Long time lurker. First time poster. Long time listeners of ICP and Twiztid and other juggalo acts. Was introduced to them around 1999 by a friend who gave me "The Amazing Jekyl Brothers," and told me to get ready to have my mind blown. He then gave me "The Great Milenko" and I was hooked. Neither he or I would consider ourselves juggalos but we like a lot of the music these guys put out and we still listen to their older albums. Newer ones, not so much. I still listen to them and I boldly tell my friends when they ask what I am listening to during casual conversation. Of course I catch heat for saying I like listening to it, but obviously I do not care.

What I do care about, as my name shows, is vinyl records. I have a huge collection myself, a fairly expensive system and a very VERY sharp needle so as to get the best performance out of my records. I was THRILLED that ICP and Twiztid and many others were putting their music onto vinyl, and in some cases picture disc. I already own the following vinyl

1. Dark Lotus - Tales from the Lotus Pod.
2. Twiztid - Green Book

3. Twiztid - W.I.C.K.E.D.
4. Twiztid - Continuous eviltion of life's ?'s
5. Boondox - The Murder

I plan to acquire Twiztid's "The Darkness", "Freekshow" and ICP's "The Riddlebox." Also possibly ICP's "The Wraith" if I can find any on the web. Needless to say I was also excited when I heard that ICP and Twiztid would be going into their back catalogue to release MORE classic albums on vinyl. Some of the ones coming up are ICP Beverly Kills picture disc and Twiztid Abominationz picture disc. Regarding picture discs, they look amazing, but they do not produce the best sound. Simply because they are not made of the typical black or even coloured vinyl that CAN produce amazing sound on an amazing turntable with a very sharp needle.

Basically, like a regular album, a chunk of black vinyl is pressed in a factory. However, on both sides of this puck of black vinyl is a round picture. On top of both round pictures, is a very thin layer of clear vinyl. The atomic composition of the clear vinyl is different from the black and it does not permit it to have a very good sound. Just a decent one. While the black puck vinyl inside the picture disc is used for stability, the think layer of clear vinyl on both sides has the grooves on it with the music pressed onto it. As I said, you can get decent quality sound, but not high quality reproduction. It is more of a collector's item with a "wow" factor. The following two videos explain it quite nicely.

How to press vinyl picture records

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hKgYLxZANU

Why Do Picture Discs Sound Worse?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNIfSPqkcVY

When I examined my Dark Lotus (black) vinyl, I noticed that it was made in Europe. France to be specific. It sounded very good. Lots of dynamics in the music. No distortion. In other words, it did not sound like this mastering has fallen prey to the typical engineering heresy known as the loudness wars. Crank everything up to the point there are no dynamics in the songs, and some parts sound almost distorted. Vinyl is supposed to be the answer to the loudness wars in this digital age of music.

Loudness Wars: Is Vinyl the Answer?

Red Hot Chili Peppers vinyl sounds better than CD

Stadium Arcadium - CD vs LP - STOP THE LOUDNESS WAR!

Sometimes, it extends to cd's themselves. Older cd's sound fine but newer remasters that have everything mastered at full levels pale in comparison to the original version.

Why I Don't Buy "Remastered" CDs.

If Smells Like Teen Spirit was released today..

From what I can gather, this has been deemed a necessity because nobody buys high quality component systems with big speakers anymore. 

Everything is through tiny little earphones since everyone has music on their phones or ipods.

But since Dark Lotus sounded so good on my turntable and my component system, I have two suspicions when it came to mastering for the vinyl for Dark Lotus specifically:

1. Despite being made in the 2000's, it was recorded onto analog technology and the original master tape was used when making vinyl. Analog to analog.

2. A digital master was taken, and remastered for vinyl. Now this can be problematic. If not done correctly, it can sound terrible in a high quality vinyl stereo system. Example:

My Thoughts On Digitally Sourced Vinyl & Iggy Pop Digital vs. Analog

So how can one avoid this problem of digital back to analog if they do not have the original analog master to work with? Very simple. Be careful about the digital bitrate you have. If you use 16 bit, it is very low quality. Go at least 24. Here is a thread discussing the issue.

http://www.progressiveears.org.....63ce9679dc

There are many good posts but I will select only a few which outline the basics.

Well, adding an analog stage at the end of a digital process certainly does changes things a bit.
The one place where there is a key difference between current vinyl, and 70s recorded vinyl, is in the mastering of mixed material. So, it's not in the recording of the instruments on Pro-Tools per se, but in the kind of extreme pseudo-loudness the digital medium offers at the mastering stage. This impacts vinyl recordings because the nature of the waveform being translated into a vinyl groove is different. Since the dynamic range of a vinyl groove is limited by its physical dimensions, the translation of brickwall limited digital recording onto vinyl can reportedly have the (counterintuitive) effect of making the record sound quieter.
In theory, good results are possible if a digitally recorded album is mastered specifically for a vinyl release, with a minimum of overall dynamics controlling.

Two of the first digital recordings I ever purchased were only available in vinyl when they first were released. They were the Telarc Robert Shaw & Atlanta Symphony Orchestra album with Stravinsky's Firebird, and William Ackerman's album "Passage". I have since purchased them both on CD. They represented the best dynamic range possible on vinyl. They were also mastered well for CD, which allowed even better dynamics.
I've heard analog sourced vinyl that sounds better than digital sourced CDs, simply because the digital recordings were not properly mastered. I've also heard new vinyl that sounds like crap not because of the recording of mastering, but because the pressing was impure and had excessive surface noise/pops/crackles.
I recently started collecting vinyl again, though not nearly as much as my early adult life. Two recent purchases absolutely blow away the original pressings. They are both 180G virgin vinyl. Yes - Close To The Edge and Alice Cooper - Love It To Death are stunning. While I wouldn't say the CTTE vinyl is better than the recent Hoffman mastering and even less do than the HD tracks 96/24 files, it is very pleasing nonetheless. I will flat out state that the Alice Cooper vinyl is much better than the old CD I have.
Since we're comparing formats here, I would much rather here a flat transfer 96/24 file of a digital recording than a CD or vinyl of the same. They are much more expensive, but certainly worth it for music I value highly.

The OP opened a can of worms. Some of the responses have danced around the issues inherent in cutting vinyl from a digital source.

Things to keep in mind:

1. With respect to vinyl reissues of older analogue recordings, most are taken from a hi-resolution digital source (either 24/96 or 24/192). The major labels will not "lend" out original masters with some exceptions. If an audiophile label is going to reissue an album and have a well known cutting engineer do the work - that the major label approves of - they will let it out. Examples: Bernie Grundman, Doug Sax or Kevin Gray have access to original master tapes. Joe Schmo doesn't. He gets the file. This doesn't necessarily make it a bad reissue. If the cutting engineer is presented with a 24/192 file that doesn't have compression ie. just a flat transfer of the master, the results can be quite excellent. The Music On Vinyl label does a fairly good job of reissuing classic albums. Sometimes they work with original tapes but more often than not they work with hi-res files.

2. With a few exceptions, most current manufacture cutting lathes work with a digital preview head so inevitably the analogue tape is passing through an A/D then D/A stage. Some of the old timers who still work with the old lathes keep everything in the analogue domain. Obviously the later is preferable but not always possible.

3. If the original source is a digital file, once it passes through a D/A the sound characteristics change. It is definitely possible that a vinyl pressing of a digital recording can sound better than the digital version. Case in point - Porcupine Tree "In Absentia". The vinyl edition sounds much better than the CD. Andy Van Dette slammed the shit out of that disc when he mastered it - its way over compressed. I don't know who cut the vinyl but its a lot better sounding and one has to assume it came from the same source.

So basically to answer your question - be a detective and use good judgement. If its a vinyl reissue that you suspect is sourced from 16/44.1 don't bother with it. Its conceivable it could sound better than the CD but not likely. We licensed two of our releases to a vinyl reissue label and they just wanted to work from a CD as a master (I shrugged and have never played them as I suspect they sound like crap). If its a high quality reissue you should be getting good sound regardless of the original source.

I appreciate the edifying replies, especially from those who work in the business and have experience with issues related to vinyl mastering. The whole dynamics issue and "loudness wars" is something I didn't mention, but it is very important to me. I'm dead set against the brick walling and compression, and maxing out of levels. I really respect what someone like Steven Wilson has done with his recent work in going in the other direction, and preserving as much as was recorded in the studio as possible without adding extra EQ and compression.

A point of clarification: Steven Wilson does remixing, not remastering. That is not to say that overuse of compression is not employed b some engineers during mixing and that Wilson isn't "one of the good guys" in this respect, but it's really not the same thing. Most "brickwalling" and "maximizing" happens during the mastering stage.

Still, I think Wilson does deserve credit in this regard, as one only need to look at the Genesis remixes to see that massive amounts of compression in remixing can absolutely ruin the original "feel" of a recording before it ever even gets to the mastering stage. He seems to stay true to the original mixes.

As was said by others before me.

- CD quality is CD quality (16/44), regardless of the medium it is presented in
- the mastering of the music is more important than the medium
- high bitrate 24/196 digital on a vinyl source sounds as good as pure analogue (mostly, depending on the mastering)
- the old purely analogue records, especially those made simply, just have something special about them

If extreme hard limiting is performed in the master used for both CD, Vinyl, or any other format, the format will not make it better, including vinyl. If high dynamic range digital (HDR) is converted to HDR analog and compressed using analog compression such as tube based and then mastered to vinyl or even converted back to digital, then good results are possible.

I would agree that for most pop music, be it metal, or rock, or power country, or pop, or rap or such things that generally don't contain musical "subtelty" and are listened to in the car or on earbuds - the compression works for them.

But if I want to hear jazz, or acoustic folk, or classical, or soft vocals and such then the micro dynamics that are crushed by compression get lost. I want that music in its pure form.

What is on pages 3 to 7 is irrelevant. Now I do not know what was done for the Dark Lotus vinyl in France, but it was done VERY well. Whether it be analog master to analog vinyl, or digital master that was PROPERLY REMASTERED for vinyl and THEN pressed on to vinyl, it was very good. I put it on to tape and it sounds great in my old vehicle.

I hope ICP and Twiztid will continue to follow proper steps for putting things on to vinyl. When they do, everybody wins. Their reputation is as awesome as the sound of the records - which guys like me absolutely love. That being said, I am a little sad that ICP Beverly Kills and Twiztid Abominationz will be on picture disc. Of course it will sound good. But on black vinyl, it would sound amazing and it would sound the way it was meant to while spinning 33 and a 3rd revolutions on a turntable.

Perhaps the first 100 copies could be picture discs and the rest would be normal black vinyl that was properly mastered like the Dark Lotus vinyl was in France? Maybe not. But if someone with some pull in the psychopathic or mne family is reading this, I hope they take it to heart and know that they have pleased many a people with their vinyl releases. Myself included of course.

Thanks for reading. Comments welcome.