CDs Vs LPs

CDs by far. CDs have much greater dynamic range, and don't have pops and tics. Plus the arguments about analog vs digital are nonsense. There is no difference in audible reproduction between the two methods (except for the much greater dynamic range of a CD).

In fact, the opposite is the case. As a consequence of the loudness wars, a CD is typically more compressed than its LP counterpart.

Most Jazz and all Classical have never joined the loudness wars. 

You are either joking, or perhaps have just become accustomed to compression

I am not joking. Check out any recording from SF Symphony Media, or AIX records, or Chesky Records, or ECM, or BIS, and I could go on and on and on. Almost no classical music recordings not mastered for vinyl are compressed.

@sleepwalker65 said:

the fact is that while the data is still represented as a staircase, (lollipop diagram if you prefer), the nature of sampling means that some information is left out during digitizing and then on playback, it is artificially synthesized. That is the indisputable flaw in the process. No matter what quantization resolution and what sampling rate, you cannot escape this fundamental.

This is a oft repeated and persistent argument against digital audio, but it is a myth. It stems from a lack of understanding of sound, Fourier transforms, and the Nyquist-Shannon theorem.

People who argue that a discrete sampling protocol can never record and reconstruct continuous audio do not fully understand the nature of sound. Sounds are made up of waves. Sound waves are just sine wave compressions and rarefactions of various frequencies at various amplitudes. Granted, in a musical performance, there are a lot of frequencies and amplitudes, but they are just a lot of sine waves. If you apply a Fourier transform to an audio recording, you can decompose all of that noise into a collection of sine waves that have equations to describe their behavior. Because sine waves have mathematically regular behavior, once you know the frequency and the amplitude, you know everything you need. There isn’t any "information left out during the digitizing."

Since humans aren’t bats or dogs, we are only interested in waves we can hear, and for the absolute best of us, that spans the range from 20Hz to 20,000Hz. For most of us middle-agers and above, a more likely range is 20Hz to 12,000Hz. Nyquist-Shannon says that a filter can be constructed to accurately reconstruct a waveform from a stream of discrete samples if the sampling rate is 2 times the desired highest frequency. This isn’t magic, it is math. And it is why the CD Redbook standard of 16/44.1 is all that is really needed. Every rigorous listening test I have ever seen has shown that for the vast majority of listeners, even trained and professional listeners, it is very very difficult to tell the difference between a 16/44.1 recording and a 24/96 or 24/192 one.

Fourier analysis has been around since 1822, the Nyquist theorem was formulated in 1933, and Shannon’s extension was published in 1948. So these aren’t new ideas. Until the advent of the digital computer, applying these ideas to audio wasn’t practical. But since 1982, it has been practical, and over the last 36 years the technology has been refined.

If people prefer the sound of vinyl LPs to CDs, that’s fine. But they should stop justifying their preference by perpetrating myths.

@geoffkait said:

The data that’s on the CD is not being 100% retrieved during playback. Not by a long shot. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news

It would be refreshing if, just once, you would back up your assertions with some corroborating evidence.

As @clearthink pointed out:

There should be no "dropouts" unless of course there is a substantial failure, defect or fault in the playback system because the CD audio standard relies on Cross-Interleaved Reed-Solomon Coding by using 24 8 bit words and encoding them in a RS code with parity check symbols.

And as I pointed out, the Nyquist Shannon algorithm ensures that nothing is lost in the digitization and conversion to analog process. There is NOTHING lost in a well recorded and mastered CD compared to an LP. In fact, given the vastly superior dynamic range of a CD compared to an LP, and the perfect reproduction of the data stream from a CD compared to the distorted output of an LP cartridge, a CD is clearly capable of vastly better reproduction.

I completely agree that the performance, recording, and mastering are more important than the medium. But ceteris peribus, an LP will be better than a 78, and a CD will be better than an LP.

@cleeds said:

Both CD and LP are capable of extraordinary performance. And at their best, they sound very much more alike than different.

Signal to Noise Ratio: LP 50db, CD 90db
Frequency Response: LP 20-20kHz, CD 20-22kHz (a tie)
Total Harmonic Distortion: LP 1-2%, CD 0.003%
Stereo separation: LP 25db, CD 90db

Ticks and pops can be on the surface of the LP, but far more of them are caused by poorly designed phono equalizers that are unstable, resulting in a tick or pop that isn't actually on the LP. About 95% of ticks and pops have this origin.

I am sorry, but this is complete BS. 

One last opinion. In comparing analog vs digital, cables, power cords, components, AC plugs and the like; in the world of high end equipment, the one that will sound the best to the listener is very often the one he wants to sound best.

Hahaha!  Yes, confirmation bias is the at the root of most subjectivist high end audio conclusions.