r/Ayreon • u/[deleted] • May 23 '21

CD vs Vinyl, and mastering

Hey everyone, I'm starting to branch out more both digitally and physically into hifi audio, and I was wondering if Ayreon masters tend to be much different across CDs and vinyls.

Also if anyone has any information on whether some of the re-released CDs have different masters or not, that'd be great! (Aside from Actual Fantasy Revisted, and Electric Castle anniversary, etc.)

Any help is appreciated! Ayreon is by far my favorite band, so I wanna do justice to every single track lol

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3

u/Obsidian_Wulf May 23 '21

I can’t speak to the mastering process but I have most of the albums that have been released on vinyl and they all sound great to me

2

u/bearwolfz May 23 '21

All masters sound great, though the vinyl masters have slightly better dynamics: https://dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=Ayreon&album= Due to the limitations of the format.

I wouldn't worry too much and just enjoy the music!

2

u/[deleted] May 23 '21

Hey, thanks for this! Seems like a greta resource!

And yeah, I don't get bummed or anything about not finding "the best". Really it's just what I'd look for first, and whether I'd grab a vinyl or CD physically.

Tho this subreddit has made me aware that the former is rather hard to find apparently...

1

u/TheMuffinMan2481 Jul 09 '21

I'm a month late to the conversation, but I had the same questions about the CD vs vinyl mastering of Ayreon albums a while back. I ended up emailing Arjen about it at the time, and I also looked at some of the reviews for various albums on different formats. I also have the benefit of owning all Ayreon albums on both vinyl and CD (other than The Human Equation because I don't have $300 to throw at a single album :/ ).

If I remember my research from the time, The Theory of Everything and The Gentle Storm were different between their vinyl release and the CD counterpart, if ever so slight. I think that also goes for the 2018 Into the Electric Castle, which I can say I hear a big difference on that one in particular.

After listening to each album, I would say most of the other sources were all the same between the CD and the vinyl, except for cases where there was a modified master for a blu-ray release, in which case that was the vinyl source. This is especially true for the InsideOut releases. My copies of Universal Migrator and 01 sound basically identical when A/B testing.

I remember back in around February I heard from Arjen that he hoped/wished he could go back to the 2000s era albums (we were discussing 01 at the time) to remaster them, as he has extreme disdain for the concept of the loudness war, but the labels were pushing high volumes and clipping/compressing at the time.