I've worked in audio engineering before. Generally speaking, I think the reason vinyl ends up sounding better isn't because it's necessarily a better medium. I

I've worked in audio engineering before. Generally speaking, I think the reason vinyl ends up sounding better isn't because it's necessarily a better medium. I mean, it's certainly resilient, but it inherently has some limitations that make the mastering process a little different. Let me explain: Digital audio has a very clearly defined limit as to how loud it can go. With magnetic tape, you have to consider the saturation point, or for vinyl, what the lathe cutting the master can physically cut, but depending on the conditions, how loud the actual medium can go changes. With digital formats, it simply goes to 0 dBFS. Period. That's a spot that's clearly marked on most meters. If you exceed it, you'll hear a very nasty sounding audible clipping, and a red light on your meter will turn on to let you know whatever you're recording is too loud. Anyway, in 1989, Sony came out with a digital "brickwall" limiting device that used a technique called lookahead to anticipate changes in loudness. Compared to conventional compression and limiting, it's very transparent, and produces drastically less artifacts - desirable or otherwise when it works. So when that happened, a shitton of developers came out with their own versions, and started accelerating what's called the loudness war. Fast forward twenty five years, it's very common for someone - whether it be a band member or a record label or somebody to use this tool very aggressively on their releases. You can push a brickwall limiter to quite literally absolute amplitude if you want - as in, the loudness level doesn't change at all for the entire song. Much to the chagrin of some of the engineers who have to actually work the brickwall limiter, people will occasionally want that. Anyway, back to the world of analog mediums. Without that clearly defined volume limit, it doesn't make much sense to be using a tool like that. That's the biggest difference in how vinyl and CD/mp3 releases are made. Some people don't like it ridiculously loud, others don't like the distortion aggressive brickwall limiting introduces, but I think the physical inability to use brickwall limiting is what's giving vinyl a comeback. Compare a vinyl/CD release of a Foo Fighters song for yourself if you want; http://www36.zippyshare.com/v/58998249/file.html http://www36.zippyshare.com/v/58998249/file.html tl;dr, digital releases can sound just as good as vinyl, but the people producing them don't want it that way. People disagree. Therefore, vinyl ends up with better sound quality. Further reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war http://www.recordtech.com/prodsounds.htm http://www.recordtech.com/prodsounds.htm