The Rise of "Hybrid" Vinyl-MP3s

Khyber writes to let us know that First Word Records, a U.K.-based record label, is now selling vinyl records that come with codes that allow you to download a 320-kbit MP3 of that record's content. The article mentions another independent label, Saddle Creek, that also offers DRM-free downloads with some vinyl records. The co-founder of First Word is quoted on why they didn't DRM the download: "Making a legal, paid-for version of the file less useful than a copied or pirated one doesn't make sense."

Comments

vye....null?

[Anonymous Coward]

What is this vye..null?

Re:vye....null?

[Reverend528]

It's an ancient musical recording that is etched into a circular rock. A bird presses it's beak to the stone and rotates it, producing sound.

Re:vye....null?

[aneurysm36]

here is an illustration

Re:vye....null?

[Mr Jazzizle]

I have 2 questions about that: Why is the bird on a turtle? Also, what's the turtle standing on? :P

Re:vye....null?

[Worthless_Comments]

It's turtles all the way down.

Possibly better than CDs?

[powerpants]

If the MP3s are coming straight from the record label, maybe they could be encoded straight from the master mix, rather than a down-sampled 24-bit, 44.1kHz CD. My understanding is that CDs go up to 20 kHz (which is pretty close to the highest pitch humans can hear), but that the bit-depth is somewhat course at that range.

Is there an audio engineer around who can explain if there's much to be gained this way?

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[Tuoqui]

I'm not an audio engineer but from a telecom course I took the basic idea is that you sample at twice the highest frequency (IE. 20kHz frequency would require 40k samples a second).

For the most part humans focus on the 300Hz-3.3kHz range which is why the phone companies only give you about 3k Bandwidth and sample at about 8k samples a second over POTS.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[iangoldby]

My understanding is that CDs go up to 20 kHz ... but that the bit-depth is somewhat course at that range.

You are probably thinking of 'one-bit' (or bitstream) digital to analogue converters. (Wikipedia article.) It gets around the problem of producing 16 bits of resolution with a single bit by switching at a frequency many times that of the sampling frequency and averaging over time.

In its purest form, it would switch at 2^16, or 65536 times the CD sample frequency. If one CD sample value is 0, the DAC would be off for 65536 DAC output samples. If the CD sample value is 65535 it is on for 65536 DAC output samples. For intermediate values it is on for the given proportion of the time. In other words, the CD sample value determines the duty-cycle of the output from the DAC. The one-bit on/off output is then averaged over time. This results in a conversion with almost no non-linear distortion of the signal.

Unfortunately a frequency of 65536 * 44.1 kHz would be in the THz range, so the actual frequency that a 1 bit DAC operates at is somewhat lower. For lower frequency audio signals the averaging process is still very accurate, but it loses some accuracy for the highest frequency audio tones mostly when there are rapid transients in the high frequencies. You might refer to this as a 'coarsening of the bit-depth'.

A full 16-bit DAC doesn't suffer from this problem because each sample from the CD is converted straight into a voltage proportional to that sample value in a single step. But it is very difficult to make a completely linear 16-bit DAC, so the non-lineararity of the DAC introduces its own distortions. But these distortions do not depend on frequency as they do with a 1-bit DAC.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[Mattintosh]

Yes. Nyquist. There's a Theorem, a Limit, and a Guy that discovered these, all by the same name.

A 44.100kHz sample rate will theoretically get you up to a 22.050kHz max frequency in the audio signal. Humans can focus on any part of the audible spectrum, but voices won't typically fall outside the 300-3300 Hz range. Thus aLaw (US) and mu-Law (outside the US, a.k.a. "uLaw", since the Greek mu looks like a u with a tail) are typically 8000 Hz sample rate, 8-bit-sample, monophonic (who has a stereo telephone?) signal when digitized.

The GP was worried that the bit depth is "coarse". This is not the case. Bit depth "distance" is constant for a given depth.

CD's are 44.1kHz, 16-bit, stereo. Always. So there are always 44100 samples per second per channel. There are always two channels (stereo, one left, one right). And each sample in each channel is always 16 bits. A 16-bit integer can represent numbers from 0-65535 (2^0-1 through 2^16-1), and since there's no need for negative numbers (this is Pulse Code Modulation, or PCM, so no, you don't need to represent a +/- of a waveform) you get the full 0-65535 swing. From there, the value is directly translatable into a DC voltage that goes to the speakers. (Most of the heavy lifting is done in the A/D phase, D/A phase is a simple value-to-DC conversion.) The change in DC voltage over time is what causes the magnets to move, which moves the speaker cones, which moves air, which moves your tympanic membrane, which blah-blah-blah... eventually you hear sound.

So there's no need to worry. Nothing gets coarse. Nothing loses fidelity. Nothing loses audible quality. This is why vinyl fanatics get laughed at by people who know how and why digital audio works. The limits of even now-mundane CD audio are far above the possible limits of even hypothetically perfect human hearing. Nobody can hear 22kHz. Nothing below 22kHz is misrepresented in CD-quality audio. For mastering work, where effects will be applied later, higher quality recordings are wonderful, since you can guarantee that it will stay high-quality when downsampled to CD-quality, but other than that (and "economies of scale" where better parts are just as cheap to produce), there's no need for anything better.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[[Marvin]]

Actually, the max. frequency that can be sampled is 22kHz, not 22.050kHz - what the Nyquist theorem states is that in order to construct a signal accuately, you need to sample at twice the maximum frequency + a little more, because then you can also deduct the phase of the original signal.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[gEvil (beta)]

Which wouldn't be an issue if "artists" didn't think blindly that louder is better, period.

It's often not the artist that makes this decision. Rather, it's whoever does the mastering that decides this. Sure, the label and artist sign off on it, but remember that the artist's ears are usually pretty shot from playing live music day in and day out. And the label doesn't want to have to pay to have it done again.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[exp(pi*sqrt(163))]

Look, if you're going to make up justifications for using vinyl, make them more convincing. Much of the theory about human hearing is based on the assumption that the ear acts as a linear system. If the ear were a linear system there is no way it'd be possible for "certain confluences of sound react with each other and produce further sounds". In linear systems harmonics at different frequencies simply add, there is no possible 'interaction' that can happen between them.

But nonlinear systems are quite different. The classic example is soliton waves. When two of these meet, they don't simply combine additively. In particular, different harmonics don't necessarily pass straight through each other and its quite possible for two very high frequency signals to interact and produce a low frequency signal in the result. And of course there really is no reason to expect the ear to remain close to a linear system, even ordinary sound waves in air become nonlinear if the sound is loud enough.

So if you want to sound convincing, talking about nonlinearity is your best bet. I can guarantee that 90% of the engineers you talk to won't have a sensible response because they've never studied nonlinear signal processing, and they'll be less likely to laugh at you.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[serginho]

"This is why vinyl fanatics get laughed at by people who know how and why digital audio works."

There's only problem with this: vinyl lovers are not worried about signal-to-noise ratios or the frequencies that are audible to the human ear. It is simply a matter of taste.

Vinyl records, if played in a decent setup (good turntables, good capsules, good speakers - but by no means audiophile gear), do sound different to CDs. They sound warmer, with more presence. That's what vinyl collectors are looking for.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[tuba_dude]

"...no need for anything better." I beg to differ, but I will preface this with the fact that I haven't studied the engineering or the physics behind it. It could just be the fact that I'm an audiophile and musician, but there's an audible (very subtle, yes) difference between a 24-bit/96KHz (or higher) recording and a CD-quality recording. Some people are better tuned for listening than others. It's like sitting some people in front of a CRT. Some will be able to tell the difference between refresh rates, some won't. I had a hard time staying on focus, I wanted to rant about audio compression or live/recorded sound, but I'll control myself for now! :)

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[SimonBelmont]

Nothing below 22kHz is misrepresented in CD-quality audio.

Wrong. The Nyquist Theorem states only that a sample rate of double the highest expected frequency is the minimum required to avoid aliasing. Meaning that, if you sample 22kHz at 44kHz, it won't come out sounding like something other than 22kHz. But you could theoretically be sampling at the 0 every time. The Nyquist Theorem isn't really about faithful reproduction.

And in reality, there's no such thing as a perfect low-pass filter. This is why CDs are at 44kHz and not 40kHz, given that we can't hear anything above about 20kHz. But that still doesn't mean they reproduce 20kHz well, just that we can use a low-pass filter which doesn't significantly attenuate 20kHz and sample it to a CD without audible aliasing.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[kevinadi]

Even though these typically fall outside the range of human hearing, we are still able to sense and feel them.

Nope, it's been proven that humans cannot hear ultrasonic sounds. Dogs, yes. Humans, no. Otherwise, you'll be reacting to a dog whistle.

The only argument against CD is that people are getting concerned that 16 bit is a little on the low side, and getting 24 bit or more is better. For the time being, there's no argument that the sampling rate is too low. What you hear coming out from your speaker is the result of the D/A converter, so if your CD sounds bad, it's probably your player/amps/speakers and not due to a defect in the CD technique itself.

A lot about music and hearing is subjective. You can convince yourself that your shower radio sounds better than a $10,000 equipment if you try really hard. It's fine by me if people judge vinyl sounds better than a CD, but from a technical standpoint, it is not.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[grub]

Nope, it's been proven that humans cannot hear ultrasonic sounds. Dogs, yes. Humans, no. Otherwise, you'll be reacting to a dog whistle.

When I was a wee lad of ~8 I could hear one of the high frequency sounds made by our TV remote control (way back it was done with high frequency sound). Our dog heard it, too. No one else in the family could hear it but we did tests where I'd have my back turned and could hear the sound of that one button. You'd hear the buttons being depressed but I only commented when the one that caused that high pitched 'tingle' in my ears was the one bring pressed.

Of course I was about 8, after 25 years of blasting Motorhead and other grinding music these 41 year old ears aren't quite what they used to be. Thanks Lemmy.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[leenks]

Not strictly true. If you play two frequencies, say 28000hz and 28500hz together, they will beat and you will hear that. Sure, you can't hear the frequencies but you can hear the effect. This could be why mediums that apply a hard filter appear dull at times.

Modern digital equipment sounds far better than it should because of the tricks employed in the converters. Oversampling and noise dithering has a massive effect on the sound, and you aren't really hearing the true digital signal but a smoothed one. Before such techniques were used, digital equipment got huge criticism for being clinical sounding (quite rightly). Vinyl and other analogue systems don't have this problem obviously, but bring loads of others to the table (wear and tear, damage, static, etc).

For some material, 16bit is definitely not enough. It's fine for a lot of modern chart material, where the mastering has multiband compressed it to hell and back to make it sound louder than the competition, but those tracks don't need the dynamic range of a Chopin valse, or a Beethoven symphony. The quiet bits on 16 bit recordings definitely lose a lot compared to 24bit (side by side comparison using old and new gear) - but I think it is really the recording and production stages that need 24bit or more, not necessarily replay because of the tricks that can now be applied.

Anyway, what does it matter? It's the material played that is ultimately important, not the method of reproduction.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[ddhuyvet]

It's not from listening to loud music that you stop hearing higher frequencies, it's a natural phenomenon: your hearing of high-pitched sound degrades as you grow older. This has been used to repell teenagers using an annoying high-pitched sound adults can't hear:

"The device, called the Mosquito, emits a high-frequency pulsing sound that, he says, can be heard by most people younger than 20 and almost no one older than 30." An other application is using it as a ringtone adults can't hear. But these sounds are still below 20 kHz, even children can't hear sounds above 18 kHz or so.

Re:Possibly better than CDs?

[FST777]

That is true. However, with a turntable it's quite easy to change the characteristics of the produced sound (presence, warmth) by just replacing the cartridge / stylus. This is why I still love hearing a good DJ use vinyl in a club: he knows what kind of cartridges he should use.

On a home system, I never heard a reasonably priced stock CD player produce the warmth and precense my turntable gives me. The filters used in stock CD players are too "commonplace" for my taste. My turntable gave just the right edge and warmth to my metal records (until the stylus broke). I have yet to come across a CD player that gives me the same experience.

That is not caused by bad technology, but by the fact that digital recordings imply the need for digital or DA filters. Since that is less "natural" than a good stylus / magnetic cartridge, it implies design desicions, which are most certainly not tailored for my taste. Most CD players focus on harmonics and fidelity in the higher ranges of sound (above 500 Hz) to improve quality while listening classical music or non-distorted pop / dance. I'm usually looking for warmth in the lower regions and smoothness in the higher. An average turntable cartridge either gives me just that or is as useless as a CD player. When I have a cartridge I like, you can be sure that Beethoven will sound horrible on it.

Hybrids everywhere

[linguae]

I guess I will be looking forward to playing my hybrid vinyl records in my hybrid Toyota soon.

Pulseblack has done it for a long time

[Echo5ive]

http://pulseblack.com/

They've been doing this for a long long time with CDs. Very nice record label.

Funny coincidence

[50000BTU_barbecue]

I just bought a turntable as an impulse purchase, a Pionner PL-516 for the curious. I have about 30 LPs lying around. I saw that HMV (a music store) had some new vinyl titles in stock, so I grabbed one at random, "The Arcade Fire". An abominable album to be sure, but it was just to hear how new vinyl sounds. Sounds pretty good. Got this famous coupon in there as well.

My conclusion is that this is how things should work. Obviously there's a demand for vinyl, and the convenience of digital is undeniable. Somehow, music companies got this right.

Re:Funny coincidence

[LiquidCoooled]

The most impressive thing I have ever seen with vinyl disks was a friend saying "you have to listen to this" and searching the disk for a particular pattern and dropping the needle on it.
Deadly accurate and spot on.
You could see the entire album and know where quiet sections are and how much to skip to to get past the annoying interlude or whatever.

Re:Funny coincidence

[TenBrothers]

I must be old to see this comment as cute and quaint.

Wow, this is awesome

[ProppaT]

I'm in a small minority, but I'm a rabid music collector. Often times I'll buy both the cd and the vinyl versions of an album (the vinyl to listen to at home, the cd for the car or to rip to portable player). Basically, this allows me to only buy one version of the album (vinyl, the version I really want anyway) and just burn a copy for the car and drop one on the mp3 player. The only way this could get better is if they start supporting flac...then I can convert that to whatever format I want. This is great news for the indie / record junkie scene, though.

DRM - no sense

[Skadet]

"Making a legal, paid-for version of the file less useful than a copied or pirated one doesn't make sense."

And herein is the best anti-DRM argument there is. Just this sentence and no further. If I were writing a thesis on DRM, this would be my main point.

Of course, expading the "doesn't make sense" part is important. It's also critical for the surely-to-be analogizers below to realise that this has no usefulr real world (as in, tangible) comparison. If three clicks of the mouse provides you with something far more useful than something you've shelled out your hard-earned cash for, something is wrong. Lax enforcement -- not to mention the difficulty of enforcement -- and fuzzy laws make this so.

It's not as easy as saying, "Stealing a car has more utility than buying one, we should all steal cars!" since enforcement and history are so vastly different. See, the car analogy is wrong! Ha!

This is the future

[tentimestwenty]

As silly as it sounds with Indie Rock, Hip Hop, Jazz and to an extent, Classical, the sales of vinyl are growing at a quick rate and CDs are slowly massively. People value the sound quality and physicality of the vinyl and generally download the tracks from file-sharing to use portably or in the car. While I don't personally care too much for the free downloads, it will save a lot of people a lot of time and it keeps them "in-tow" with the record label's marketing. Everyone wins.

The Fools!

[zmollusc]

Don't they realise that evil hackers will make multiple copies from the vinyl to audio cassettes and listen to it on portable tape players? Home Taping Is Killing music!

Somewhat pointless

[11223]

Given that I can buy totally unmolested WAVs from Beatport, what's the point? I find it hard to believe that there are vinyl purists who want MP3s, or that those who would work with an MP3 wouldn't rather deal with a master-quality WAV which can be manipulated even more.

Lossy compression is just as insidious as DRM when the bandwidth for CD-quality uncompressed audio is available.

And to those who say you can't hear the difference, if you slow the track down by 50%, you can. If you don't know why you would do that, ask a DJ.

Re:Somewhat pointless

[TeknoHog]

Lossy compression is just as insidious as DRM when the bandwidth for CD-quality uncompressed audio is available.

And lossless compression like flac makes even more sense.

someone gets it

[timmarhy]

"Making a legal, paid-for version of the file less useful than a copied or pirated one doesn't make sense."

BINGO, YES why can't the rest of them understand this?

320kbit/s noobness.

[Anonymous Coward]

320kbit/s CBR mp3 encodes are the ultimate "I have no idea what I'm doing" sign in the audio coding world. All the downsides of mp3 (lossy, huge files) with none of the benefits. "I'll just turn all the knobs to 'highest' and hope that's good".

Looks cool, and functional too

[CheeseTroll]

Perfect, now audiophiles can look cool with their 'retro' collections of vinyl (even if they never listen to them), and still get easy access to the far-more-functional digital copy.

NOT better than CDs

[mangu]

I'm not an audio engineer but from a telecom course I took the basic idea is that you sample at twice the highest frequency

You are correct, the Nyquist theorem states that you must record at a sampling rate that's above twice the higher frequency in your recording.

All this debate over vinil is rather tiresome. Anyone who has studied electronics engineering like I did knows that vinil records have a rather low signal-to-noise ratio. I did a course on "Probabilistic Models in Electric Engineering" where we learned how to calculate noise due to the fact that electric charge is quantized. Now, get this vinil fans: ELECTRIC CHARGE IS QUANTIZED. There is no such thing as a charge smaller than an electron, which is 1.6e-19 coulomb.

There are no such thing as analog values in this universe, everything is quantized. You cannot possibly have an electric signal that's totally free of noise, what you get is a number of "clicks", one for each electron that goes by. The same way, you cannot even hear a sound without noise, what you get is a number of "plocs", one for each air molecule that hits your eardrums.

Now, I know people will say, "sure, but these effects are very small". Well, think again. Human hearing evolved to be as sensitive as it physically could be. Inside an anechoic chamber you can hear the blood flowing through your veins. The sensitivity of our ears is just short from hearing individual molecules hitting the eardrum. In any analog pick-up, be it moving coil or moving magnet, human ears are sensitive enough to hear the noise due to the quantization of electric current.

Digital equipment have much better signal-to-noise rations because they have high currents in low-impedance circuits, the effect of charge quantization is diluted by averaging a large number of electrons. In analog vinil pick-ups either the impedance is relatively high for moving magnet models or the voltage is very low for moving coil types.

And all this is considering only the most fundamental effects, not to mention problems as dust on the record. The cleanest cleanroom specified in the ISO-14644 standard has 12 particles per cubic meter. The lowest spec in ISO-14644 allows over 40 million particles per cubic meter. Does the room where you do your listening conform to an ISO "cleanroom" specification?

Digital sound standards were created to be as good as they need to be. CDs have all the bandwidth and dynamic range one needs in the final recording. It's only when you are going to mix and resample the music that you may need better quality to avoid round-off error in the processing. Because of this, professional equipment normally use something like 24 bits @ 192 kbps. The widespread acceptance of MP3s show that the CD standard has actually a better quality than the majority of people need or want.

Re:NOT better than CDs

[Endo13]

No, "better" in this case is not subjective at all. I think you entirely missed his point. His point is that you can create any sound you want with digital. Any sound at all. If you wanted to make a digital version of a track that sounded like it did on vinyl, you could do that and put it on CD. The issue here is that CD audio is a lot closer to the original live audio. Therefore it's a better reproduction. Just as 3.141592653589793238462643383279502884197169399375 10 is a better representation of Pi than 3.14 is. So the question isn't so much "do you like CD or vinyl better". The question is "do you like live music or vinyl better". Because with CD, you've basically got the exact same sound as if you were actually at the concert.

Re:NOT better than CDs

[neomunk]

There are no such thing as analog values in this universe You tell that to my friend pi and his buddies. But be careful, I understand they can be quite irrational.

Re:NOT better than CDs

[colanut]

The question is "do you like live music or vinyl better". Because with CD, you've basically got the exact same sound as if you were actually at the concert.

That is BS. CDs are no where near "live". First tracks (as in individual instruments) are recorded separately and then mixed together, edited in production and then eventually mastered for final encoding. There are many steps between recording and pressing and at each step there is loss/enhancement.

If CDs were so perfect, why was there a need to spec out SACD or DVD audio (other than the obvious audiophile cash grab)? Because CDs are mostly adequate. Also early CD mastering was pretty awful. CDs are convenient for the digital age, but I wouldn't consider them "source" perfect. Also, labels that produce vinyl might be recording and mastering analog so your point would be moot.

I'm not saying that vinyl is the most accurate recording of the source, but your CD worship is pretty baffling and ignorant of the audio recording/distribution process. The real question is: do you like the aesthetics of vinyl or the convenience of CDs? The question that the article is pointing too is that vinyl positive labels are now offering the convenience of digital with their experience. I don't see why people on either side of the "debate" must somehow declare superiority. People like what they like, and people will often set up business plans to make money off of it. This isn't a holy war...

Re:NOT better than CDs

[Cadallin]

Arg. There are Audiophiles and there are Audiophiles. Some of them are idiots with too much money who buy "magic" cables. Some of them are actually intelligent and realize stuff like that is bullshit. They don't buy "magic" $100/ft cable, but they don't by $0.10/ft Ratshack 22guage speaker wire either. Some realize that there is actually a way to calculate what guage of wire you need depending on run length and load impedence. It is actually possible for speaker wire to improve the quality of sound reproduction, you do this by using cable of sufficient size such that the impedence of the cable is negligible compared to the impedence of the speakers. Nothing "special", nothing "magic." Just rational application of electrical engineering.

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

[Opportunist]

Making a legal, paid-for version of the file less useful than a copied or pirated one doesn't make sense.

Someone selling content realizes the "value" of DRM? Excuse me for a moment, I gotta check for flying pigs. And could someone who has his number call the big red guy and ask him if the temperature in his home is still cozy?

The REAL reason behind 44.1 kHz

[darkain]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CD#Audio_format

"The sampling rate of 44.1 kHz is inherited from a method of converting digital audio into an analog video signal for storage on video tape, which was the most affordable way to get the data from the recording studio to the CD manufacturer at the time the CD specification was being developed. A device that turns an analog audio signal into PCM audio, which in turn is changed into an analog video signal is called a PCM adaptor. This technology could store six samples (three samples per each stereo channel) in a single horizontal line. A standard NTSC video signal has 245 usable lines per field, and 59.94 fields/s, which works out at 44,056 samples/s/stereo channel. Similarly, PAL has 294 lines and 50 fields, which gives 44,100 samples/s/stereo channel. This system could either store 14-bit samples with some error correction, or 16-bit samples with almost no error correction."

Wish I could mod that up...

[Valtor]

Making a legal, paid-for version of the file less useful than a copied or pirated one doesn't make sense. It is a pity we can't mod that +5 insightful for the other guys in that industry...

Not a True Hybrid

[PPH]

Its not a true hybrid until they figure out a way to get MP3s to skip and warp if you leave them in a hot car.

They do have MP3 turntables you can use to 'scratch' recordings.

'digital' vinyl

[hack slash]

When I first saw the heading I thought the mp3s were stored on the actual vinyl and wondered how they'd be retreived from them, nothing so fancy but it reminded me of the plastic flexi-disc I have stored away with my miniscule vinyl collection, the flexi-disc in question having a couple of Sinclair ZX81 programs on them whereby you use a turntable instead of a tape recorder to load the programs in.

Hmm...

[Ayanami Rei]

I think it's disingenious to talk about air as a non-linear system. It doesn't start acting non-linear until you're talking about distances (and/or/which imply) amplitudes that would shatter your eardrums or kill you.

I mean, let's talk about the non-linearity of speakers! They're damped oscillators!

And you can prove to an audiophile (hearing is believing) that sound is sufficiently linear to make such arguments irrelevant.

Take two frequencies (say... 14000 and 14300). If you play them, you get a 300Hz beat. Put that on one channel. Now take a 300Hz sine on the other channel, and then adjust the phase slowly. You should "hear" the 300Hz tone moving around the sound stage.

This experiment only works because sound reproduction (and your ears/brain) are a sufficiently linear system that trying to call it anything else when making qualitative arguments is just silly.

What's the point?

[Daishiman]

What's the point of a vinyl of a digital master?

As I've mentioned on a previous thread, I'm a huge fan of classical jazz and I have invested very seriously on a pile of records from the time, and I'm of the opinion that mastering was done more carefully back then and made to sound well with the way vinyl colors the sound.

But sheesh, if you're going to master an album digitally then why add noise of the line by converting it to a physical medium with a low S/N ratio?