CD Got Absolutely Crushed By Vinyl


No comparison, CD always sounds so cold and gritty. Vinyl is so much warmer, smoother and has better imaging and much greater depth of sound. It’s like watching the world go by through a dirty window pane when listening to a CD. Put the same LP on the turntable and Voila! Everything takes on more vibrancy, fullness and texture. 
128x128sleepwalker65

Showing 2 responses by mikelavigne

not all CD playback is created equal, and not all vinyl is created equal.

use of words like 'always' and inferring universal domination by vinyl is not helpful. but I agree with some of the spirit of what you are saying.

at the top of the food chain for both formats vinyl is better, but CD (or 16/44 files) can sound awesome.....even compared to great vinyl. and surpassing the very best digital will cost you dearly in dollars.

OTOH maybe you need to find yourself better digital playback if you are open minded enough to consider it?

@mikelavigne OTOH maybe you need to find yourself better digital playback if you are open minded enough to consider it?


You raise a good point, but digital has a long way to go before it can fully integrate into traditional systems with both a recording (archiving) and playback (streaming) function in one product that can stand alone or optionally interface to a PC. The variants of DSD have the performance potential, but have not reached a level of consumer-friendliness to go mainstream. That’s not to say that the mainstream even cares, but the products need to be more operator-friendly from an interface and functionality perspective.

@sleepwalker65, if you check out my system page....

http://systems.audiogon.com/systems/615

......you can see that i have been open minded and have found myself ’better digital playback’, which I’ve compared with my vinyl and RTR tape and found it comes quite close and is not humbled by the analog.

of course, we all have our own viewpoints on what ’better digital playback’ might be and my view is just my own. maybe you have investigated what ’better digital playback’ which can come close to vinyl and could share that information with us?

my only point was to say that digital playback certainly exists that approaches the musical performance satisfaction of vinyl, but depending on the vinyl it might cost a pretty penny to acquire.

and I do have 7+ terabytes of dsd files, 1xdsd, 2xdsd, and 4xdsd, and assure you it’s very mainstream these days with most dacs. I listen to it often.

have a great day and we likely agree more than we disagree.