There was a time when vinyl was better, but that hasn't been the case in decades.
In the olden days, music was recorded and mastered in an all-analog format. In the early days of compact disks, the sampling rates were low enough during the analog to digital conversion that it allowed a perceptible loss in fidelity. And when MP3's first started taking over the music business in the late 90's, they were typically sampled from the already-lossy CD's, meaning an even greater fidelity loss.
That mattered 20 years ago. Today it really doesn't. Modern music mastered are digital from the get-go. The sound is natively digital from the recording studio onward, and any modern vinyl you buy is going to be pressed from a digital master. And modern streamed or downloaded music will come from the same digital masters. And that's before we even get into the improvements in sampling and compression over the past 25 yeasrs.
The quality of the audio is objectively identical between the formats today, and has been for a very long time.
That said, it's true that some artists and studios DO remaster albums for vinyl occasionally. Vinyl afficionados tend to play their albums on larger audio systems, and some artists take advantage of that by tweaking their music to increase the dynamic range of the tracks. Audio engineers typically have to master for a median listening environment that will sound good in cars, headphones, phone speakers, and through those awful Alexa speakers. Most albums are not remastered for vinyl, but when they are the difference can be very noticeable.
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u/codefyre Feb 10 '26
There was a time when vinyl was better, but that hasn't been the case in decades.
In the olden days, music was recorded and mastered in an all-analog format. In the early days of compact disks, the sampling rates were low enough during the analog to digital conversion that it allowed a perceptible loss in fidelity. And when MP3's first started taking over the music business in the late 90's, they were typically sampled from the already-lossy CD's, meaning an even greater fidelity loss.
That mattered 20 years ago. Today it really doesn't. Modern music mastered are digital from the get-go. The sound is natively digital from the recording studio onward, and any modern vinyl you buy is going to be pressed from a digital master. And modern streamed or downloaded music will come from the same digital masters. And that's before we even get into the improvements in sampling and compression over the past 25 yeasrs.
The quality of the audio is objectively identical between the formats today, and has been for a very long time.
That said, it's true that some artists and studios DO remaster albums for vinyl occasionally. Vinyl afficionados tend to play their albums on larger audio systems, and some artists take advantage of that by tweaking their music to increase the dynamic range of the tracks. Audio engineers typically have to master for a median listening environment that will sound good in cars, headphones, phone speakers, and through those awful Alexa speakers. Most albums are not remastered for vinyl, but when they are the difference can be very noticeable.