Just one thing....
We've been here before, and I've demonstrated this to Macca, by ripping a vinyl copy of Nat King Cole's 'Live at the Sands' onto CD (a favourite album of his that he owned beforehand on a commercially produced CD, and knew inside out), which I sent to him to compare with his own CD, and aside from some very low-level surface noice, on certain tracks, which you have to expect with vinyl, he couldn't tell the difference - and neither could I. Both sounded superb, and 'sonically correct'.
Therefore, and this is the point, if vinyl is so
intrinsically [the key word] flawed, as Justin contends, then why weren't those flaws immediately apparent when either Martin or I listened to and compared both of those CDs, which were analysed many times - surely the
intrinsic flaws of vinyl would've been captured on the rip...??
And we both have very revealing systems and good ears, so if there were any obvious, INTRINSIC, flaws present on the digital recording, produced from a vinyl source, then we would've definitely heard it. Plus, I've carried out the same process with 100s of different vinyl albums, ripping them to CD, and the results were always the same: the rip sounded near sonically identical (certainly no obvious flaws) to the source CD.
I therefore put it to Justin [but don't expect him to agree
], that what he's hearing (which incidentally I also believe is real) is only present on *some* vinyl recordings, and is either a deliberately engineered effect or a flaw somewhere in the recording/mastering process and/or with the equipment used.
I don't believe that what he's describing is intrinsically inherent in vinyl itself, as otherwise the test above would've proved it. It's just that weird electronic music you listen to, man!
Marco.