Everything should have its shape. This is my own capture of the vinyl recording of the KT Tunstall track of the same name.
If only the same was true of the digital download version of the same track.
The first was captured using a sound-blaster live card into audacity direct from my HiFi. Lot’s of lovely dynamics in there . This is as you would expect from an artist who is a very talented musician and cares about the sound quality.
When I put the wav download into audacity for comparison I was shocked by what I saw. The brick wall compression and limiting is bad. Very bad. But it gets worse. Those red lines are clipping. Digital clipping is horrible. Nuff said.
I don’t normally bother to digitise my vinyl if I already have a digital version, be it a CD or a download packaged with the vinyl. In this case though, the digital sounded so lifeless compared with the LP that I made the effort to create a nice high res FLAC for my streamer. It worked out very well.
Anyway, here you see one of the main reasons why vinyl can sound so much better than digital. Sadly, most of this is down to post production and presentation of the digital version for a dumbed down audience.
It’s a shame. A real shame.