New vinyl probably suffers from various effects, some mentioned already. LPs from the advent of RIAA-curved hi-fis in the mid 50s were made of good vinyl and recorded/pressed by companies that had great experience. Things got better all the way into the early 70s, by which time vinyl began to suffer in quality due to the ’energy crisis’ and bad economy. Tape cassettes had begun to offer viable competition after Dolby (and early DBX) became available, which took more attention off of vinyl. CDs marked the end of the trail. Newbies will have their teething problems. Even CD reissues have been panned, but it has nothing to do with the medium, rather poor remastering techniques. The guys who mastered the RCA Red Seal LPs of the 50s/60s were gone and with them their expertise. This is probably the real reason for poor new pressings.
I now use nothing but digital source material. I have ordered expensive good-quality used vinyl to get precious (to me) recordings from the 50s unavailable elsewhere during the 90s. Recently I finally found what I sought on youtube. Despite its non-optimal digital format it sounds worlds better than the recording I had purchased. True whether played through my all-analog home system (made 30 years ago) via my laptop and a DAC or streamed directly through my new all-digital system (up to the power amps which, using ’class T’ Tripathi amp chips, have also been misrepresented as ’digital’ due to their switching structure) and I have no further use for even reel tapes with DBX I NR, let alone vinyl.
It has been mentioned on the thread that new digitally recorded masters pose no detriment to quality when pressed into vinyl, and I'm sure that's true. The question becomes then, why then introduce all the added processing of pressing into vinyl and replaying on a mechanical device (which mandates further analog processing)? The digital signal path in the home is far more flexible and accurate than stacking analog (or even digital) boxes with patch cords. It can all be done in software, which is why I use 2 fast computers as my entire hi-fi hardware ensemble (minus, again, the power amps and speakers of course). As an added attraction, they run at 3.2Ghz, are quad-cores and cost me $160 each refurbished. All filtering (including crossovers) is linear-phase. And I'm certain the results are superior to vinyl/analog since I've bought/built and heard both. And it's only getting better. This is where development is now concentrated.
