My experience with purchasing new vinyl that its hit or miss these days. I can honestly say that most of my new vinyl purchases have been good with low noise floor and excellent production. The problem is that TLS locks himself into one specific genre of music which is his loss really. The problem with the classical genre is that there is so much poor mastering out there. Im still looking for a good recording of Beethoven's Piano Concerto No 5 having picked up 2 poorly mastered productions on CD.
I don't know where you get that idea. Like in all things there is bad mastering, but in my experience it is not common.
I have not bought any new vinyl for about 20 years now. I have a huge collection of vinyl going back to 1954. Almost all of it is in excellent playing condition. When playing many discs I doubt you would tell it from CD. The fact is digital media is superior. However with the rise of high quality streaming there is less need to purchase hard discs, though I do buy some and ordered one from the UK a couple of days ago from Signum Classics. I am not a fan of downloading CDs from the NET. It is often tricky to get them to play seamlessly. Downloading albums is much more attuned to to the pop culture than the classical music lover.
What I do listen and watch, especially listen and watch is on my subscription sites.
In this I would especially site the Berlin Philharmonic Digital Concert Hall. This started 15 years ago, and I have been a member for 12 of those years when I built my first HTPC. However they have all their concerts archived in AV going back to the Krajan years. Their archive is massive, and all available to members. Their streams are lossless audio and 4K video. I think their 4K video quality is better than any other I know of. They now stream in 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos. There is a week or two delay for the Atmos version to appear. This season they have really got the hang of it. Because Dolby are obtuse about the streaming of Atmos audio the level is about 8 to 10 db lower than the non Atmos stream. Part of this is that the dynamic range of these stream is colossal. Honestly the sound is now really, really close to being in the Hall. This system really is object based, and you localize the instruments really well, not only horizontally, but vertically, and with depth. You can clearly hear the tiered chorus in the choral works. The other benefit is that the bass is even better defined. Also with this approach massed strings sound incredibly natural.
This year we had a bonus. For and extra $15.00 you could purchase two Atmos BDs. All the works are in the archive, and I really can't tell the difference in SQ or PQ between the discs and the stream. I think this is a major achievement.
I think this also speaks to the mastering issue. "Back in the day", the major labels had long career engineers like John Culshaw of Decca for instance.
Now they tend to use jobbers. So there are duds. The minor labels are more often than not engineered by their owners, who tend to be audio enthusiasts.
I have to say, that among the major labels I find that past offerings tend to outclass the newer offerings from the major labels.
So now the major orchestras are engaging career long term engineers. Obviously the BPO come to mind, but the Detroit Symphony now have there own AV mastering sweet and their streams are of very high quality.
High quality AV can also be found on Met Player, from the Metropolitan opera and Medici TV based out of France. I have access to the BBC and their audio quality and mastering takes a back seat to no one.
As regards to your complaint about not being able to find a good recording of the Beethoven 5th Piano Concerto, that is ridiculous. They just abound. There is an excellent recording from our own Minnesota Orchestra on BIS with Osmo Vanska and Yevgeny Sudbin. BIS-SACD-1758. It is a hybrid multichannel SACD and will play on any player.
If you are still having audio quality issues, then your speakers are not as good as you think they are. Not only must speakers have good measurements especially FR, but they need a lot of mid band resources, and wide dispersion, and need to be able to cast a sound stage behind the speakers.
Luckily I don't have to design for rock, but engineers who do seem to like my speakers, but that was never a consideration to please them.
