Michael Fremer is more biased — definitely biased in favor of analog and vinyl — but I have to say I have some sympathy for what he said about ProTools in his review of the latest Kathleen Edwards album:

“If this isn’t a ProTools recording I’ll eat a reel of Ampex 456 (that’s a cop-out because no one in their right mind would allow one to be destroyed). It has all of the dark, congealed, airless ProTools sonic fingerprints. ProTools sucks. It is an abomination. It is the musical equivalent of the burnt beans Starbucks passes off as gourmet coffee. It is the music business’s poison pill. It repels people who don’t even know they are being repelled. It is why people hardly listen to music anymore. They hear it but they don’t really listen. ProTools is literally unlistenable.”

Michael Fremer is more biased — definitely biased in favor of analog and vinyl — but I have to say I have some sympathy for what he said about ProTools in his review of the latest Kathleen Edwards album:

“If this isn’t a ProTools recording I’ll eat a reel of Ampex 456 (that’s a cop-out because no one in their right mind would allow one to be destroyed). It has all of the dark, congealed, airless ProTools sonic fingerprints. ProTools sucks. It is an abomination. It is the musical equivalent of the burnt beans Starbucks passes off as gourmet coffee. It is the music business’s poison pill. It repels people who don’t even know they are being repelled. It is why people hardly listen to music anymore. They hear it but they don’t really listen. ProTools is literally unlistenable.”

I prefer both, but I admittedly have a fondness for vinyl. I admit the degradation of quality is a concern, but I'd still take vinyl over a poorly mastered CD anyday.

And heck.. I'd actually enjoy owning “Dream After Dream” on vinyl again. I'd even play it and smile.

(But.. I also might compare it with the Japanese remastered CD to see which sounds better.)

If you can't hear that a lot of new releases these days are mastered
one way for the vinyl and a different way for the cd, then you truly
do need more than pricey equipment. If they hadn't started squashing dynamic range out of existence on new release cds I might not have resorted to the change. But they did, and I had to dodge the problem
or listen to nothing new.

(owner of 5500 lps and 400 cds)

As for that Mudcrutch album, you'd better give the audiophile CD that comes with the vinyl a listen. It blows away the standard CD. Like I mentioned above – same mastering as the vinyl. It is lovely sounding.

Like I said, my USB turntable has a shitty needle, so the digital conversion is somewhat worse than vinyl copy. If I play the same record on my old skool turntable (i.e., the Technics sl 1200), it sounds great – which is why I want to get a digital interface that works with it.

Matt Johnson (i.e., The The) said in the mid '80s that CDs were like having really good copies of the master recordings. CDs were certainly had a cleaner sound, but to me CDs basically made mediocre speakers sound better. Setting your EQ so CDs and vinyl would have a similar sound was pretty tough when doing a DJ gig. I had some presets to punch in when going from one format to the other, but if I forgot to punch the preset when going to a CD, the crowd would cover their ears because it was so skewed toward the high end. Once the EQ was adjusted, however, people calmed down and stopped asking for my head on a platter.