Chervokas shares his knowledge

Honestly, I never understood why anyone would prefer a digital recording or mastering pressed to a noisy, off centered, tracking distortion prone playback format when they could just listen to it in its native format.

But people have differing sonic preferences and perceptions. If people want to listen to an all analog production via an all analog playback format and signal chain, that's fine too. And it can sound really good too. If they want their digital files delivered via vinyl playback, that seems like a little bit of a head scratcher to me when we have such good options for digital playback available today and so inexpensively.

It isn't all that bad. Really, it isn't.

Look, I have 4K LPs, I was a late adopter of digital audio for listening and clung to the LP format well into the 1990s because I found early digital playback not to sound too great. I have a decent record playing set up -- Merrill Heirloom, highly modified Rega arm, AT 33 ptg/ii cart, Lundahl and Cinemag SUTs, Darlington phono pre (which is great for reducing the impact of ticks and pops), but I've grown to a point where really I can't much enjoy listening to LPs anymore. There's always something intrusive going on reminding me that I'm having a canned experience and taking me out of the music -- a tick, a pop, vinyl roar, groove echo previewing the big dynamic change that's about to occur in the music, even just preamp gain hiss.

I've spent a lot of money and time chasing different vinyl related solutions: turntable motor drive tweaks, vinyl cleaning solutions, stylus-groove friction reduction methods, etc. But it the end I find digital playback has gotten so good -- and electronics have gotten so neutral and low noise -- and digital is so blissfully free of any of that intrusive stuff that's always present with vinyl playback, that I find digital a much, and I mean MUCH, more relaxing, revealing and realistic experience, to the point that when I switch over to an LP a lot of the time I just feel like taking it off right away and going back to digital (and have). Its like the music and the recording is liberated with digital. I only put on LPs anymore pretty much as a last resort for music that hasn't otherwise been made available. Other people don't seem to be as distracted by all that noise as I am I guess. But I'm also sure I'm not alone in my feelings on that either.

In any event, that's tangential to the example of what I was talking about -- having a digital master recording, say in 16/48 or 24/96, and either pressing it to vinyl or just duplicating it in 16/48 or 24/96 for digital playback in it's native format without all that goes into both transferring it to vinyl and playing it back from vinyl.

I understand that in some cases there might be a wholly separate mastering for the LP, which is different from the scenario I'm talking about (though for me, still, the mechanical intrusions, and the extra workload of vinyl playback are usually more of an impediment to my enjoyment than mastering differences, with some exceptions). But if we're talking about the same digital master and you can have it pressed to vinyl and played back from vinyl or losslessly duped and played back in its native digital format, I think the former can only make it noiser and more distorted.

Honestly, I never understood why anyone would spend so much effort obsessing over what other people think or do, especially when your mind is already made up on the subject.

One thing that I have noticed in these threads is that the people who are most obsessed over this always resort to gross exaggeration and imaginary scenarios to make their points. But they are always right about one thing: They really don't understand what they claim to not understand, and never will.

A lot of faulty presumptions here -- like obsession, who is obsessed over this? Do people actually lose sleep spending their days and nights thinking about this? I don't. Second, who says my description of my experience is gross exaggeration and an imaginary scenario? That's the kind of presumptuous dismissal of other people's perception that is really toxic and silly too because I what do you know about my experience other than what I say about it? Understand? Help me understand: what is the audio benefit of a transfer to vinyl of a digital master if the same master is also available for playback in the native digital format?