What a silly article. Of course headroom and compression is manipulated and optimized by the recording engineer when mastering for vinyl, sometimes to good res

What a silly article. Of course headroom and compression is manipulated and optimized by the recording engineer when mastering for vinyl, sometimes to good results and sometimes to bad. A skilled engineer will know how to make any recording medium sound optimized, a schmo will phone it it and either under or over use compression, to poor results in either case regardless of media. For example, I own two different 1969 pressings of Led Zeppelin II, both from the same pressing plant, but made from different masters. One pressing was mastered by the mighty Robert Ludwig. It uses extensive compression and barely leaves any headroom. The sound is rich, full, and driving. It sounds great on medium to high-end turntables, but caused cheap ones to skip due to the bass excursions. After a week on the market Atlantic Records recalled it an replaced it with a version they remastered internally, which leaves plenty of headroom but sounds puny and pathetic in comparison. Guess which one collectors value today? https://www.discogs.com/release/4699428-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zeppelin-II https://www.discogs.com/release/4699428-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zep... https://www.discogs.com/release/8753624-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zeppelin-II https://www.discogs.com/release/8753624-Led-Zeppelin-Led-Zep... https://nowspinning.co.uk/led-zeppelin-robert-ludwig-the-strange-case-of-his-1969-hot-stampers/ https://nowspinning.co.uk/led-zeppelin-robert-ludwig-the-str... On the flip side, my original pressing of "Are You Experienced" is pretty terrible compared to the remastered pressing that was authorized by the Hendrix family in 2014, so choose modern over vintage on that one.