We have two camps: all analog tape-based master recordings from roughly 1950-1980, and mostly digital masters from roughly 1980 to present (the "mostly" applies to major labels, as opposed to the labels favored on this forum). Of the ground-breaking rock recordings of the first decade, how many can faithfully be listened to as intended from a analogue-tape-as-remastered-for-digital transcription?
To clarify my position, I'm going to quote myself on this topic from another forum:
I feel I have two preoccupations in audio that need not be diametrically opposed: One, a strange preference for the vintage, warmth, look, and technology of tube gear. Two, expectations of my equipment to extract as much out of the wonderous splendor of human expression that might lie in a groove of vinyl, without unneccesary coloration, distortion, or infidelity.
Of course, things are not so simple. If I were to listen to a Gene Vincent record on state-of-the-art, high-end, solid state gear, I would be listening to it in a completely different form from the men who mastered it to the sounds of tube gear. It is up in the air as to what they would have done differently in mastering had Gene Vincent been displaced fifty years into the future. Moreover, when I listen to a Gene Vincent record on my ST70, it is an experience altogether removed from the simplistic idea of Hi-Fi; it's the notion that something has better "fidelity" within the paradigm of it's own times, rather than achieving the technical ideal of neutrality. Science, by it's nature, evolves and renders antiquated notions obsolete. Perhaps the persuit of audio perfection, in some cases, has forsaken the imperfect nature of it's origins for a rather clinical idealization of it's ultimate destination.

Vinyl is more than a fetishised, dinosaur-like technology. It is a conventional technology built out of ingenuity and a love of music that is not to be underrated nor understimated in it's capacity to please. It only seems sensible to throw a bone to those of us still true to the spirit who might still have a use for an iPod, assuming we ever buy one.

Brinkman wrote:Right. The Honor System. I had a car with a cassette deck and had no problem listening to mix-tapes friends made me, as well as dubs of CDs I no longer owned. While I think you may be ethically correct, if I were to agree with you, I'd be a hypocrite.

I reckon mixtapes are cool - samplers. I've no idea what a 'dub' is.

I'm honestly too lazy to explain "dub" in it's most popular form, but I can link you here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dub_music for an article explaining it better than I can. The idea is that you make a copy of a sound recording for later use, whether for listening or manipulation.
I have no sense of the term "dub" outside of what I've explained; in other words, I have used it colloquially without confusion.