What is the point of music being pressed on Vinyl if it was recorded digitally?

I personally could care less about aesthetics. Despite what anyone says, I firmly believe that there are vinyl pressings, sourced digitally or analog, that can easily out perform their digital counterparts.

That being said, in 2015, more and more albums are getting properly (re)mastered. So the exceptions are getting smaller.

Take for instance, the Beatles catalog. For many years, due to primitive technology, the original records or needle drops were generally a better option if played back on a good system. But as of 2009, when they were properly reissued, that all went out the window. Even Dr. Ebbett, a well known Beatles bootlegger, called it quits as everything in their catalog at that point had finally been properly done utilizing modern ADCs and a team of well trained, professional engineers. Not to mention mono and stereo had been covered as well.

But back to my point: this isn't the case for all music, and that's where I see aesthetics being secondary. Just because digital is a much better container, doesn't mean every engineer is going to take advantage of that. Many awful techniques are used such as poor EQ and overuse of noise reduction and compression/limiting. In this case, the original recording can sound better on vinyl. But, had the engineer not been so reckless with remastering the album for CD, the digital alternative would of course be better. A modern digital audio workstation has so many things that analog tape probably can't achieve.

As far as newly recorded music, it's likely going to be recorded digitally. And unless a different, better mix is cut to vinyl (which is often not the case), I would just go with the CD/stream/lossy download etc. There is aesthetic purposes, which in my opinion, is a complete waste. Album art and lyrics are easily obtainable online, as are posters or empty record jackets if you want to show something off.

I'd also ignore DR ratings and just listen to the music, as that stuff is going to drive you nuts. Not to mention that dynamic range measurements for vinyl are completely inaccurate (source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-AE9dL5FG8)

Some more info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_analog_and_digital_recording (I should probably read that, as my understanding of both formats is admittedly lacking.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM (Monty Montgomery of Xiph, creators of the FLAC and Vorbis codecs, shows that there is objectively no difference between an analog and digital signal.

To conclude: is there a point? It entirely depends on the circumstances. Just because digital is a better container, doesn't mean it's always used correctly. In that case, vinyl could easily be sonically superior. On the other hand, with better back-catalog remastering, and newly recorded music, I find it to be pretty pointless.

/r/audiophile Thread