I prefer Vinyl, too. If available, I buy the Vinyl, then record it to my computer as a 24Bit/96kHz lossless FLAC for convenience (making playlists, etc.).
However, I don't make a religion out of it. Although I do like the slightly "softer" sound of Vinyl, as opposed to the more "strident" sound of a lot of CD releases, I still think that the CD is a really good medium if used properly. But exactly here is the problem. Because of the "Loudness War" probably 99% of modern releases (except for maybe instrumental music like classic) suffer from high amount of dynamic compression. This means, that all sound elements are normalized to the same loudness level to make it appear more "thick". Thus, percussion/beats don't have any punch anymore, because they are as loud as the rest of the song. Often the singer only reads or even whispers the lyrics, but still the drums are quieter than the singing and don't really sound like drums but rather like someone tapping with his fingers on the table. Then for CD releases high frequencies are often amplified, which results in the typically "shrill" and "sterile" digital sound.
The only "advantage" of the Vinyl format is that mastering engineers are much more limited in destroying the original sound material, because Vinyl can only handle a moderate amount of dynamic compression and such, and that's why current releases often sound better on Vinyl as the sound is just less tiring to the ears. However, this doesn't necessarily make the Vinyl format better. If done correctly, a CD can handle much more dynamics and clarity than a Vinyl. And we should not forget that we already have new and better formats like high resolution digital downloads which have better quality than CDs. They just aren't really used yet. All the popular download stores like iTunes are still stuck in the late 90s with lossy 256kBps files.
And of course even the best medium or file format doesn't help if 99% of the new releases are just terribly recorded and mastered and only enjoyable on a crappy mono radio.
That's what I like about PJ Harvey. Although she has used an increasing amount of dynamic compressions on her albums, compared to most other releases of that time it has always been rather moderate and therefore the sound has been still quite intact. The only exception is maybe "Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea". This one is pretty horribly compressed and I find it quite hard to listen to more than three songs of this album in a row because it is so loud. This is also confirmed by the "Dynamic Range Database", which lists the used dynamic range in dB for each song/album (The values are calculated by looking at the 20% loudest parts of a song and then taking the average difference between the average volume of the track and the peaks [the louder parts like drums] in dB):
http://www.dr.loudness-war.info/index.p ... &order=asc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Kueken
