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New take on CD vs Vinyl vs CD

What if I digitize a vinyl record, and compare that CD to both it’s rebook CD, and the actual record?

1. Clean record (using a VPI HW-17)
2. Put vinyl on turntable (Ortofon Blue cart)
3. De-magnetize vinyl using a Furutech Destat III
4. Record vinyl using a Harmon Kardon CDR 20

My Parasound Halo integrated allows nice A/B/C comparison.

I used 2 CD players: Sony CDPXA7 ES, and XA 20 ES

I put the song on (‘We got the beat’ Go-Go’s) all 3 sources at the same moment (using all 3 of my hands)

Though the turntable and it’s mediocre cart is the weakest link, it sounded pretty nice. I then switched back and forth and forth a few times till I had a winner.

By far the digitized copy of the vinyl sounded best. Not the outcome I expected.

I then A/B’d both CD players, with the result remaining the same.

Can anyone explain this, besides my psychologist?

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jasonbourne52's avatar
jasonbourne52
2,863 posts
 

The surface noise from the LP transfer should be apparent! 

curiousjim's avatar
curiousjim
4,131 posts
 

I while ago I tried to digitize a few new albums and no matter what I did, I still had some background noise and a click or two. So I gave up.

thespeakerdude
483 posts
 

The record and the recording of the record can't be compared to a CD to do anything but compare how different engineers interpreted what should be on each format and perhaps what they had for breakfast that morning or if they fought with their spouse. That and how your turntable is setup. You are comparing Macintosh and Granny Smith applies. Some like one, some like the other, some like both and different ones on different days.

That you liked the CDR20, a pretty ancient beast now, says the CD format is pretty robust. I doubt the CDR20 gets the most possible out of it.

dinov's avatar
dinov
789 posts
 

Interesting. I don’t know about digitizing vinyl. I seem to have a problem with getting on board with that. I’m really impressed with how digital has come along me right now I’m focusing on that with my system. With the right equipment red book cd is amazing along with hi rez music files like dsd. I’ve been an advocate of the bluesound node in the past and all the tweaking that you can do with it,  but after upgrading to an Esoteric Network player, wow. I haven’t played vinyl in a while. The future is truly digital, and after looking at my huge vinyl and cd collection, I’m afraid it’s probably streaming. 

mikekollar's avatar
mikekollar
42 posts
 

And another problem with your A/B comparison...... The Go go's "We got the beat", are you kidding me, that was your test song. Not exactly the high quality recording one might use for this kind of experimentation. The song has too much going on in it and I would think impossible to catch all of the nuances of a great recording. My opinion has nothing to do with the performance, just the recording. If I were running this test, I might grab a vinyle that truly has a great recording quality..... Anything from say Steely Dan for instance. That would be a better baseline to start with. You may as well have done this with Led Zeppelin..... Love the band, hate the recordings.

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