I have cds and vinyl , good and bad in both formats but I would love to see a blind test wherein audiophiles were tested on their ability to differentiate between the two .

Jay: So Mike, what do you think of "Does vinyl sound the same as CD?" Mike: It reminds me a lot of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Imagine caring this much about vibrations in the air.. i love it!

I say, it's genuinely heartwarming to see a such a fine old chap in a freshly laundered shirt!

I have a decent stereo and listen to music in both formats, CD and Vinyl. I can tell you that if you stacked up (a) a CD transport plus DAC combo against (b) a turntable plus cartridge plus phono preamp, with the same preamp/amp/speaker chain, you’d have to spend quite a bit more on the vinyl setup to match the sound on CD. My vinyl combo costs about twice as much as the digital front end, and it is noticeably better in terms of transparency and how pleasing it sounds across various genres of music. It also depends on the quality of the recording. CDs and records can both sound amazing or flat-out horrible. I mostly use the TT for classical/jazz and the CD player for rock/pop. Keep in mind that your mileage may vary. Cheers, and happy listening. 👍🏼

i would say that OVERALL (at least for me) the difference between individual pressings is greater than the difference between formats - all things considered.

Excellent explanation. If I compare a recording of pop or rock, for example Frank Zappa's "Grand Wazoo", between the vinyl and CD versions, they sound remarkably close to each other. In this case the dynamic range of the original recording is not very wide to begin with. The differences show up with good recordings of symphonic music: Here the CD shows off its greater dynamic range inherent in this type of music. Dynamic range compression is more evident in the vinyl version and surface imperfections are more apparent during low level passages. Also pitch fluctuations occur with an eccentrically pressed LP which is especially noticeable in music having prolonged sustained passages. This defect was fairly common with LPs due to an incorrect stamper setup. The clocked accuracy of the CD is especially rewarding in this instance. I remember returning eccentric vinyl pressings that showed up about once in every five purchases, hoping the replacement would be from a different stamper setup. Then there was the problem of pre and post echo that occurred fairly frequently with vinyl recordings. This was due to a loudly cut groove being adjacent to a quiet groove. This was also a problem with analog magnetic tape masters that had been stored for an extended period with pre and post echoes having been transferred from adjacent tape layers.

I grew up with vinyl records and once I got my first CD 💿 player I never looked back. The hiss, pops, off speed, and cleaning/caring of records you can have it. Vinyl does have a certain warmth to it but I think way over hyped and not the supreme media.

FIRMLY agree, Paul... the differences are night and day in my experience.

i have a relatively cheap set up, a Technics receiver from the 70's, balnced on that good Kenwood speakers from the same era and a Technics sl1200 turntable, and i can tell you i hear difference in quality between digital music and vinyl. with "a good" vinylrecord the basses are more deeper but also warmer and the high pitches very sharper. i also can hear some details on the background i dont have digital, unless its a masterrecording in FLAC or such. yeah the ticks and pops sometimes on vinyl are there also but thats the charme of the mdium, you love it or hate it. next to the fact of the music on it itself, i find a record way much pleasable because its a concept, you must take it out, put it on the player, its more like a ritual u know.

Good explanation without soap boxing.

I am glad you mentioned the Elac Sprout system, I have been watching you for a while now and learning a lot and have never had the chance to really get into the high end audio with other priorities always it seems and tight budget but this looks like the system that could get me started and I love music since I am also a guitarist, so I am going to see if I can get a start here and dabble with high end, ha, over the standard off the shelf audio systems I have had all my life. I feel it is about time.. Thanks for all the great info, I have learned to really trust you after all I have heard through your great videos here! I maybe be ordering soon hopefully....Larry

I really wish I could afford some ps audio gear . They seem like a awesome company to support !

Just got into vinyl. Im 33, play in a band and run a studio for the band. I am so glad I did, the difference is astonishing. I absolutely love vinyl.

The dynamic range aspect can easily be demonstrated, vinyl-to-vinyl even, with Mark Knopfler's Shang Ri La album. This is a two record single album where they put half the songs on each side, allowing more needle travel and increased dynamics. It sounds vastly different than your normal vinyl recording, more CDish IMO. Don't know if there are others made like this, it's my only one.

One of the features of CD that was toured back in the day was that the staging of lower frequencies was more versatile, as they were centred on vinyl to prevent skipping. I don’t know how that actually translates to the listener, given how humans find it difficult to isolate the location of low frequencies.

One of the main challenges to determining a difference btw vinyl and CD of the same music is the fact that, first of all, the mastering of an original mix of a recording must be equalized (all music is mastered before being published, and mastering involved EQ and compression, among other things) and this equalization and compression must be done separately for the vinyl vs the CD. So the two formats may sound different because each was mastered independently of one another. Another major difference has to do with old equipment being used to master an old LP recording, and when the mastering was done for the CD from the original material (either remixed, or remastered from the original mix) many decades later, it was done with much cleaner equipment. This was the whole point of buying a CD version of an old LP. So while some CD's might sound close to the LP in tonal balance, others will vary widely. In fact, some CD's of LP recordings I have purchased in the past decade were so terrible in their EQ balance (poor, sloppy job of mastering, I had to take the wave files into a recording program and re EQ them to get them to sound good. Having said all that, of course if the mastering was done for the CD to very closely match the LP (a rare thing) then you can experience differences, both good and bad. The CD eliminates all disc noise, wow and flutter associated with LP's. But the LP retains a warmth and musicality that many CD's lack. But then, the differences re warmth, etc, depend a great deal on the quality of the CD player vs the quality of the phono cartridge. So the whole matter is much more complicated than it may seem.

I own both records and cds. I love them both. CDs sound cleaner, but I feel more of a relationship with my music when I play records. That being said I recently got into CDs again. They're so great. Simplistic and most importantly cheap as hell. Records are great but most labels overcharge for them. Basically I buy more CDs than vinyl records these days.

The sound of Vinyl is dynamic, dramatic, vivid, even emotional. It is hard to describe the difference between CD and LP without getting technical, without quoting some data that was measured by a machine. The question is, does the music move you? Does it make you feel something? Vinyl is the format that does that for me.

I have a good CD recorder and I have noticed that many if not most of the new recordings on CD are so compressed that the VU meter is maxed out at 0 db over the length of the recording. This over compression cause's listener fatigue because of the dynamic range of the CD. Some people are more sensitive to this than others and that is why they prefer vinyl, it is much smoother and less compressed than a poorly recorded CD and easier on the ears.

I agree there is difference for sure, I prefer listening to CDs, but I buy vinyl too, i love big cover pictures :D

I auditioned dozens of CD players a few years ago, settled on an Audiolab 8200 as it was easily superior to the competition, even a few costing twice as much. I got it home and it got flattened by my old Transcriptors / SME / Ortofon combo never mind the Alphason or the Roksan decks. CD was a huge step forward in terms of convenience but a massive leap back in terms of musical satisfaction.

Tbh on cheap setups, it is very easy to hear the difference, because the two media's have different "noice" characteristics. However the two media's do "sort of" converge towards similar sound as the quality of the equipment goes up.

Great video Paul. What I find most fascinating many folks have opinions and yet many have not actually auditioned both formats. I used to think all turntables and CD players sounded pretty much the same. (I fully admit I was 100% wrong) IMHO, if you're really interested and curious, if possible, go find an audio dealer and go have a listen to both formats.

I recently got a Rega P10, and besides the very minimal crackles, my vinyl sounds better than my CD version in 9/10 cases. With my old Planar 3, it wasn't even close though. Digital is significantly better than a "cheap" setup.

Vinyl,the care that we take.The experience when we listen to vinyl is much greater than listeing to cd.

Thanks Paul for your clear presentations. I remember hearing about an amplifier that restarted the dynamic range of vinilo applying selectively gain to different frequencies. Is it on par with digital players?😎

I accept all that is said here except the experience. As a general rule( of course there are exceptions) I find a record grabs my attention when a CD won't. It could well be my system, it could be my old CDs, however I think there is another factor. Our perceptual system works by attending to change. Think about how a bad smell disappears from our perception, if an image is retinal stabilized it also disappears. I suspect the "perfection" of CDs may be working against our perception of the music. A record with the odd dust tick and other faults may be producing a sound that( with respect to our perceptual system) is unexpected and grabs our attention more. To sum up: it may be the case that with CDs we get to hear a better sound, yet with a record we perceive better music.

I'm still in college and don't have a fantastic set up for playing records, but even still I can tell the difference between CD and vinyl. Just last year, I had my friend over who listened exclusively to Spotify and had no interest in purchasing physical media, and he started collecting vinyl after listening to just one record!

You guys should be as meticulous with your network cable management as you do when designing PS Audio products!

Most people misunderstands the effects of compression and may actually mistakenly prefers the less dynamically jarring quality. Such as, easier on the ear or the system hence less harshness and distortions. Thanks for the video!

Got to say - your facts and figures are all spot on as usual, but vinyl seems to just have that analogue character which is very engaging. If you like the sound then you know it's good enough for you. Flooding the mind with facts kind of takes the joy out of enjoying music somehow. Always clambering for perfection brings mental exhaustion! I'm a bit old school and surely my hearing has diminished a little, but I still love a good cassette deck with a well recorded tape. Like your videos! Most entertaining

Great unravelling and explanation of a long standing mystery, looking forward to seeing your home movie setup :-)

One little story I'd like to share. Back in the 90's, I lived in LA and had the pleasure of attending several of the hifi shows (before they moved everything to Las Vegas). I brought several of my own cds to listen to (since most booths only had acoustic, jazz or other styles I don't listen to). One of the cds I brought was "The Music Man" recorded in 1962. I had some not well know brand of stereo system play the cd (the spoken and singing parts). The sound stage was shocking. You could "see" where each performer was standing. The clarity and fidelity were amazing. The host enjoyed having something out of the norm to listen to as well. The company that made all the equipment was in California, but I cannot remember their name. Not sure if they're still in business.

I am a recording, mixing and mastering engineer and I love TIDAL’s premium service. I gave away all of my vinyls and CDs to a producer friend and he is having a lot of fun with them!! So, what ever makes YOU HAPPY, that is what is important!!

Good points. The most noticeable difference is the truncated dynamic range. I have a CD that sounds very much like vinyl, but for a reason. The record was one of the "direct to disc" jazz recordings of the late 1970s. Wonderful, compared to most tape-master vinyl recordings. However, they later made a CD from that. You definitely notice the truncated dynamic range, which cannot be fixed after the original cut. Also, the high frequencies are shy from the tracks near the center of the vinyl because of the slower stylus speed in the groove.

VYNYL vs. CD ? First question I would ask , ---- What turntable do you have ?

Okay, I'm a subscriber and I've listened to most of your explanations, this has to be the best. I've always been blessed with the finest stereo equipment and having a cd player after lp' s was just to eliminate the worn vinyl noise. It took some time for cd to accomplish its place, but it can be good. I used my pioneer laserdisc player on my cd s and it's most certainly a huge improvement over typical cd players. You nailed it by telling people that it's necessary to have a good turntable system. A very good T.T. in the past was more affordable in the 70' s than it is now, but it's essential to hear the results of a finely produced, scratch free vinyl record. Thank you, keep up the good work.

I guess everything is a bit of a compromise really, but for me the biggest noticeable sound issue in any format ..is the general lack of good quality recording and mixing these days ...rendering a lot of really interesting and creative music into the so so (Iwishit could have been done better) bin.

I used to blame the physical medium, but with KZfaq resources such as this video I have found that it all comes down to the recording and how it is mastered for a given media or format. I have had some terrible CDs that sound lo-fi and dark and new digital re-masterings that explode beyond the original vinyl or cassette's dynamic presentation.

Given the way vinyl works, you'd think there will be differences due to losses from scraping a groove, moving magnets/coils, equalisation in the phono preamp etc.

The answer is Yes, there is a huge difference. Even if the vinyl album is sourced from digital, it is a completely different medium requiring different amplification parameters. The needle's reproduction of the sound is truly analog. Not only that, almost always the digital sources for modern LP's are much higher fidelity than CD quality, except of course for bootleg LP's which are often sourced from inferior CDs or worse.

What is purpose of that Dell PowerEdge server inside rack? I have few Dell PowerEdge servers on my workplace.

I like the sound of cd's over the sound of vinyl. I do not have a resolving sound-system. But I do hear the difference between vinyl and cd's. Vinyl does not sound bad, but when the music is very quiet, cd's sound way better.

I owned one of your 400watt stereo amp, I forgot the model. I was sorry I sold it. I was using it for Bi Amping for the bass and a Counterpoint for the rest. My Counterpoint blew some Pwr Trans when I accidently shorted the left channel output and nobody had the replacement. So I decided to replace everything with your class D 400 watt amp. I used it for 12 years.

People do this with everything. They find a small truth which points to why its better and then exaggerate about it being better than everything else.

I like fiddling with the set up and exploring the way each cartridge sounds on a record player. CD's can't satisfy these proclivities. I do believe a well mastered CD sounds more true. In other words, no matter what I've tried, I can detect the source is from a phonographic recording.

Absolutely not. I have the same CD and vinyl for a couple of albums and have A/B ed them. The CD is much more brassy and harsh, whereas the vinyl is more musical and sounds more authentic. The vinyl also sounded as though I was sitting in the middle of a concert hall listening to the actual performance.

All that dynamic range don’t mean squat when a lot of music is brick walled . So in a sense I get where the guy was talking about how the mastering is more important .a lot of people feel vinyl sounds better , not becauSe the format is better , but because of the limitations of the format , which is dynamic range . The mastering has to be done different for vinyl hence less brick walled vs a lot of cd’s . Now if cd mastering wasn’t brickwalled , then there would be no contest , because the cd format is superior spec wise .

Some of the new CD's are heavily compressed because volume sells. The quality is bad and that did not happen in the LP days. So sometimes the LP sounds better sometimes the CD but a well master CD will always sound better than a well mastered LP, however LP's can sound quite good overall.

i personally think lp's sound better then cds , that being said i think its harder to get good sound from lp over cd once done right the lp wins

If i come to colorado, this will be my first stop. Gotta see the IRS in person!

With older LP’s, I could close my eyes and point out where every instrument was. I miss that. And newer LP’s are just CD’s on vinyl, why bother.

Try this. I get a new record and record it on my PC at 48000 sample rate at 24bits and it captures the entire frequency range and to my hears I hear NO difference between my copy and the record. I then mix it down to 44100 16bit and put in on a CD and guess what, it sounds exactly the same. Sure you can say that some CDs sound different due to the mastering process but that has nothing to do with the CD technology and sound reproduction. I like to collect different forms or media for listening to music but Vinyl is not a superior format for sound reproduction.

Vinyl is many things, but "perfect" certainly isn't one of them.

I just tried listening on my dads system. It seems like vinyl just has next to no background noise. Can anybody confirm? Is that a common thing? Or just a matter of my comparisson tracks?

Theres IP's and Mac addresesses and login/password stickers stuck to the servers. Not secure to film.

At last a sensible answer to this old school question.

What about the recording / mixing process.. maybe vinyl is less compressed recorded (lower dynamic but more loudness), so vinyl sounds different. Not because of vinyl, but because of less compression and digital mixing crazyness in cd / radio production..

A Crosley vs a cheap CD player, the CD wins

This argument has been going on for years. Both have it's own pro's and cons. Most people couldn't tell a difference anyways unless they are intently listening to the media. The newest cd's made in probably the last 10 years works perfect for newer music since they really relaxed on the compression used. A cd will never compare to an original press from the 70's or 80's given the same type system/speakers.. There is a lot more involved however to people than just the overall music quality..

For most of us i think it's because we have collections of LP's Tapes and other kinds of Music we have spent are Hard cold cash on that keeps these formats alive . But come on the LP art works are still the best lol. I like my last format i bought that i thought would catch on was the sony mini disc player sounds great and i have bought a lot of music for it . So to me its a keeper

There are complaints that there is basically no dynamics on new CDs because the large companies use digital dynamics compression. everything should sound as loud as possible

I would love to take that tour! “...use their heads more than their ears”! Brilliant!

My struggles with LP's 1. Decentering Wow I can't understand why no one talks about this. Turntable manufacturers go to great lengths to reduce wow and flutter, but then it all goes out the window if the center guide hole isn't perfectly centered! This is an area where record manufacturers fall flat on their faces, in my experience. If the goal is to have wow under 0.1% rms, and maintain that for the inner tracks where the radius may be only 2.5" on a 12" LP, the maximum permissible centering error is only 0.09mm. One of the worst offenders that I own, is a direct-to-disc recording which was intended to be one of the highest-quality LP's available since its production skipped the tape mastering stage. I had to take a file to the center hole and offset it more than a full mm, in order to get the wow down - and it's not easy to find the correct position to eliminate the wow. In fact, trying to set this up can be a real short cut to insanity. 2. Tracking distortion Distortion caused by the cartridge failing to precisely follow a groove at high lateral velocities is annoyingly audible - and very difficult to prevent. I'm convinced that there are LP's which no cartridge can faithfully play without this type of distortion occurring. 3. Clicks and Pops Take a microscope to the surface of your LP's and you may find little surprises: Gifts from the manufacturer in the form of tiny foreign objects or near-microscopic droplets stuck to your grooves. I've actually been able to find and remove a few of these, but it isn't easy to do a clean job of it. 4. Surface Noise We all know how important it is to keep LP's clean, but even if that can be done perfectly, there is the issue of material quality since most LP's made from the '70s and on were recycled material that can't produce the same surface smoothness as virgin vinyl. Additional surface noise can also result if the manufacturer pushes their mother or stamper discs too far. 5. Wear The albums we love the most, are the first to go noisy and distorted from wear. When I was young, I tried to get around this by copying them to high-quality analog tape when still new, but then of course that introduces other issues.

This needs more views!

The challenge which so few have taken up is to take the SAME EXACT MASTER of a song or album, and transfer it both to CD and LP('vinyl'). One significant step that applies to the vinyl transfer is the RIAA curve and complementary reverse curve. This should not be audibly significant though.

I prefer digital formats. But love to play a vinyl record at some moments. The charm of see the vinyl spinning, bringing back the good old memories exploring music in the past.

Thanks Paul. That answered the question...

Thank you Paul, finally someone with some common sense.

I agree. Anyone saying this does not have a transparent system. I just recently added an hdcd player and an sacd player to my system. Playing music on those, in comparison to my vinyl, was shocking. This from a huge fan of vinyl.

One of the best and most honest assessments yet, Paul. I love my high end vinyl setup in my analogue listening room, it gives me a great deal of pleasure. Regardless, I understand its limitations. In my favourite listening room (which has flexible but high end "digital" setup) unless your hearing is damaged, you'd would literally have to be deaf to not hear the difference. Even more so if you're replaying a master 24bit 96khz wav unaltered from recording. My digital setup (which is the replay section to a high end recording section from my studio) has a dynamic potential of 127dB. It can create the illusion of reality with the right recordings. My listening can often be an emotional rollercoaster ride.

I can't hear well enough anymore to give a s*** about CD quality anyway. Cassette tapes or just fine for me.

I always had to stack a bunch of pennies on the arm. most of my records eventually got scratched up and stuff LOL. All those little pops and hisses made it sound great though.

If you are talking sampling rate perhaps most people cant tell the difference, however if you are talking about brick walled compression and and bad remixes and or remasters, yeah, any record will sound better. But I applaud any continued use of vinyl. I believe getting up to turn over record or even space between the sides allows people to think about music. A 7 inch even more so. I think digital music has killed active listening. Moreover music mixed for vinyl turns any stereo into a presentation and or feel of an analog recording studio.

The centre half of a vinyl record has much less dynamic range than the outer half whereas a cd has equal range from beginning to end

Excellent video

Great answer..👍

what sounds better?

There is some music I just enjoy hearing on vinyl, last night I listened to Pink Floyd Animals. Are they better? No, not than a good master recording CD, but there is something about putting that album on and experiencing it. Its why I have a transport and a decent turntable with my 2 channel system.

Can someone give me an advice for good book articles or video about audio electricity loudness +db - db . Theres a lot of info out there but at the same time a lot of disinformation 4:56 20 db 😖. No entender!

I have a vinyl setup and a CD setup. My best sounding records sound better than my best sounding CDs.

yeah, definitely there is some excessive information for hackers - your inner IPs, shown on several devices

To simplify this argument. Isn't this at the most basic level arguing you can't hear the difference in source components in general? I guess what I am getting at if it's so easy to get different results between two different cd players in the same system and two different turntable. Wouldn't this argument be crazy?

geezus, without getting into the analog vs. digital discussion, the loudness wars (compression) , remastering, etc you cannot answer this question.. The best sounding music is the music you enjoy listening to and nothing else really matters.. If Justin Beiber sounded so great on digital then every music owner would own all his CD's! Its what you like and what your happy with............ Not withstanding I have 2 original Black Sabbath albums along with a few from Pink Floyd and they are far far better sounding (to my ear) then a digital remaster. But sometimes the digital brings other things out crisper and clearer than other media... And yes, the equipment your playing on plays a HUGE deal...

Honestly, they sound just as good as each other, but both have a different flavor.

What we are really talking about is has recording arts evolved since advent of digital tech or devolved?

I'm perfectly happy listening to mp3s and can totally enjoy my music, if there is a difference, then it's not enough for me to care. The shear convenience of mp3 files far outweighs any quality that I can detect. That's it.

Yes but a very good LP can sound close to the same recording on CD if both are done well.

Thanks Dear Paul for your contribution to this extremely confusing world of Audio. I'd like to draw your attention though to a point regarding this video. You explain that the CD format has more dynamic range than the vinyl format. That is true only in theory! If you check the measured dynamic range of the majority of recordings you can easily see that the vinyl recording has more dynamic range than its CD counterpart. Check for example Adele 21 on the following link: dr.loudness-war.info/album/list?artist=adele You'll notice that the vinyl recording has a Dynamic Range of 15 whereas the CD has a Dynamic Range of 8. I have yet to see a CD which has more measured dynamic range than its vinyl ... the reason may be that mastering engineers are seeking loudness in their CD project and thus are curtailing a big chunk of the theoretical dynamic range of a CD to achieve high sound volumes, what has been termed as the "Loudness War". In my opinion, Vinyl sounds better in most cases because it is mastered differently. In my experience, if the vinyl and digital are mastered identically, they will sound identical on equipment of equivalent prices especially if a low jitter DAC (e.g. having Ted Smith's signature!) is used for the digital. Thanks again Paul for your contribution it is very needed!

I remember Michael Fremer from Analog Planet posing a slightly different analogy... Despite 99% of my music collection are redbook CDs I would love to try vinyl someday, which are more tangible. Taking out a CD from the case brings you back down memory lane, similar to a vinyl record, which is not doable on digital files. And I would love to try vinyl one day, but it's not very spouse-friendly - "oh another box on the TV rack?" :)

Very good vinyl and analog playback are very good. CD's can be good, too, and they are very convenient. Flash drive with 24 bit transfer from Ampex ATR is best format. Will try DSD from source material "real soon now".

CD 90db no noise. vinyl 70db groove noise tape 70 db tape hiss with no noise reduction. these are just mediums. yes they sound different because of the medium.

Eons ago when I used both LP and CD I felt the sound from my LP was better for music with a more consistently high level (rock 'n' pop mainly). However surface noise, reduced dynamic range etc. just kills classical imo. My LP cost a lot more than my CD too (LP12), and this was also at a time when CD hadn't perhaps quite 'come of age' (90's). I think CD is a lot better than it's sometimes cracked up to be, and the physical object is a good size - physical enough, minus the storage/handling headache of LP. Even Audio Note think they've got CD 'almost' right!! There are however some appallingly mastered CD's, (mainly Rock 'n' Pop) and I would say the LP version can sound better in this scenario. For classical, some of the early ADD recordings are great.

The ease and convenience of cds wins for me. Plus, I've never had a cd that was off center or warped. Most cds sound identical to vinyl (at least Carly Simon's cds do) and other nice thing is with much of the older music, when it's put on cds, they turn up the volume. Not all cds sound great, especially the early ones.

I'm glad somebody can afford CDs and vinyl, but I can't afford vinyl anymore. It's gotten way too expensive. I can still afford CDs and cassettes, so I guess I'll live.

The idiot that is being talked about must be using a 29 dollar plastic turntable and a 29 dollar CD player-system, which would both sound like a string telephone built with yoghurt cups and a fishing line, or he is deaf! The sound carriers are completely different, and the conversion from carrier-stored information to sound takes 2 entirely different chains. Fans will like one or the other better, but there is a huge difference between vinyl and CD. I can hear the difference on a puny, but revealing system (that has surprised everybody so far) hobbled together from el-cheapo new stuff (Dayton B652 speakers, Jico SAS stylus, new-old-stock Shure M91 nude diamond stylus, Fischer DVD/CD player I bought new almost 20 years ago, Philips CD burner, also bought new at the time) and vintage mid-fi equipment (SAE TWO R3C receiver, Marantz 4270 receiver, Superscope R-310 and R-340 receivers, Dual 510 turntable tweaked with a new matt, Dual 1242 with a new matt, Dual 1237) that at the time was expensive, but reachable by a working class guy.

In that case all entry level amp shouldn't be allowed to use a phono input. I have a Marantz pm5005 and I'm impressed but hearing this makes me doubt my amp can't tell the difference between a cd and a vinyl

not buying the 'dynamic range argument' - that would be true IF mastering engineers used expanders to fill up that dynamic range available but it would make most recordings VERY irritating and unlistenable even. RARELY do CDs or SACDs even use all their headroom. especially where 'classic' recordings are concerned - i would also argue that vinyl has MUCH more than 70dB d/r due to the way noise is subtracted ... i would argue that the 'noise' from vinyl is of a very different nature than the program material and is somewhat 'transparent' ... on a good system the 'noise' will be manifested very differently from the music anyhow (for example it might physically appear to be in the background somewhere or out to the sides - depending on the system) - okay that's my two cents .. :)

The Problem with cds is the since 2000 compressed recordings with almost no dynamics.. Listen to cds from the 90s and you will think you have a new audio system..