Early digital recordings on vinyl vs. CD?

I have many and probably most of the early Telarc vinyl releases, and indeed many of them are outstanding.

Much of the credit for their sonic quality can be attributed to the "purist" microphone techniques they used. Rather than placing a forest of microphones in close proximity to the performers, as many of the major labels did, they used just two or three or so high quality omni mics placed at significantly greater distances. In addition to the inherent sonic advantage that approach can provide regardless of the recording technology that is used, it reduced the amount of high frequency energy being picked up that might otherwise have brought out to a greater degree some of the shortcomings of digital recording technology, especially in its early implementations, such as the effects of sharp-rolloff anti-aliasing filters.

I should add, though, that in a few of their releases that relatively distant mic placement resulted in what I found to be disappointingly "swimmy" acoustics.

A few other classical labels that come to mind as having in those days put out some very good digitally recorded classical releases on vinyl, if memory serves, were Hyperion, Chandos, Nimbus, and Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.

Oh, and if your system can't handle brief dynamic peaks that may reach 100 db or more at the listening position, without amplifier clipping or other issues, beware of that Telarc bass drum!

Regards,
-- Al

05-22-12: Johnnyb53
The early digital classical LPs have the advantage that they were probably mastered from the native mode of the digital recording, and definitely done through a pro-quality DAC. With CDs, regardless of the original sampling rate and word length, the mastering is downconverted to 16/44.1 and most of the market plays it back through an inexpensive DAC or built-in chipset. With LPs you're usually playing back a high quality analog made from a full-res master.

Johnny makes a good point. The Soundstream digital recorder which Telarc used in those days was 50 kHz/16 bits, as Phasecorrect mentioned earlier, but the difference between 50 kHz and 44.1 kHz sampling is more significant than it may seem from a numerical standpoint (even putting aside differences in implementation quality).

44.1 kHz sampling means that the anti-aliasing filter that precedes A/D conversion has to cut off all frequencies above 22.05 kHz, which only allows about a 10% margin relative to the highest frequency (20 kHz) that is intended to be captured accurately. 50 kHz sampling, on the other hand, allows an anti-aliasing cutoff frequency of 25 kHz, which increases that 10% figure to 25%. That represents a considerable relaxation of the sharpness of the filter rolloff that is necessary, which (everything else being equal) can be expected to significantly reduce the side-effects the filter may have at audible frequencies.

Also, I should add to the comments in my earlier post that (as Mapman alluded to) another major reason for the sonic quality of the early Telarc's was the fact that they applied far less dynamic range compression to their recordings than was typical of releases from the major labels, if indeed they applied any at all. Which means that you'll play them with the volume control set to a higher position than it would be set to for most other recordings. Which will make that bass drum even louder :-)

Regards,
-- Al