Vinyl and LPs - Analogue Music Goodness

Oh no, I totally enjoyed the rant! There's nothing better than meeting someone on the Internet who is passionate about a subject, or has significant expertise who can clear up misconceptions or misinformation.

And yes I agree on the range levelling / squashing, and I think it's for radio purposes so it sounds good coming out of horrible mall speakers or low-end car stereos / smartphones. Mass market appeal, as you said.

The surface noise is obviously a problem for vinyl, but in the specific few that a friend had shown me (Nine Inch Nails), I thought it was just part of their aesthetic, because a lot of Reznor's stuff is "grainy" on purpose.

On mastering: I'm not even sure what the "new medium" would be for super high end audio, I've resorted to FLAC at Quality=11 because .wav/.raw is ridiculously large for no good reason, and internet connections are so fast nowadays (125 MB/s+) that even buying physical Blu-Ray disks is tenous given you can digitally grab the album in under a minute, versus driving to the record store.