The LZ remasters (CD) from a few years ago actually sound pretty good. The thing I love about LZ is - 9 albums, almost 50 years ago, EVERY time you listen you will hear something new, simply never get old, music from the spheres, here for all time

Now that Tidal has dropped MQA, their Hi-Rez files are better than they were. However, Quobuz being cheaper than Tidal, there's no benefit (sound wise) to keep Tidal.

I have a pretty well setup custom digital rig. A friend brought his dads cheap record player that he wanted me to fix. Plugged it into my receiver (yes, receiver) just to test it and I had an old Joni Mitchell album my uncle lent me. Couldn't believe it, even my wife said it sounded good. Then she said "So, do you want a record player for Christmas?" I said "Hell no, that is one rabbit hole I am not going down" but I was just shocked at how much better than digital it sounded. Unreal.

Just got done watching an older video with really bad vocal reverb in that room. Nice to see the front wall treatment adjustments. I can already HEAR an improvement. Nicely done, brother.

I think the crux of the analog Vs. digital debate comes down to the mastering. One of the major issues with digital is the amount of compression used as it can be compressed down to square waves where as a cutting lathe cannot cut a square wave so by default a album cut for vinyl can have less compression than its digital counterpart.

Love your channel it's the best glued to all your videos nobody does it like you Jay. !

Qobuz has a much better selection than Tidal when it comes to classical music. I have both, because there are some classical albums that are available on Tidal but not on Qobuz.

I am vinyl guy! I divided collection in two sections - old used vinyl and newly pressed. Reason is because new vinyl are usually high res audio files which does not sound the same as the old ones. I love them nevertheless - high res file pressed on a record still sounds better then any FLAC, tidal, or SACD I have. Of course today we have new analogue pressings as well (Tone Poet or Rhino high fidelity series..)..but usually I cant afford them.

Vinyl and cassette and reel to reel with valve amps my set up and I’m happy

Love love me some vinyl. I dont do digital as of now but im interested in it. Really dig your channel btw.

Spot on JAY agree 100% on Tidal Qobus debate

I agree that the Digital vs. Analog thing is recording dependent. The art of capturing, mixing and recording analog has a set of challenges that are equivalent in Digital but have other effects on the recording. So both analog and digital are two options, I enjoy them both.

Another interesting question regards whether there are quality differences in different forms of digital. 1. CD 2. Streaming 3. Local FLAC files played through good software (JRiver or Roon). My ears tell me that there are such differences--non-trivial ones.

"It depends on the album you play." I agree with that 100% some albums within playing the first couple of music bars I can hear the difference through my system. I feel it depends a great deal on the quality of the pressing weather streaming, or not.

Most hi-fi stores I have visited would disagree about your qobuz vs tidal conclusion in terms of quality. Stores tend to subscribe to both but they all agree Qobuz is better sound wise. No one seems to know why for sure though! I also hear the difference in those stores... No doubt Qobuz sounds a little bit better. Yet I still subscribe to Tidal because of the perceived wider record selection. But I'm wondering if the selection is that different nowadays...

Amazon Music HD is the best streaming service. Better than analog? It certainly is easier than having a thousand expensive albums (which I used to have) to deal with.

Come on Jay, there are *reasons* for analog vs digital quality changes over time! The MAIN reason is quality of the ADCs involved. There were a handful of decent ones in the 90s, such as the Lavry gold, then much better ones starting with the Grimm. And the main reason was jitter performance. The greatest tragedy is that so many great performances were captured -only- on poor ADCs (with no parallel analog chain), which until the 90s were all inferior. But -today-, digital and tape capture can be about equal, though too many recordings are still made with mediocre ADCs, for which there is no excuse. Thanks for listening!

2-3 years ago LZ released a re-remastered version for all of their albums and they sound MUCH MUCH better than the older CDs. I actually re-bought them. They simply took out that DR limiter and it sounds MUCH smoother. Not as SMOOTH as vinyl, but more DETAILED.

Hi Jay, I’m so glad you finally addressed the Tidal Qobuz controversy. Paul McGowan keeps saying Qobuz is so much better than Tidal. Maybe it’s his hearing. I use Tidal 90% of the time because it’s more user friendly, has a wider selection and seems to sound better to me on most music. I can always count on you to tell it like it is.

My theory is that when digital came to vinyl, the industry embraced it and really tried to work with the improvements? that it had to offer. I do have some classical music recorded in digital from the very early 80's that sounds pretty incredible. Records today, you can clearly hear that it's digital, but it sounds like what we wish CD's sounded like to begin with?

I enjoy Tidal, especially through Audirvana, there is something there. I do wonder how much better CD is than streaming.

I couldn't agree with you more 💯🎶👌 both are fantastic and as you said, it totally depends on the recording and 🎶 analoge is superior period 👊

MOFI Santana Abraxas....digital LP...great sound. Mr. Pete-------> aging hippie

How much $$ did it take to get a turntabel setup like you have? Do you play old records?

with all the guests/listeners I had at my place over this year, there was not one that said "the digital chain" was better. Everyone prefered the sound that came from the turntable, they all like it more, even more as myself. To me the difference is closer and the Transport/Dac combi is really close. But as you said, it is very often album depended and sometimes the digital chain even wins (if at all mostly newer records) but because my music Pop/Rock/Metal was created end 60s till end 80s, all produced analog, the chance getting a better record on vinyl is very high and almost always guaranteed if you can find a great pressing in good condition. I hate noise, pops, clicks, scratchy sound... but if you have a good record honestly you don´t even have a single pop on the entire album, total noisefree and you even forget listening to vinyl, its a dream. But getting to this point where you collection is 90-99% on this condition level is expensive and timeconsuming and frustration getting there but all this efford is worth it to me

The master always matters more then the medium.

I play cd most of the time, but i am working to get the better sound out of my turntabel, its already over 1500$d, how much do i need to spend to get this "better sound" some ppl speak of?

Isnt vinyl also digital in the sense that music is recorded and mixed digitally, then put onto the vinyl. Back in the day everything was recorded analog as well.

Hi Jay what are you using as source for steaming? Before the DAC. Thank you

Don’t forget Tidal now have full have FLAC 24/192. Boom.The FLAC 24/192 excuse is now nearly mute for Qobuzz vs Tidal when all other streaming services like HEOS, etc also start pushing Tidal FLAC 24/192. Even with Tidal MQA some albums/songs sounded better than Qobuzz. Yea it doesn’t make any sense but I noticed that too. I found myself going back between Amazon HD, Qobuzz and Tidal. Tidal has a better library than Qobuzz, native steaming apps support Tidal more than Qobuzz, user interface and navigation is easier. App is better built. The only excuse for using Qobuzz was FLAC 24/192 which Tidal also supports now. Why FLAC was not offered earlier in Tidal was a costly business decision. Imagine all the market share Tidal would have if they went FLAC initially but finally the corrected the mistake since MQA was not going anywhere.

Why did you repeat the intro twice? Can you fix that?

The technology used to carry the signal (music) does not matter much. It is all about implementation imo. Recording quality and processing is far more important than anything.

Tidal Vs QoBuz = PRICE DIFFERENCE that’s all.

Well, Led Zeppelin on vinyl most likely sound less "harsh" then from a revealing digital version. Small Jazz band will also sound just great on vinyl. But for more complex music that includes orchestra for example, vinyl will more often than not sound congested and loose a lot of definition and dynamics. And, of course, the crack and pop of vinyl can get very annoying. Again, quality of recording is a factor but it also depends on what you are listening to...

The opening tune is grating imo. I skip thru it too. It sucks.

The official studio master on anything since the 90s is digital hires. Why the hell would someone take that pristine studio master, crap on it and press it on vinyl?! But, to each his own, as long as his IQ is above room temperature.

That’s such a great topic at the beginning. What really strikes me is how bad the arena rock bands sound digitally. I used to jam out with my car radio all the time and now I can’t stand listening to Loverboy, Journey, etc, etc!!

Qobuz sounds better with classical and jazz, Tidal for everything else but none of them even come close to a well set up turntable especially with decent pressings something you agreed with in a past video, from what I hear but haven't had the chance to listen to the top wadax dac server is supposed to close the gap but as I said I haven't listened to it and absolutely nothing beats reel to reel

Real digital is digital from an album burned on a server like an Innuos, a 432 EVO or others, and connected directly to its DAC or via a streamer to the DAC. Never, ever via Tidal or Qobuz. The difference in quality is too noticeable between music coming from the server and streaming.

Doesn't happen with your cheap speakers, but with a high end setup Qobuz is better!

What happened to the videos of your system playing music? Takin a break?

Digital recordings pot onto vinyl will sound different to CD.

BIG NEWS, everything's recorded digitally - - come on, we all know that - - it's in the playback gear - if ya have an analogue set up like Fremer's and ya put that up against reference digital in the same system they'll both sound excellent - that's not debatable, it just isn't - yep, of course, they'll be differences that might lead to preferences - just like there's differences between components / cables etc. - - one can argue that it's all digital to begin with, ok, fine, that is a fact, but I don't know a single person that claims what the writer is expressing, that analogue guys don't get that it's digital to begin with (with the exception of older, pure analogue recordings, like Led Zep - those can't be argued) but how that medium sounds in a system, via a plastic record or 1's and 0's is about the equipment being employed - - - personally, I love both, sure one recording or another might be better in digital or plastic, which has more to do with the processes employed to get to the final product, but yeah, that's fact too - imo, both camps need to take a step back - high end analogue is wonderful and can certainly match up or better OCD Michael's Playback Designs and so is reference digital that would better most average table/cartridge set ups, big whoop, that's not news - the playback gear is so good these days that the actual medium just isn't as important as listeners want to make it out to be - if ya running reference in both camps then ya know what I'm taking about - btw - the Lead Zep stuff has never properly converted, Jay is on the mark, analogue only for those guys.

Well his conclusion that since 1980, all recorded music is digital is just flat out false. I would say vast majormajority of pop music since 1980 is recorded digital masters but even that is not absolute. Fantasy Records in Berkeley. A major label from 60’s through early 90’s was always recording on 24-track 2” Ampex. The most famous studios in US for many years were the Record Plant, started in LA and Sausalito, just across GGB from SF. Later they added a Record Plant in Brooklyn, NY. I don’t know the equipment at the Brooklyn location, the LA and Sausalito were fitted with 3M 24 track 2” tape machines. LA added DAT recorders to 2 of the 5 studios in early 80’s, the other 3 remained 3M . The most famous Record Plant was of course the Sausalito studio that opened in 1972 with 2 studios. A 3rd, named Studio C opened around 1978 or 79. The studio was primarily funded by famous promoter Bill Graham who managed many of the famous SF bands in 60’s. Bands like Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Santana, Tubes, etc recorded there. Basically, unless you’re on Fantasy label, ie CCR and Joplin, you recorded at Record Plant. The studio became iconic when Fleetwood Mac recorded Rumors there. Among the famous acts to record albums at Record Plant are Prince, Aretha, Journey, John Meyer… Metallica and Green Day also recorded debut albums there. When Santana did his famous comeback collaboration, all of his tracks and majority of guests were at Sausalito. The other tracks were either in LA or Brooklyn Record Plant. All were analog masters. Record Plant had numerous controversies over the years, including drug raids and a DEA seizure for a brief period. There’s at least 2 biographies on the studio that I’ve read, they are pretty fascinating reads. The Sausalito Record Plant closed in 2008, all 3 studios were still 100% analog; Studio A & B had 3M master recorders that had been rebuilt several times, Studio C was an Ampex MM1200 and a Studer A800, both 2” 24 track machines. Outside mainstream studios, many musicians these days still demand analog masters. Blues artist Eric Bibb is one such artist. Several of Pearl Jams albums were analog masters although I’ve read they now use studio that records in dsd256. Even within digital recordings, there’s a vast array of digital recording masters. Most pop music is recorded in PCM simply for cost and mixing purposes. This is likely why your cd’s sound better than vinyl. It’s a native pcm recording, the vinyl is limited to essentially being cut from a cd quality master. Ultimately the quality, no matter the medium is limited to the master recording and then the transfer equipment to create the retail product. As Jay states, Zeppelin has some really bad cd’s, but even the albums are pretty awful transfers. There’s been some re-engineered releases from the masters that are quite good, I was able to obtain a direct from master 1/2” 15ips tape of Houses of the Holy several years ago that is absolutely stunning, miles better than any vinyl version I’ve heard. I’ve tried getting more direct from master tapes of all Zeppelin albums but sadly the masters are apparently damaged from poor archival thus unlikely to ever happen

Physical media beats streaming imo

Vinyl can sound better but not because it is analog but because it is mastered better.

Sound is analog my friend. Whatever you say, analog is ALWAYS better than digital, because sound is an analog wave and you just can't reproduce EXACTLY THE SAME sound wave digitally. What you can, however, is to have an hi-res audio recording (24bit/192kHz is close enough) and a very good DAC which can reproduce Digital-to-Analog PRECISELY enough so that is seems the artist is breathing on your ears, and you'll get some details from the music you never noticed. Now... analog has some MAJOR disadvantages... once the record is worned down from use, it's garbage. To the cassette recording, you just have to come across a strong magnetic field... gone! So digital is better in that sense. It's forever! But sound is what it is. We have different ears... there are frequencies you can't hear, but I can. We're all different and our senses are tunned differently.

Adele 30 sounds better on vinyl

Your intro went twice

And now.... the rest of the story 😮

Both analog and digital have flaws. First, analog is exact copy (continuous) but limited by equipment, wear & mixing (less dynamic). Digital is limited by format, conversion (D&A) and estimated continuous algorithm. Mixing/recording has the biggest impact period.

That opening is so hard to sit thru. I have to FFwd to get away from it. Too neon.

Vinyl? Lol what? Tidal is exactly the same as Qobuz. Jeez this guy is a goofball

Cringe when Jimmy plays guitar? For me, NEVER! Coming from a two time Zeppelin concert attendee.

That theme tune stinks . Its always best to tell the truth 👍

Neither, CD forever!😃

Goood analog is always better than digital.