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No, your first instincts were correct: the first version will sound way better. All that compression and brightening will sound like extra shit on vinyl.The cutting engineer will likely need to do things like roll off a smidge of low end or sum the low freqs to mono but let them worry about that. Ambient music should be pretty forgiving as far as side lengths and sequencing go.

Okay so I dug around to see if I was creating a redundant thread and didn't really come across anything. I make ambient music and I'm currently in the lead up to pressing my first record. It's a reissue of an album from a few years ago, which was remastered in 2016 by another ambient producer. I think it's a really nice remaster, he didn't brickwall the shit out of it but everything is very audible with a nice dynamic range. It's sounded good in every format in which I've released it. So anyway, I'm planning out this record release and someone suggests "hey, you should probably get this remastered for vinyl." I send it off to a friend who's been making a modest name for himself recording and mastering some very good sounding, successful records for a good 10 or 15 years. He turned it around pretty fast, and at first brush it's kind of...very bright veering on harsh and very noticeably compressed. My instinct is the other one sounds better, but I don't know anything about mastering to vinyl, so maybe bright sounds are going to work better, especially since, at 22.5 and 23 minutes a side, it's kind of pushing the limits of how much you want to put on one side of a record.I guess my question is are there any particular attributes I should be looking for in a vinyl master as opposed to mastering for other formats? Should one prioritize volume or dynamic range or is it just a matter of taste? I know I'm trying to boil down an entire profession into one question so apologies for that. Obviously I can send anyone samples if they're interested in helping me out/taking a quick pepsi challenge, but also don't want to be fishing for free skilled labor, so y'know. Thanks!

he didn't brickwall the shit out of it but everything is very audible with a nice dynamic range. It's sounded good in every format in which I've released it.If your regular master sounds good, it'll sound good on vinyl with a decent engineer cutting it.Should one prioritize volume or dynamic range or is it just a matter of taste?It's more like volume vs frequency content, I think.At 22-23min/side, if you have a lot of low end, you might have to pick a bit between the heft of the low end and the overall level. Perhaps. Particularly stereo low end--you might have to bring some of the lows in to mono, like 154 said. Also as 154 suggested, xtra treble and compression aren't friendly to vinyl cutting. Excess treble will just have to be rolled off lest you get sibilance.Compression jacks up the average level and results in a quieter-sounding cut. If you leave the dynamic content intact, the quiet parts take up less groove space, meaning the loud parts can be cut louder, resulting in a louder-seeming cut.So if the compression isn't artistic...I would not use anything extra.