Why do records made from digital sources sound good?

Atmasphere,

Thank you.  That makes sense to me.  I always knew that mastering engineers are wizards!  Great insight and much appreciated.  I had given up hope.

Bill

I prefer digital sound.  The LPs that I buy are limited to ones that either were never issued digitally or were poorly remastered digitally.  Occasionally one of these LPs will eventually be digitized and I almost always prefer the digital.

  Having said this I recognize that it is possible to get excellent sound from analog.  I believe that many listeners prefer to hear the colorations from their analog set up (usually related to cartridge choice)and the sense of ambiance from LP playback, and I think the OP is probably not one of them.

  I might investigate the sugar cube.

Having said this I recognize that it is possible to get excellent sound from analog. I believe that many listeners prefer to hear the colorations from their analog set up (usually related to cartridge choice)and the sense of ambiance from LP playback, and I think the OP is probably not one of them.

@mahler123 Cartridges affect the sound a lot less than you suggest in this post! The ability of the arm to properly track the cartridge has much more effect. The platter pad has a big effect too. The other thing that affects ’cartridge sound’ is the phono section. Many phono sections (oddly) don’t take into account the simple fact that the cartridge is an inductor, and when you put an inductor in parallel with a capacitance (the tonearm cable) you get an electrical resonance that can overload the input of many phono sections, resulting in colorations as well as ticks and pops.

Once that problem is solved (often with a more competently designed phono section) the cartridge choice is limited to what works with your arm. The big weakness of LP playback is setting things up correctly and not really the media (which has wider bandwidth than digital and much lower distortion that many digiphiles care to admit).

The advantage of the LP in today’s world is its less likely to be compressed; digital releases tend to be compressed since there is expectation it will be played in a car, on earbuds in a noisy environment, or over the radio. LPs might be played on the radio but not in the other two situations.

When I was running my LP mastering operation, if we got a digital source file I always requested a version that had no DSP except for normalization. I never ran into a project that actually needed compression.

Whenever folks reference the colorations of analog / vinyl, there is usually a connotation of superiority to digital / solid state AND to the listeners who prefer their sound "clean, untained".

I readily admit the colorations of viny playback gear & tubes BUT sincerely find them - in the appropriate amounts and combinations - to be wonderful! A true testament to the way our universe sometimes expresses beauty in unexected and nuanced ways. Plus, the endless mix & match combinations make this a hobby worth sustaining for more than a week. 

Somwhat related is the usual whipping-boy of "dynamic range compression" in recordings. Yes, too much is bad, and a recording explicitly mastered for car/portable use is much more likely to sound just plain bad. BUT too much range is bad too - I DON’T want to crank up volume to hear intelligible vocals, just to have a snare drum hit pop out my eardrums! The proper mixing for a home environment is an artform of its own, which combines talents of artists AND mastering engineers. When done right, the playback in your system is a kind of performance in its own right. NO, it is never going to be the same as live, and with many kinds of material it shouldn’t try to be. That’s why the extra dynamic range capability afforded by digital is often meaningless in practice. Vinyl has "enough" for most use cases.

I believe that people who dis vinyl playback simply have not heard a really good system within a context that they are familiar with.  Likewise people who dis all things digital are equally flying blind.  The fact is that the differences are converging and either can be the winner in any given comparison.  A lot comes down to the mastering engineer apparently.  One thing I am learning is that although my favorite record playing system (VPI HW40, Consolidated SUT, Sound Smith Hyperion, C-J ART Phono), usually bests the best, newest Redbook  discs played through my Luxman D-10X, the difference is not as great as it once was.  Moreover, on occasion a Redbook comes along that is it's equal or better.  Too, DSD almost always equals and frequently betters my analog setup.   There is over a 5X cost up charge for that analog setup compared the the very expensive Luxman.  LP prices are skyrocketing.  BTW, in my system, high res down loads have not sounded as good to me as either CD or LP copies of the same music.  All this makes the CD, worthy of reconsideration in my estimation.