richard tollerton

As a semi-lurker (who was indirectly led into this debate by Steve), I
really think we should care less about exact decibel ranges for
dynamic range. As Andy has pointed out, they're not all that
comparable between LP and CD to begin with. And you can define the
recording level to some arbitrarily high value and get an arbitrarily
increased SNR (at the expense of tracking/tracing distortion and
mistracking).

But I *will* say that, on several records I have, the dynamic range of
the music has been clearly and obviously constrained by the noise
floor of the vinyl. The biggest example here is a (sealed!) copy of a
Mahler 3 by Horenstein on Nonesuch I bought a couple years ago -
wonderfully produced, but I need to struggle through the noise to
understand the quiet solo sections. There's a Mahler 1 I bought a
month ago with about the same problem. On Shellac's "Excellent Italian
Greyhound", there is clearly audible tape print-through in one song on
the CD version that is lost in the noise on the LP version. This one,
in particular, was produced entirely on tape and is a brand-new
pressing from 2007 on 180g vinyl cut on Abbey Road's DMM lathe - so it
likely represents something pretty close to the state of the art in
vinyl production nowadays.

Quite simply, I have experienced several obvious examples where I
can't hear something nearly as well as I ought to on the vinyl because
the noise (which I believe to be surface noise) obscures it. And I've
listened to a lot more CDs and I've only encountered *one* CD whose
dynamic range reasonably exceeded the medium (and it was experimental
electronic, so CDs kind of get a by on that). That alone is reasonable
proof to me that the dynamic range of vinyl is not sufficient for at
least *some* real music out there, and IMNSHO, it should be reasonable
proof for you, too.