How can you tell if a vinyl record was pressed using the original studio recording?

Answer 1

Unfortunately you will probably never know :-( Let's start with the current state of affairs. Mastering facilities used to create the lacquer master that were used to create vinyl records. It was a somewhat complex, expensive, and very time sensitive process. With the rise of CD's and diminishing vinyl sales of the late 20th and early 21st century, many mastering houses stopped cutting lacquers. Today most mixes are sent to mastering facilities (or Landr, etc.) that perform audio enhancement, and file conversion/creation. Digital files are then sent to pressing plants where the files are used. Additional mastering functions such as Low Frequency Elliptical Filtering, Compression/Limiting, High Frequency Limiting, Groove Optimization, that are needed to create an LP are applied. These processes can greatly affect the sonics of the vinyl pressing! A few pressing plants will master your mixes to a master lacquer and some mastering houses will cut a lacquer, but they are rare.

In the days of all analog recording (and early digital era) a tape copy of the mastered album was often used when additional pressings where needed, rather than cut another master lacquer. Sometimes the tape copy was not in the original format as the master tape. for instance a 1/2" master copied to 1/4", a 30ips master copied to 15ips, or the use of noise reduction.

Feel free to contact me if you have any more questions!

Answer 2

The closest thing to what you are looking for here are "direct to disc" recordings. In this case the vinyl master is the original recording: there is no tape or post-production stage between the microphones used to capture the recording and the cutting lathe creating the disc master. This technique can produce amazing audiophile sounding recordings but tends not to produce the most enjoyable discs, for the obvious reasons -- only a single take is possible (for the entire album side), any flaws in the mix are permanent, and the playing tends to be uninspired as the whole thing becomes about the process rather than the music. These recordings are easily identified as the direct-to-disc nature is their prime selling point and so they are always titled and labeled as such.