Learned something about vinyl vs. digital recently


I have been running some different speakers for a change recently - something that's actually conventional, which for me is unusual. They are are the AZ Adagios and they are a pretty impressive speaker.

Here is what I learned: while I still prefer vinyl, digital sounds better on these speakers than on my hi-eff, single-driver speakers. Why? I suspect it is because of the rising response that is an almost guaranteed side-effect of the wideband driver. This results, to some degree, in a slightly thinner sound.

Vinyl, of course, has more body and density (some say this is simply a matter of vinyl's inherent higher harmonic distortion but I don't know about that). This makes it sound *much* better, IME, on thinner-sounding speakers, than digital.

Anyway, whilst I find digital more tolerable generally thru these flat speakers, vinyl's still even better.

Cheers.
paulfolbrecht
Sounds like you need a different CD player! There are a number of options with lots of body and density.

Arthur
Everybody needs more records.

Digital can sound nice enough but no recording seems to have the same body quality. And many of them seem to have problems with tonalities. I notice this with horns mostly. Bass instruments sound great on my best digital recordings, as can strings and vocals. For some reason it is the horns, saxes and trumpets, that are the most difficult to get right.

For people who doubt there are serious problems with either the medium or the mastering I usually play St. James Infirmary on 45 RPM vinyl and then digital. The latter is a complete joke after the former, no matter what you play it on.