"It's physical, visual, old vinyl records smell a certain way." Indeed :-) And the covers of vinyl albums are much easier to read when your eyesight begins to fail when you are in your dotage. I surprised myself a couple of years ago when I purchased a couple of reissues of my favourites on high quality vinyl for my birthday. (A Freddie King album and Miles Davis' "Kind of Blue", the best selling jazz album of all time). Mind you, I immediately digitised them so I could hear them in as pristine condition as possible. One of the downsides of vinyl is the groove deforms each time you play the record. High frequency content moves the stylus fast enough to increase the temperature of the vinyl closer to melting point.

warc8us with a properly set up cartridge* & a half decent t/table, tonearm & phono stage ...vinyl is King! & rules high in superiority over cd's. I.M.Humble.O. (*many folk just screw a cartridge into the middle of the headshell's adjustability range & nearly always (without lottery-winning luck) get lousy reproduction results) May your dream system with vinyl come in to fruition.

Steve Roginski totally agree with an equalizer, a must for that Hi Fidelity sound

The cassettes can imitate everything cassettes { especially type II and IV } recorded in hi-end deck from a hi-end turtable sounds like the turntable and so the same when recorded from CDpalyers I love cassettes very much along with LPs and CDs I wish the Brands start building cassette decks again with the standards of 80s of course .

yes thats TRUE .. im going to by a AR 15 automatic riffle and enter in the digital mastering enginer congres and do a massive killing and when they prison me i wil say: it worth!! and began to laugh and they will bail jaim me for eternity and 10.000 in hell probaly lol

Tom Freeman what!?

Danny Woods I hate lower res music..

If you buy the old versions of the CDs (late eighties, early 90s) of older albums from the 60s, 70s/80s etc, the CD is not brick walled. Although newer remasters of CDs aren't as loud as they were in the early 2000s. Things are getting better.

Menos mal no todo lo digital está mal, mira head Maschine de Deep purple en Hdtracks.

Dunno if you guys gives a damn but if you guys are stoned like me during the covid times then you can watch pretty much all the new movies on instaflixxer. Have been binge watching with my gf for the last months :)

@Kristopher Gunnar Definitely, been watching on instaflixxer for years myself :)

Sorry but I can hear much more detail from well-made LPs than CDs, although well-made CDs come close. Drums and guitars are affected the most.

Oh and I know a lot of the early CD's were just remastered from the original recordings or vinyl versions I guess to put on CD so didn't always sound good like you say but some of the new ones started sounding pretty good when they got it figured out, ha.

well digital audio I can increase the loudness by 5 decibels the loudness of vinyl can't be increased at all so vinyl is inferior

I tested an old CD player and the highs sound super aweful. Same goes for pop songs mastered in the 90s (when the first DAWs came along). I prefer modern remasters and productions for that reason alone. Though the loudness war sucks.

I can take your digital audio and raise the loudness 5 decibels you can't do that only I know how to do that

? could please elaborate?

"First and foremost, you have to keep the Vinyl clean. I keep a spray bottle of antiseptic alcohol, brush and lint free rag handy." While cleanliness is goodliness where vinyl is concerned, I'm a little chary of alcohol on vinyl as it's probably too aggressive. I only use it on LPs so filthy the following is insufficient. I use a non-ionic detergent wiped onto the vinyl surface with a well-worn, super-soft toothbrush. Then I rinse it off with distilled water; you don't want residue from hard water. Then I air-dry the records on a document-sorting rack. The idea is to then keep the surface clean with an anti-static record cleaning brush. I purchase most of my music second-hand.

Right My favourite records I purchased years ago in CD formats. I also had some of them recorded on mono reels with quality of broadcast turntables . . It was not compareable. . I blamed it to speakers and gears that tapes sounded "easy and clear" while CDs were "fancy" After I purchsed gramophone and started to buy the same music on LPs. And LP's sounded in way of magnetic tapes - this was very obvious . When decided analog as a leading quality I was able to align my whole system so that it is almost all, CD, reels, casstette and LP are same same enjoyable. .

The problem is the comparison is almost always meaningless. The mix from the Master that is used for the vinyl pressing and the digital production are very often different and there is no way of knowing. Just Listen and enjoy the music.

I agree but kids listen to cheap stuff are because many of them are poor-

@denny b I was only talking about the dynamic range that forced me to buy a turntable and vinyl records at 48yo, though I don't like the hassle of dusting them and changing side every 20 minutes. I'm more a multichannel SACD or blu-ray kind of "audiophile", I guess. In my youth, CDs were all the rage, compared to audio tapes, and it took me well over a decade to agree with hipsters' wisdom, some of them half my age. Have a good one, denny…

@denny b i listened to an HD album of Kind of Blue on my PSAudio Stellar Strata and it sounds pretty phenomenal. There is 0% chance that vinyl would sound better. 0.

Me either which is why I digitised so much of my vinyl collection. I purchased my first EP in 1962 (Spotlight on the Shadows) and my first LP in 1967 (Jimi Hendrix's "Are You Experienced").

Software quality should drive your purchasing decision (which version is best?) either way. With most of the music from the 1960's, 70's, and 80's, the original LPs in good condition will sound better and cost less.

Right dude, so according to you there is no need for bringing up the nyquist frequency to 44Khz or 88Khz, aka 96 KHz sampling and 192 KHz sampling.Go to all the professional recording studios and tell them. src.infinitewave.ca/help.html

There is no limiting in low range for LP. May be you only didnt met any plate without noticeable rumble noise compaired to usefull signal . Of course there is something like wind blow which is created by vinyl material but not affecting listening. I do not observe any supremacy of CD in low range. I cant point about sopranos - in fact I suspect that sopranos in CD may sometime depend on radio interferences around. Somany reports about changes with some appliances working or not. I am aware it is not small problem which I observe in my place strongest last time at 3,2MHz The confirmation could be all the fuzz about highly priced specialy shelded cables for CD.

Thank you very much for your great insight. Never would have thought of it.

As I understood from your text: Vinyl is great but it's not superior. So much confidence. All I could say is who knows. And that???? I may answer beacause I say that I know. Not by semiscientific calculations but by real experience drawn from direct comparaison by ear. Ear conneceted to my imagination is my ultimate indicator. . All fuzz is about synergy of systems. System made synergetic to CD is not comlementary to system made synergetic to analog. In fact CD is not that prone to any synergy. That is beacuse CD recordings are in 99% cases deeply modified analog recordings for purpose of including in them "primary synergy" to popular cheaper systems. Trouble with that is that each CD may have it not the same. " . In my experience only vinyls ordinary recorded by me to CD at 48 kHz were equal each other . Analog recordings are 100% original and with elaborated but crucial synergy they are superior.

Hi Mike, to each one his own. I am (also) more on the analog side, and agree with you, but if somebody prefers digital I am 100% fine with that. The only point I wanted to make is that redbook CD has it's limits too. I owned the PS Audio LAMBDA drive and ULTRALINK II. After that a Dcs stack of many 10.000 of Eur. All that time I preferred my analog above the digital. I Do own a SME30 with own designed motor drive. The digital set remained for 95% of the time stacked somewhere. Each time when I took it out for listening it takes only a few days or even hours and I am done with it for the next few years. Vinyl demon makes some kind of crusade of it and exposing his very limited knowledge and besides that I think he is tone deaf. Listening is my full time occupation as conservatory trained musician and as high-end amplifier designer. I have a decent set of digital connected to my apple computer for YT music and so, for "the real work" I totally gave up on digital. The only decent thing I heard till now was a 12.000 Euro SACD player.

The reason why you can listen "way louder" to vinyl is because the music is compressed on vinyl. The guy says that in the video. Digital has more dynamic range.

The high-frequency "hash" generated by the nearly universal sigma-delta DACs wears down your ability to hear treble detail because your brain works hard to discern the music from the noise. Your dislike for PCM has likely been noise-shaped by this successive-approximation (not bit-for-bit) conversion process. Well-executed multibit PCM conversion generates much less high-frequency noise and thus much less listener fatigue.

My TEAC UD503 11.mhz DAC has digital filtering pushed all the way up 150khz, upsampling PCM to 11.2mhz DSD. It does help digital sound a lot less digital. But in the end, listening to an analogue recording, on analogue gear, out of my analogue loudspeakers, is the only way to completely get rid of any digital sound ;) but yeah, this has a very "vinyl" sound, it's like two different curses. Some recordings i prefer on vinyl, some i prefer digital.

Moving up in turntable quality first removes the motor noise and bearing noise then reduces tonearm resonances. Most "vinyl" sound results from these mechanical problems, along with phono preamp noise.

Martin Tousignant I disagree.. The most significant trade of analgogue sound, is the complete absence of adc and dac. Even on a mid level turntable I hear this..

No no no no no no. My Decca's are dead silent after a clean. Can you clean your digital? No you can't. Vinyl records is a huge advantage with the analog orchestra and its warm lush tube sound. Record that on CD and it is only gonna sound lifeless and cold because of the square waveforms and artificial corrections.

or only “one”.

Thomas Schmitz I’d say I agree with you for the most part. I don’t personally listen to vinyl on any of my systems but I have heard some that do sound “magical,” on others in certain songs/albums. The experience is definitely part of it, like how some people still enjoy playing retro consoles on actual equipment opposed to emulation. Some distortion can definitely be perceived as warmth such as in tubes sometimes, so you are absolutely right. With all that said as Paul has mentioned on many occasions in comes down to the mastering of the media. A CD is absolutely superior to vinyl but if it’s compressed too much and not done properly the end result can be an inferior product. I love audio, it’s strange how such little details can drastically effect the sound we hear.

Yes my favourite recordings are choir and orchestra recordings done by my father. He does this as a hobby and so far never applies any processing to his recordings (whether that is a good idea or not is debatable of course) and they give you the most pure and realistic sound imo.

We don’t need vinyl, we don’t need tubes, we don’t need many flavors of coffee. The best coffee is plain black coffee, because 100% unflavored coffee is best. Yes, maybe? Some people like things slightly flavored. Vinyl and tubes give that, the type of distortion it imparts to the music can give it some degree of realism as well. Some reviews say “This solid state amp is worth $$$$, it has some tube like characteristics…”, but I have never read a review saying “This ss amp sounds very transistor like worth $$$$”. Distortions from Vinyl or tubes are not necessarily bad. Many artist distort their guitars, voices, Mastering engineers EQ the music. Plain, unflavored, pure is not always better and sometimes you want the music slightly tune for your enjoyment.

Rubbish.

You are also wrong, as Paul says it is not black & white. You really need to do AB comparisons. Recently my march towards digital was I thought unstoppable, I listen in work via a PC and a cute, effective Audioquest Dragon Fly Red DAC and recently was happily listening to a friends mid - high end system, closely analysing the sound of his £3000 CD player with a variety of music both older and fairly new and over differing genre. He had a Linn Sondek sitting there that incredibly someone had gifted him. It was a an older deck with a Rega arm and Linn K9 and an entry level Projeckt phono stage. Out of curiosity, I asked him to fire it up. We had a beer or two and let the turntable settle and compared Tracy Chapman - Tracy Chapman; Talk Talk Colour of Spring and The Neo Soul artist Malia and her complex yet moody album Divergence. I can only describe the experience as life affirming, without exception to both mine and my friends ears we were both blown away by the way the Linn reproduced these albums. There is something about vinyl that CD often doesn't capture. Hours went by without fatigue. It was something spontaneous but joyful. It made me rethink my whole system approach. I have now purchased a Linn Sondek with an Ittok arm and Audio Technica Moving Coil cartridge. Whilst my friend has upgraded his cartridge to a wonderful Dynavector MC 20x and a Schitt Manu Phono stage. The upgrades have further elevated his turntable. He now buys much of his music on Vinyl wherever possible the 190g virgin vinyl pressings. I unearthed some of my grandfathers Decca heavy Vinyl Full Frequency Stereophonic sound recordings of Mantovani and his orchestra. You may laugh but I know he looked after them but played them on a low resolving Radiogram. On the TT they are remarkabke, stunning in fact. I will be upgrading my cartridge and trying out some new phono stages like the Tom Evans etc. This experience with the Linn Sondek has forced me no more like seduced me to change. I don't think I will be purchasing a high end CD player, instead I am looking into Hi Res streaming as my second and digital source. One thought though to finish, CD is as much a flawed medium as Vinyl. The difference is summed up for me thus; CD communicates with the Brain whilst Vinyl has the ability to touch the soul.