CD vs Vinyl

[AVRevForum.com]

The age-old question. What do you think sounds better, compact disc, or vinyl.

[stevemtno]

Vinyl is FAR superior to CD. No comparison...

stevemtno

[MilleRSV]

Clean static free vinyl sounds better than CD in my opinion. More natural, more
live sounding. I have just got back into vinyl after many years (20 or so) of being away from it. I bought a Project Xpression table and think it's a great
table for the money. Replaced the original cartridge with with an Ortofon
OM-20, added the Project speed control and preamp. Not audiophile grade equipment buy great sounding for under 1K.

Long Live Vinyl !!!

[Winston O'Boogie]

On my rather modest system, my vinyl sound quite good. However, a good multichannel SACD or DVD-A is hard to beat. It's a wash, IMHO, and totally dependent on the source recording. I have lots of pretty lame redbook CDs as well as some outstanding LPs, DVD-As and SACDs. This is a topic that will never be settled.

[MilleRSV]

I agree SACD & DVD-A is hard to beat, and that the debate will go on for many years to come. I guess I'm reflecting on my younger days, but I think there's something special about the vinyl experience, the packaging and that warm analog sound just strikes a chord with me.

I've been lucky getting many old LP's from friends that no longer use them. They had them stashed away in a box somewhere and just wanted to get rid of them. Some where in pretty bad shape, there were some wild party's back in the 60's & 70's. I also found some gems, one was Jethro Tull's "Living In The Past" two LP set with a beautiful hard leather like book cover and many pages with pictures of the band, the records where in great shape too.

I'm enjoying rediscovering vinyl, but I'm not giving up my SACD & DVD-A disk's either.

[mrmusic]

The difference between 12 by 12 and 5-1/2 by 4-7/8 is the difference between Richard Avedon and a four-pose photo booth strip. When's the last time you glanced at a CD cover for more than the title?
Keep your LPs for the art! Get a few frames and rotate your best LP covers and wait for your friends and visitors to comment. They won't even notice that new Klimt you stuck in the hallway.
As for the sound? Warm, schwarm. I wanna BE THERE in the room with the players, in the studio, on the stage, and vinyl hiss destroys that illusion. Forget pops and crackles, tell me how much you have to spend on gear to completely eliminate hiss -- even between cuts?! -- and then tell me how many pristine LPs you have, made in the first place from high quality polyvinylchloride and never degraded by a stray fingerprint or needle wear, let alone cat hair or a microscopic (but audible) chunk of peanut butter, and then we'll sit down and compare warmth vs clean sound. Won't take long, 'cause that will be a short stack you've got to listen to.
As soon as I discovered in the mid-'60s that the British, and the Germans and Japanese, were pressing albums from much, much higher quality vinyl than the cheap Americans, and that you could jaw-droppingly hear the difference on even a modest stereo setup, I started funneling all my lawn-mowing earnings into replacing the essentials: my Beatles, Stones, Pink Floyd, Jimi. Jump forward to the '80s, and the CD hands me what I was trying for with import vinyl: nothing between me and the music. No audible reminder of the medium. Will I trade that for a negligible warmth factor? Oh yeah.
And now with DVD-Audio, SACDs, DualDiscs etc., I am right there. Throw in 5.1 Surround Sound mixes -- if done well (unfortunately, many are not) -- and I have finally achieved sneaking into the studio, while reclining in my La-Z-Boy in the middle of my own living room.
You can have your LPs. Boo. Hiss. In fact, you can have mine, all 7,000 (except the ones I'm keeping for the cover art), 95% of them in pristine condition -- for what that's worth. Make me an offer. I'm in the process of getting everything digitized in near-lossless format, and then I can dump my 4,000 CDs as well.
I'll take 21st Century playback, thank you, hands down.