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Shouldn’t a Digital Recording Sound the Same on CD and Vinyl?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Dire Straits Available Now

UPDATE 2026

These comments are taken from a reddit thread that Geoff Edgers and I were on years ago talking about Hot Stampers. I would add that the audience seemed to have very little experience with high-end audio. Based on the comments I read, most of them, like most audiophiles, especially audiophile record collectors, thought I was selling snake oil.

(Doesn’t it strike you as odd that no one ever seems to bring up the fact that we make a point of explaing to you exactly how to find your own snake oil?)

Someone asked a question about vinyl for digital recordings. Discussing the difference I typically hear between CDs and vinyl pressings, I offered the opinions you see below. (We might have been talking about Brothers in Arms; I honestly don’t remember and don’t think it matters anyway.)

For those of you newer to the blog, please keep in mind that, unlike a great many fans of analog, I actually like the sound of the hundreds of CDs I own and make a point to play them regularly for enjoyment. Properly mastered CDs can sound shockingly good.

In my experience, a good CD will wipe the floor with the vast majority of Heavy Vinyl records being made today. If you are buying modern remastered records, I highly recommend you stop doing so and instead make the effort to find a good CD player and buy vintage — and even gold — CDs.

My comments:

Well, a too short version would be something like:

On the vinyl and on the CD the tonality should be identical.

If it is not you have problems and you need to do some work to find them and fix them.

Assuming correct tonality, the CD should be big, lively and clear, assuming you have a good CD player and a good CD.

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Paul McCartney – McCartney

More of the Music of Sir Paul McCartney

  • INCREDIBLE Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) sound or close to it brings McCartney’s Apple debut to life on this vintage pressing – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • It’s practically impossible to find copies of this album that sound any good, let alone this good
  • The musicality, energy and presence are right on the money, not to mention that the studio space is huge
  • On the more resolving audiophile systems of today, the ambience, three-dimensionality and transparency of the best originals are aspects of the sound that only the highest quality vintage vinyl pressings are capable, in our experience, of reproducing
  • Record Collector highlighted “Every Night,” “Junk,” and “Maybe I’m Amazed” as songs that “still sound absolutely effortless and demonstrate the man’s natural genius with a melody.”
  • A Top 100 pick and Paul McCartney’s one and only Masterpiece – a Must Own when it sounds this good
  • Marks in the vinyl are sometimes the nature of the beast with these vintage LPs – there simply is no way around them if the superior sound of vintage analog is important to you
  • This is our pick for Paul McCartney’s best sounding album. Roughly 100 other listings for the Best Sounding Album by an Artist or Group can be found here.
  • A Must Own Title from 1970, a great year for rock and pop music

The best tracks here have the quality of live music in a way that not one out of a hundred rock records do. The music jumps right out of the speakers and fills up the room.

The album sounds like it’s recorded live in the studio, but of course that’s impossible, because Paul plays practically all the instruments himself! It just goes to show how good a multi-track studio recording can sound when done well.

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Latin ala Lee! The Record of the Year for 2003?

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Miss Peggy Lee Available Now

UPDATE 2026

It’s highly unlikely we would still agree with all the good things we had to say back in 2003 about Latin ala Lee! on Heavy Vinyl, but here it is anyway.

Plenty of records that sounded good to me back in the day don’t sound too good to me anymore, for the simple reason that, in this case, since 2003 we’ve managed to make a huge number of changes to the system.

These changes resulted in more accurate and revealing playback, derived mostly from the testing we did with this group of records and others like them. (Here is a personal favorite.)

Unfortunately for all concerned, S&P’s releases from this era (as well as DCC’s) had to fight their way through Kevin Gray’s transistory, opaque, airless, low-resolution cutting system, a subject we discuss in more depth here.

As for the difficult remix, the more remixes I hear, the less I like them. The ones Hoffmann did for Nat King Cole (see here) drive me up a wall.

Our Old Review

The Record of the Year for 2003.

I know how crazy that sounds, but it’s true! If you don’t have a smile on your face fifteen seconds after playing track one, you better check your pulse, cuz, as the famous song has it: Jack, You Dead. Amazingly good sound, courtesy of a fabulous and painstakingly difficult remix by the mastering guru himself, Steve Hoffman. This is popular music for the previous generation — but why should we be denied these long forgotten treasures?

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Letter of the Week – “No one doubted your records after this listening session.”

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of The Beatles Available Now

One of our good customers had this to say about some Hot Stamper pressings of Abbey Road and ELP’s debut he purchased a while back.

Hey Tom, 

Yesterday, I attended an audio event in Verona, NJ, where I had purchased my stereo.

I spent my time in the “analog” room. This room had the flagship equipment (Vandersteen 7 speakers, Aesthetix Jupiter series amps, pre-amps, phono stage, Clearaudio’s Goldfinger Statement cartridge, etc).

I listened for a while, hearing all the issues with almost every record they played. I then asked the store’s “turntable guru” to play some of the records I brought with me.

They thumbed through my boxes and asked me what the difference was between my two copies of Abbey Road. When I explained the superior side X on either copy, the audience found this concept amusing, based on their laughter. Any doubters would soon become believers.

They played Abbey Road‘s side 2 (3+ side, of course). While “Here Comes The Sun” was playing, Garth had his eyes closed. At the track’s conclusion, he exclaimed “Outstanding!,” and the record played on.

Next, we listened to ELP’s “Lucky Man.” Garth said it was the best he had ever heard.

I do not really know Garth, but I suspect he does not easily offer up such compliments in a room full of people. Others in the room, including the store’s turntable guru, were all very impressed. Several folks approached me, all pointing out parts of the music that blew them away.

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Our History with Led Zeppelin’s Rock Classic from 1990 – 2010

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Led Zeppelin Available Now

UPDATE 2026

In 2010 we wrote the overview below about what we thought we knew about Zep II. We have since amended the text in a few places and added some links. Please to enjoy.

This is undoubtedly one of the best, maybe THE best hard rock recording of all time, but you need a good pressing if you’re going to unleash anything approaching its full potential. We just conducted a shootout and heard MUCH more bad sound than good. You name it — imports, reissues, originals — we’ve played ’em, and most of them were TERRIBLE.

Especially the non-RL originals. That’s some of the worst sound we’ve ever heard.

If you see a “J” stamper, run for your life.

The best copies of Zep II have the kind of rock and roll firepower that’s guaranteed to bring any system to its knees. I can tell you with no sense of shame whatsoever that I do not have a system powerful enough to play this record at the levels I was listening to it at in one of our shootouts a while back. When the big bass comes in, hell yeah it distorts. It would have distorted worse at any concert the band ever played. Did people walk out, or ask the band to turn down the volume? No way. The volume IS the sound.

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Gary Wright / The Dream Weaver – One and Done

More of the Music of Gary Wright

  • Outstanding sound throughout this vintage Warner Bros. pressing, with both sides earning Double Plus (A++) grades – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Big, rich and full-bodied with lovely texture to the synths and relatively little grit – these are all qualities critically important to the sound of the better copies
  • One of only a handful of copies to hit the site in nearly two years – pressings with this kind of sound are tougher to come by than you might imagine
  • 4 stars: “Backed with only drums and a wide assortment of keyboards, Gary Wright crafted instantly recognizable tunes such as the title cut and ‘Love Is Alive,’ which caught on and remain staples of classic rock stations around the U.S. … Dream Weaver hasn’t lost any of its magic over time.”
  • If you’re a Gary Wright fan, or perhaps a fan of mid-70s synth-pop, this title, a personal favorite of mine from 1975, is surely a Must Own.
  • In our opinion, Dream Weaver is the only Gary Wright record you’ll ever need. Click on this link to see more titles we like to call one and done

Keyboards and More Keyboards

An all-keyboard pop record like this was a rarity at the time. The only other instruments besides drums (and one track with guitar) are keyboards. Every song is layered with multi-tracked clavinets, organs, and Moogs – it was a remarkable feat in 1975 to create an album with nothing but keys. Listen to the title track, the most dynamic song on the record, and you will hear just how well all of those stacked keyboards and synths work together. (Steve Winwood’s Back in the High Life borrowed a page or two from Gary’s solo debut here.)

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The Band – Music From Big Pink

More of the Music of The Band

  • Both sides of this vintage copy of The Band’s 1968 Masterpiece boast superb Double Plus (A++) sound
  • Even one Mint Minus Minus side is rare these days, and two are close to impossible, so consider this copy pretty darn quiet for a Super Hot Big Pink
  • Forget all those vague, veiled, lifeless, ambience-free Heavy Vinyl pressings – this is the Big Pink that The Band recorded!
  • Remember when you used to play the same record over and over, never taking it off the turntable for days at a time?
  • Well here it is – this pressing captures the music in a way that will make repeated plays the joy they used to be
  • 5 stars: “…as soon as ‘The Weight’ became a singles chart entry, the album and the group made their own impact, influencing a movement toward roots styles and country elements in rock. Over time, [the album] came to be regarded as a watershed work in the history of rock, one that introduced new tones and approaches to the constantly evolving genre.”

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Count Basie – Basie Plays Hefti

More of the Music of Count Basie

  • Only the second copy to hit the site in nearly three years and, boy, does it have superb sound, with both sides earning solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER
  • If all you’ve ever heard is the Roulette original (or the wacky MoFi, or whatever current Heavy Vinyl pressing is being made), this LP is guaranteed to be a revelation
  • Basie Plays Hefti catches Basie’s band at the peak of their powers in 1958, and in this All Tube Recording you get every bit of the magic they made in the studio
  • 4 stars: “The Count Basie Orchestra was in top form for this set of Neal Hefti arrangements. Hefti had been one of the main architects of the new Basie sound of the 50s… ‘Cute’ (heard here in its initial recording) became a standard.”

This is the followup to the smash Basie album The Atomic Mr. Basie, an album we would love to make available if we could ever find a clean, good sounding copy to play. The liner notes tell the story of this album well. Click on the tab above to read them.

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Neil Young and the Limits of Expert Advice

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Neil Young Available Now

Richard Feynman gave a series of lectures concerning the workings of the scientific method. Here is an excerpt from one of them that I would like you to keep in mind as you read the discussion that follows. [Bolding added by me.]

Now I’m going to discuss how we would look for a new law. In general, we look for a new law by the following process. First, we guess it (audience laughter), no, don’t laugh, that’s the truth. Then we compute the consequences of the guess, to see what, if this is right, if this law we guess is right, to see what it would imply and then we compare the computation results to nature or we say compare to experiment or experience, compare it directly with observations to see if it works.

If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science.

It doesn’t make any difference how beautiful your guess is, it doesn’t matter how smart you are who made the guess, or what his name is … If it disagrees with experiment, it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.

Back in 2015, a mastering engineer by the name of Phil Brown contacted me in reference to a Hot Stamper pressing of Neil Young’s  Zuma he had seen in our mailer. (Apologies in advance for not giving out the stamper numbers; we tend to frown on that sort of thing around here.) He wrote:

  Hey Tom,   

I see it’s a featured disc in the newsletter. I’m curious what the matrix numbers are since I mastered it.

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Siren on Import Vinyl? Not So Fast

Hot Stamper Pressings of the Music of Roxy Music Available Now

Siren is one of our favorite Roxy albums, right up there with the first album and well ahead of the commercially appealing Avalon.

After reading a rave review in Rolling Stone of the album back in 1975, I took the plunge, bought a copy at my local Tower Records and instantly fell in love with it.

As is my wont, I then proceeded to work my way through their earlier catalog, which was quite an adventure. It takes scores of plays to understand where the band is coming from on the early albums and what it is they’re trying to do. Now I listen to each of the first five releases on a regular basis.

Somehow they never seem to get old, even after more than forty years.

Of all the Roxy albums (with the exception of Avalon) this is probably the best way “in” to the band’s music. The earlier albums are more raucous, the later ones more rhythmically driven — Siren catches them at their peak, with, as other reviewers have noted, all good songs and no bad ones.

Imports? Not So Fast

The British and German copies of Siren are clearly made from dub tapes and sound smeary, small and lifeless.

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