Does vinyl have a sound?

Categorically, yes, meaning in many cases a trained listener will be able to detect if its a record that is playing.

The distinction can be made based on the fact that vinyl and digital for example tend to exhibit distinctly different kinds of noise and distortion artifacts.

The thing is I find that in cases where both digital and record and playback quality of both is top notch and tuned/tweaked to a similar reference standard, it can be very hard or even not possible to accurately distinguish good records from good CDs.

I agree vinyl has a sound (coloration). If you ever have the opportunity listen to a master tape and compare it to vinyl. Also, vinyl goes through its equalization process (RIAA) to reduce noise which adds to the coloration.

And vinyl does not have nearly the dynamic range and frequency response of even the cheapest digital playback devices - not even close. Digital has a much quieter background and can reproduce the transients much more fully than can vinyl.

-RW-

Funny, it's rarely described in this way, but I too used to have a sensation of vinyl as having a "plastic" coloration. It disappeared through improvements to TT and tonearm.

I think a better question would be 'does analogue have a sound.' My answer would be yes. Skipping over some of the comments made on vinyl, and its limits as a media for carrying sound, I have many analogue reel to reel, two track tapes, and many versions of the source music and the other media, cd/sacd etec. Analogue does have a natural sound, not to be found on the other media.