Buying new vinyl?

Whart's hit the point which is true in most cases.
New audiophile re-s sound thin.

Fwiw...I was impressed with Amoeba records in Frisco...vast selection new/used, fair pricing, etc...believe they do mail order as well. Good luck!

Thanks again!

Johnnyb53,

Why so personal? Do you have an issue with opinions or facts, or maybe both?

How about a test? Come over with your favorite LP. We'll record at a low 44.1 16bit PCM rate then play it back. We can compare the recorded LP to the digital version of it. If there is a considerable difference I'll get my young ears checked.

The point of my response was not to be dogmatic at all. My point is that you will not hear a difference in an LP mastered in digital versus one that is mastered in analog. In fact the latest stereo set of Beatles albums got great reviews for sonics and those were ADA not AAA. The sound of vinyl comes from the vinyl.

I doubt many people here listen to tape on a pro player like a Studer. That is a more accurate format than LP but certainly doesn't sound the same. There are plenty 15 IPS tapes out there and that should be more analog, no RIAA or dust concerns.

Scvan- I have no dogma in the fight over digital v analog, but I don't think that Beatles' stereo release was well received for a variety of reasons (the more recent mono set was). I bought one record from the stereo release- Revolver- and it was flat sounding (i.e. sterile and lifeless) and uninvolving. That said, there are plenty of good records on vinyl that came from digital masters (Alison Krauss' 'Live' on MoFi is a nice record) or were remixed and used digital processing to good effect (Tull's Benefit always sounded murky to me, but the re-do a couple years ago really improved the sound- different mix, and digital processing).
The problem that I have encountered is that alot of new releases are of unknown provenance- there is no disclosure requirement on remasters as to source, and even the marketing hype about 'taken from original analog tapes' isn't necessarily a guarantee. Whether it is all analog or not should not matter if the record sounds good, but the reality is, alot of the reissues on vinyl are pretty mediocre sounding. I assume this is because they were mastered from a digital file or the source used wasn't that great to begin with- the problem is, we just don't know until we hear it.
(Not speaking to what Chad does in Kansas, but there are labels that are known for being very hit or miss as to SQ). This means that the uninformed buyer gets jammed or is disappointed- what's the big deal about vinyl, they wonder? I can't tell you how many times I've replaced a record of unknown provenance with an early pressing- often nothing fancy, with dramatic improvements in sound quality.
It is something anybody can assess on a case by case and record by record basis- you can hear and decide pretty quickly if the record sounds more 'real' or more 'reproduced.' (No 'golden ears' required). The downside is, one can spend a fair amount of money having to buy multiple pressings of the same record just to find the one that sounds more like real music, and less like a "canned" reproduction. Whether that is purely an artifact of digital processing, or bad mastering, I don't know.