I've seen this trotted around and I think its absolute bullshit. I've asked multiple people in the music business, and they've all told me they use the same masters for CDs and Vinyl.
There is an issue with vinyl brokers and certain unnamed plants that advertise "mastering" that consists of running any delivered audio through proprietary software that "fixes" all physically problematic issues that could affect cutting or playback (excessive sibilance, excessive negative stereo correlation etc.). There is minimal listening involved and they can cut almost any audio. All optimised for maximising the factory throughput, not sound quality.
Personally I have a hope that this will become less of an issue in future as vinyl is getting more popular and people little bit more educated.
A small portion of the market but the portion most willing to spend large amounts of money on music and music related products.
> it seems much more "present"
That could be due to some low frequencies that vinyl can't reproduce and are reduced to avoid distortion. Also vinyl's poor crosstalk figures could play a role here.
Not unlikely, as the signal did get converted back to analog, and the physical media's characteristics influence the mastering even when it's being done digitally.
"Presence" is usually associated with high frequency content. Turn up the high frequencies and the music seems more present. Therefore, differences in media/amplifier/speaker high frequency response will make the music seem more or less "present".
And it's a crying shame because in terms of raw songwriting it could have been the best thing they've put out since the Black Album. What a waste of some good riffs.
https://popdose.com/popdose-qa-david-bottrill-on-rushs-vapor...