Degraded, yes. But as you mentioned, the RIAA curve gets applied back by your phono preamp, which takes care of a lot of the issue. Modern digital recordings a

Degraded, yes. But as you mentioned, the RIAA curve gets applied back by your phono preamp, which takes care of a lot of the issue. Modern digital recordings are often ran through a compressor to the point where there's zero headroom left. Hell, there are albums where things outright clip even on the lossless version on the CD. Plenty of others have so little wiggle room that you'll see clipping on any compressed format. Certainly, there are plenty of albums out there that use the same shitty masters as the CD. But plenty of others don't. One of my favorite albums from the past few years, The Flesh Prevails by Fallujah, for example, has a completely different master for the vinyl. The dynamic range is great. The CD master, to me, has several songs that are nearly un-listenable due to the mastering on the CD. I'd love if I could just pay for the good master in a digital format. But as someone who is primarily a metalhead, masters are shitty far too often. So I have to wait to find out if the vinyl releases are better, and then buy and then rip them if so. Then spend 5 or 6 hours per side manually removing crackles and pops and other noises... I don't like it. But it is what it is!