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Perhaps. I have heard they also master differently for vinyl since it can't provide the same dynamic, frequency, or stereo range as digital. Some listeners find

• Nasrudith 7y ago
  That does highlight the one infamous issue with "loudness wars" bringing the quality into the toliet to keep the volume high when we all have perfectly good knobs and switches to regulate them.
• ravenstine 7y ago
  That's essentially correct, and there was an HN article about that in the last few years, but I can't seem to find it.
• atoav 7y ago
  Sometimes the vinyl master is in fact better, because it is less compressed, because a mastering engineer can assume that people listening to vinyl got a decent sound system, while mastering for "web" means people have phone speakers, laptop speakers, hifi systems, whatever.
  • TimTheTinker 7y ago
    That's interesting, but I'm not sure what you mean by "compress". Do you mean data compression, or a compressing audio filter? Web distribution (iTunes/etc.) files come from running the CD master through an AAC/MP3/etc. converter which does data compression only. But a 256Kbps/16bit/44.1KHz AAC (like you'd get from iTunes) is a lot higher quality than vinyl.
    • atoav 7y ago
      You are right thats ambgious, but in this context compression refers to the dynamic compression of the adio wave (so essentially reducing the difference in perceived loudness between the loudest and the most silent parts of a recording). Data compression doesn’t make much sense here, because you usually use uncompressed audiofiles anywhere unless it goes to the web.