When the pressing is right

I spent an entire film on non-fill, stamper damage and inclusions in brand new records. Then I ended it exactly where I started. When the pressing is right, the sound is something streaming cannot touch.

That is not a contradiction. Digital is more accurate to the master, and I have never argued otherwise. But accuracy is one question and realism is another, and for me the answer lies in the difference between technical accuracy and perceptual realism.

Think about what a record player actually does. A stylus with mass in a groove, coils moving through a magnetic field, tiny random variations from friction, resonances through the tonearm and the cartridge body. Live sound in a real space carries the same kind of complex random micro variations, and our brains evolved to hear physical objects in motion.

So those imperfections may be exactly the cues that tell the brain something real is making the sound. The second and third order distortions vinyl adds sit close to what acoustic instruments produce on their own. And many mastering engineers and musicians with access to the best of both formats still choose vinyl for certain music, which suggests something beyond mere nostalgia.

Digital wins the measurement. A right pressing wins the room, and the factories keep making it harder to find.