MoFi controversy

To my ears, most of the new reissues, including the most famous audiophile brands, sound like digital.

Which means exactly what? No one knew. No one was screaming for the last many years that they sounded digital (whatever that means). A big difference in modern audiophile vinyl is how much quieter they are. They may have a wider frequency response due to superior equipment. Does that mean they sound digital? Digital does not sound like anything except flat frequency response without noise.

@theaudioamp The masses may not have been screaming, but I've been telling myself this for many years now, Alex seems to be in same boat.

I'm not saying the old or new vinyl objectively better or worse, it just sounds different, and I'd agree it sounds more like my digital than the old vinyl. Vinyl and digital sound different on my vinyl and digital setups, so they do have different sound qualities, at least in my setup. And I'd bet vast majority of those with both setups find them to sound different.

I'm not judging one as better than other, Iove my streaming setup, rarely listen to vinyl anymore, digital is great. This is not about digital vs analog.

The only thing the DSD transfer will do is remove a generational loss. If they added another analog tape step, there would be more noise, more compression of high level transients, etc.  It is as close to the 1st gen master as possible. Then again, that 1st gen master is possibly quite old now.  Do you associate more realistic high level transients as "digital"? Perhaps.  You may associate softening of those transients as more natural as it is what you are used to, even if it is less natural.  Many analog records were pressed by 2nd and 3rd gen tapes, so more of the above noise and softening of high level peaks. The 1 step process may also preserve more transient detail. It may not even be the digital step.

@dconsmack -  I hope there are lots of people like you out there. It will keep the prices of the used UD 1steps down and keep the scalpers who don't ever play them away. Please continue cutting off your nose to spite your face.

After Ampex/Quantegy went out of business, I had questions whether I could tolerate the sound of new tape... some of it sounds worse than PCM recording - just my opinion.

@moonwatcher Tape does not have much of a 'sound'. Tape technology does. In case you are not aware, new tape is being made by ATR Magnetics https://www.atrtape.com/

-and it 'sounds' just fine; every bit as good as the Ampex/Quantegy. But of course, any time you change the tape you're recording with the bias on the record head should be optimized for the tape or it won't 'sound' right. So it might sound bright or otherwise unpleasant if the bias is off. If you've run into this and think its the tape, its really your machine not being set up right.

Beyond that any properly functioning tape machine will express a bit of 3rd harmonic at or near 0VU (when properly calibrated) which adds a bit of warmth to the sound.