Vinyl vs Streaming

Hello fellow Audiophiles,

Here is my vinyl rig and my digital rig.

Vinyl: Triangle Art signature(older much more massive) turntable, Tri-Planar 12" tonearm, Dynavector XV-1t cartridge, silver stepup transformers, Modwright phono pre with silver output transformers.

Digital: Taiko Extreme server, Audio Mirror WAVE DAC.

I find digital to be much more revealing, detailed, better dynamics and soundstage, refined, tonally balanced and  makes you sucked in to the music.

I pay $16-18 for Qobuz. I have access to tens of thousands albums, some of which has never been released in vinyl format.

Also someone said in this forum "pay once and listen many times". While is thrue,

You never know how vinyl you buy will sound until you buy and put it on your turntable. I have been disappointed many time by the sound quality of the vinyl album, not to mention that many of the albums claiming are made "direct from analog master" are actually made from a digital master, not analog. Example - MoFi. On top of that my yearly subscription to Qobuz is sometimes less that the price of high quality vinyl record.

@fire_water ECM puts every release out on vinyl. Their record quality is renowned and quite reliable. I just ordered Jarrett - Deer Head box set 4LPs this morning on sale at Music Direct. While I also stream many ECM titles and they do sound great, some of their LPs are truly gobsmackingly amazing. Cheers,

Spencer

@sbank interesting because I can't find the ones I absolutely love on vinyl. For example Bobo Stenson Cantando. I don't know enough about vinyl and need to educate myself

I think when Michael Fraemer said that dCS's $250,000 streaming setup was almost as good as vinyl, that pretty much reinforced my feelings. I never question whether streaming will sound as good as vinyl, at least in my lifetime. Most of us spend maybe as much as $10,000 on a good streamer. Some might be able to afford dCS Bartok Apex at around $30,000 +. If the dCS assemblage costing $250,000 was "almost" as good as vinyl, the $30K dCS will clearly be inferior to vinyl. 

When I put on a good record, it almost gives me shivers it sounds so present. Streaming simply cannot capture the decay of cymbals or the tight bass without overhang that a good analogue setup can. And streaming simply does not have the air that surrounds the music the way that analogue does. Good streamers I've heard can capture each instrument quite well, but compared to vinyl, streaming doesn't sound like a group of musicians playing together in the same space. This is most easily  heard on well recorded, intimate jazz albums. Good streaming sounds like each instrument is well reproduced, perhaps even cleaner than vinyl, but it sounds like the instruments were cut out and pasted into one space as if  they're playing together. In analogue they are playing together, in the same place and sharing the same air. I think that's what streaming loses the most, air. 

To qualify this, my analogue rig is a VPI Prime Signature 21 with a VPI Shyla cartridge. Phono preamp Pass Labs XP-25. Preamp Pass Labs XP-30. Amp Hovland Radia. Speakers Sonus Faber Olympica Nova V. So, I have a very revealing system and pretty decent analogue rig. So, that's going to make a difference.

I purchased a Moon 280D streamer, which is decent, but kind of at the bottom of the high end. My CD player is a McCormack UDP-1, quite good 25 years ago. Yet I have heard better streamers at my dealer. The new Linn Organik which sounded very good. But was still lacking the air of my analogue rig, and apparently many other people who prefer analogue mention the same thing about capturing the air. 

@billpete 

Yes, it’s sad HDCD has gone. I bought one recently, Pieces by Manassas. It more than holds it own against all the high res stuff that’s around.

I do appreciate the world moves on and a lot of new technology is positive. But at times, I have found it frustrating that new formats have effectively been forced on me, when I am perfectly happy with the old ones.

Very little of the change in formats over the decades has been about improving sound quality. It’s telling that vinyl and CD can still sound at least as good as streaming.