usually get, you will find a lot of vinyl comes right from a cd master at 44.1.

It'd be great if there was a way to trace a particular vinyl album's recording lineage to see if the master was analog, hi-rez, or 16/44. Could devote a whole website to the topic.
johnnyb53
3,510 posts
 
It'd be great if there was a way to trace a particular vinyl album's recording lineage to see if the master was analog, hi-rez, or 16/44. Could devote a whole website to the topic.
OK, I'll start: It's my understanding that the LP version of Brian Wilson's "SMiLE" was mastered from the 88.2/24 source, and sounds better than the CD.

The liner notes on the Diana Krall "From This Moment On" LP state that she still records in analog.

Although all of Mapleshade's music products are CD, he records in very high-res, lo-noise analog. Perhaps we could prevail on him to cut some LPs of his most desirable titles?

Anybody know the source/mastering of Paul McCartney's "Memory Almost Full" LP (I have it)?
emailists
923 posts
 
There was an interview in last year's TAS analog issue with one of the major mastering engineers. He mentioned that the LP of a hi res digital master has an octave more info than the CD. I didn't completely understand this - perhaps referring to brickwall filtering?

Either the same article or another said most of the time the high res digital master is what is that engineer sends to the LP mastering session.

BUT - the big issue here is what kind of analog rig is it being played back on? I think you need to achieve a certain level of LP rig and setup to extract the most from LP without it's inherent limits.
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