It demonstrated that under 'sighted' conditions (because properly blinded comparisons are only advocated by 'trolls' ), an at best loosely level-matched comparison between LPs and 'digital' (actually, Redbook digital and FLAC files of unknown format), with no actual guarantee that the formats are the only difference being compared ...the people involved find that sometimes the CD sounds better, sometimes the LP does, and both can sound good. Apparently for vinyl this was a surprise.
Well.
Some points this 'reading illiterate' would question:
- "They will also decry that if the recordings weren't mixed by the same engineer, than you're comparing different mixes and not the formats themselves. ", No I don't think so. I don't think different *mixes* is typically the problem. Most records aren't remixed for digital vs analog delivery. And no one is going to complain that you compared Teo Macero to Hugh Padgham (the guys who mixed the Miles and Collins); you weren't comparing between recordings, you were comparing different releases of the same recording. You were comparing both the differences in mastering, as well as any differences the formats themselves impose on the sound, with no way to separate those.
- "This is an interesting comparison since in the Phil Collins case, the Vinyl would appear to have an advantage being an original analog master while in the Spyro Gyra case the CD would seem to have the advantage since its an original digital master." This really doesn't follow except by a sort of magical thinking where 'like is best with like'.
- " So suck on that Objectivists; we do have the same recordings mastered by the same people and mixes on both formats!"
Having the same mixes on both formats is nothing special, no one claims that's rare. It's the mastering that typically differs -- you even allude to this, mentioning the different use of compression in modern CD vs LP. As for the mastering in both formats being done by the same person, how are you so sure? In the case of an analog recording later released on CD, it wasn't typically the case that the engineer who created the original master tape, was the same person who created the CD master. And even when that was the case -- if the LP and CD were actually mastered by the very same person -- that's no guarantee that the mastering was the same on both. What do the mixing and mastering credits for the CDs say? (For KoB you have to be careful about both credits to be sure you're comparing like to like -- it's one of the rare cases where there *are* 'original mix' and 'remixed' versions out there,along with various different masterings).
-also, 'Suck on that Objectivists' is a bit confrontational, don't you think? Were there 'objectivists' in the room arguing with you?
(btw, if you mean acolytes of Ayn Rand, in that case, yeah, they can go suck it.)
- "It's impossible to level match with a SPL meter since we were trying to match music sources not a fixed generated test tone or pink noise." Of course if the masterings are different it could well be impossible to closely level match. If you are feeding the LP output to an ADC, then outputting it (or recording LP output to CD and then playing it), i.e., you really are comparing the same input audio, it's feasible though probably tedious. If you're using more than one track you might have to level match for each track -- LPs didn't usually make every track peak to the same level, whereas modern CDs often do.
