I would say that 90% of the preceding comments are off base. I worked in Nashville and NYC recording studios for seven years. No qualified engineer or producer intentionally or neglectfully makes distorted or poor recordings, unless it's for the art form such as mid-fi, low-fi production etc. Producers and engineers are only a portion of the process, when it comes to the actual final stages of "manufacturing and quality" they are 99% of the time not involved. By the way, record companies for the most part, do not care about the quality of a recording only that the product sells.
If you spend some time investigating the manufacturing process you will find that a lot of things can go wrong once the cd plant (or record pressing plant) gets the mastered music. For example, JVC proves my point with their XRCD products. JVC went to great lengths to insure that the manufacturing process was inspected for quality through many stages. Here is a link to a brief overview of the process, https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/jvcs-extended-resolution-compact-disc-xrcd-tas-203-2/
I personally prefer vinyl to digital however there are some very good sounding CDs. I find that vinyl is more "emotionally involving" than digital playback. The one thing that CDs do better than vinyl is nothing and by that I mean silence. I love quiet vinyl but it's more rare than a quiet CD!
To my knowledge there is no "measurement for the emotional qualities elicited by playback formats. I enjoy vinyl done correctly.
The insistence from many audiophiles that digital just can't sound good or is inferior to analog at the professional studio level is nonsense. I can absolutely guarantee you that well recorded analog music sounds different but not better than well recorded digital music.
Ultimately, I prefer well done vinyl pressings of albums over digital (not including some Hi-Res formats such as DSD etc.) A poorly engineered, mastered or finalized version of music cannot be corrected by the playback format. What makes a truly great recording is NOT the equipment but the engineer.
A Sony 3324 digital tape machine sounds absolutely wonderful and it should when they originally sold for a few hundred thousand dollars.
The newer digital studio formats sound great, but you cannot compare CD's with pro digital formats. I do love some of the older recordings from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80's that are analog. But I also love some of the digital recordings of the last few decades. The devil is in the details.
If you spend some time investigating the manufacturing process you will find that a lot of things can go wrong once the cd plant (or record pressing plant) gets the mastered music. For example, JVC proves my point with their XRCD products. JVC went to great lengths to insure that the manufacturing process was inspected for quality through many stages. Here is a link to a brief overview of the process, https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/jvcs-extended-resolution-compact-disc-xrcd-tas-203-2/
I personally prefer vinyl to digital however there are some very good sounding CDs. I find that vinyl is more "emotionally involving" than digital playback. The one thing that CDs do better than vinyl is nothing and by that I mean silence. I love quiet vinyl but it's more rare than a quiet CD!
To my knowledge there is no "measurement for the emotional qualities elicited by playback formats. I enjoy vinyl done correctly.
The insistence from many audiophiles that digital just can't sound good or is inferior to analog at the professional studio level is nonsense. I can absolutely guarantee you that well recorded analog music sounds different but not better than well recorded digital music.
Ultimately, I prefer well done vinyl pressings of albums over digital (not including some Hi-Res formats such as DSD etc.) A poorly engineered, mastered or finalized version of music cannot be corrected by the playback format. What makes a truly great recording is NOT the equipment but the engineer.
A Sony 3324 digital tape machine sounds absolutely wonderful and it should when they originally sold for a few hundred thousand dollars.
The newer digital studio formats sound great, but you cannot compare CD's with pro digital formats. I do love some of the older recordings from the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80's that are analog. But I also love some of the digital recordings of the last few decades. The devil is in the details.