Does vinyl have a sound?

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.

I think you are setting yourself up for the inevitable answer "vinyl sounds like pop - click - tick - pop - crackle" :-)

But that aside, I have had most people say that they can;t understand how my vinyl can sound so clean. No surface noise and few minor tic's. Clean records and a good stylus play a major role in resolving those issues.

But that aside, vinyl just souonds more musical than digital to my ears. How to quantify that? I really can't, but I know what I hear. It's just more fluid. Colored? Maybe. More musically enjoyable? Usually.

I think it's not a great question. There are too many variables in the analog chain that impart their own colorations for one to say per se that "vinyl" has a sound of its own. On the other hand, tape definitely has a sound of its own, which makes it hard to know whether the ability to distinguish one from the other is due to the "sound" of vinyl or the sound of tape.

A poor turntable that blurs rhythm and pitch, a tonearm that is poorly aligned and adjusted, a badly tracking cartridge, a poor tonearm/cartridge match that results in bass distortion, bad or damaged LPs with ticks, pops, crackles: are these (some of) the sounds of vinyl? Since they all can be eliminated or significantly ameliorated, I would say not.

A lot of information and misinformation in the answers. Let's see if we can sort it out.

First, the misinformation. Yes, all formats have some artifact but artifact of LP is not 'plastic' by any means. It has greater dynamic range of the best digital and tape, although it is rarely expressed (the limit is on the playback side, not the record side BTW). The RIAA curve is not a cause of phase shift. In fact the media has the least phase shift as it has the greatest bandwidth, often extending out past 50KHz.

If your setup is poorly done, you will encounter all sorts of artifacts. A good cartridge is key but it need not be expensive if the arm can make it track correctly. What this means is that the arm is far more important than the cartridge. The platter can affect soundstage; if it is varying its pitch even slightly the arm will jog back and forth over the stylus which will impart a shimmer to the soundstage that tape and CD lack.

The choice of phono preamp can affect how much you hear in the way of ticks and pops; this has nothing to do with bandwidth and everything to do with the stability of the phono section!

If you have a poor setup the cheapest CD player may sound better; if you have good gear with good setup you will find the performance hard to beat with any other media. The truth of this last statement is why you see such variable responses.

I have read reviews where they describe 'cardboardy' sound on poorer set ups. I think you may mean this when you describe plasticky. In this instances the sound is very two dimensional- no depth perception at all. The record noise is major contributor in addition to not having proper coupling with the platter. I personally have found this when there is not enough center clamp force or the right clamp material. just my 2 cents.