Digital LP’s


Has anyone noticed that LP’s made from digital sources don’t sound as good as actual CDs.  The seem to lack spaciousness and detail.

128x128rvpiano

To answer the OP's initial question, no I have not noticed that.  What I have noticed is that format is secondary to mastering choices and other "care" taken with the recording itself.

Plus, digital recording goes back quite a few decades at this point.  There's lots of good music that never saw pure analog.  

There sure is a lot of infopinion and expectation bias in this thread...

I do agree that vinyl can sound different even when I have the same general master in digital and LP, and I attribute that to the playback chain, and I also agree that choice of vinyl playback hardware is in effect tuning the system.  

I have also purchased some vinyl in the hopes that the master isn't as brickwalled as the CD or other digital version, with moderate but not universal success.

Finally, I mostly buy LPs not because of sound preference but because I like an album enough to (1) reward the artist with a higher margin purchase and (2) have a more physical artifact to enjoy.  It's like making a martini when I put on an LP, and it also "forces" me to listen to at least a whole side if not a whole album.  Plus the colored vinyl looks cool while it's spinning. 

+1 jji666. I believe the mastering is the key. I enjoy vinyl because it is more intentional, with the selection and cleaning ritual, then sitting back with the album cover in hand and enjoying the graphics and information.

CDs are never high rez. They are constrained to 16/44 . LPs are usually mastered from 24/96 or higher, so at least have a chance at being true high rez.

Everyone seems to miss this point. It matters a lot.

Everyone seems to miss this point. It matters a lot.

I cannot speak for others, but I am not missing that point.  I just don't find it to be generally true that hi rez is inherently better sound.  What I have found to be true is that some hi rez releases have had more "care" and that is an improvement in sound. It's probably not so much the resolution as the idea to provide something that would sound good on a better system, which finds its way into the mastering.

However, I will also say that I feel that sometimes DSD has a bit of a different character.  That could also just be mastering.

+1 jji666. Part of the bad reputation of CD arises because a lot of the ADCs and DAC's in the early days of CD weren't capable of true 16 bit resolution. Since then there have been significant improvements in converter and filter design that have led to improved sound from CD.

A lot of so-called High Rez recordings don't have the frequency response or dynamic range to need 24/96 resolution in the first place. Some do and I enjoy them for that.  But to speak to your reference to "care", they are often more purist recordings where the quality of the engineering is probably a bigger determinant of their sound quality than whether they are 16/44 or 24/96.