CDs Vs LPs

My system can reproduce EITHER, with excellent result, AS LONG AS the source material is well recorded, mastered and pressed. Of course, when new my tubed output, CDP(BAT VK-D5) was over $5K and I installed six mid-60’s, grey shield, Siemens CCa’s(over a grand, THEN). I haven’t spent nearly as much, on my analog rig, though I’ve upgraded the power supply of the phono stage and completely redesigned the turntable/motor assembly. I try to listen to CDs, when I want to do some reading or work a crossword, but(generally speaking)- I’m transporting elsewhere, by the music, anyway. Regarding vinyls: "Clicks", "pops", "ticks", "hiss"?? I suppose, if you’ve got cheap recordings/pressings, and/or no record cleaning machine(and/or- way to eliminate static), you’re going to have those. I RARELY have, in the past four decades.

I discovered serendipitously, about 35 years ago that the phono section played a huge role in how many ticks and pops you get with LPs.

Since I am a designer as a result I'm used to not getting ticks and pops. To avoid wear, I use a Triplanar arm. It never mistracks so I'm not encountering wear.

Surface noise otherwise really isn't much of an issue for me- I only use a dust brush and don't feel the need to otherwise clean LPs- I've not used my LP cleaner in decades. I listen to the music, which exists in 3D; surface artifacts exist in the speaker, so I have no problem listening past them.
I don't mind digital these days at all but much depends on quality. In the old days when my hearing was more intact, I ascertained the quality of the playback by how long it took to give me a headache. A good player was 2 minutes and bad one was 30 seconds. About the late 90s I heard the first DAC (Appogee) that didn't give me a headache. These days getting a headache is a rare thing; the last time it happened was 3 years ago at RMAF. Anyway, the better systems are pretty convincing  but oddly, price isn't the variable- whether the stuff works right or not is. So digital can be really cheap or really expensive, but if it works I'm fine with it. To this end I regard it as bad news that Oppo is out of the game.

My biggest objection to digital is the distortion in the highs which in the digital world is known as aliasing. The ear converts it to a sort of brightness. These days its not nearly the problem it was years ago so I can listen to digital without much complaint. But when I play the LPs for my girlfriend, she hears the improvement right away (extra detail for some reason) and she hears the same things I do, so I think digital still has a way to go. Her daughter, who is 30, can't listen to digital at all; she says it makes her jittery and annoyed. She's not particularly pleasant to be around in that state, so when she comes over we have to have the stereo either off or on LP only.

I like the streaming aspect of digital- find what you want and just play it. But I don't like the ads, the subscriptions and the feeling that it isn't permanent. Not that LPs are permanent, but I have some made 55 years ago that still sound great, with no wear or ticks and pops. Maybe its a comfort thing...

@atmasphere 

Ralph, you mention aliasing. Do you think that you are hearing aliasing or the phase shift introduced by the brick wall filters, which are there in an attempt to prevent aliasing?

Or, is it the number of samples per waveform; that is, at 15KHz a waveform is sampled 3 times (Redbook), which is not very many. But I hear the distortion the same way: brightness causing headache, jitters, and irritability. Solved it with simple RC filters at 3KHz, and now I can positively enjoy a digital background.

nkonor said:

"tattooedtrackman,
Thanks for this thread and All that have kept it civilized while expressing your opinions. Wish the rest on this forum would pickup on this."

That's real nice, but y'know ... wspohn did call all the people that have pops and clicks "TOO LAZY".
And the fact that I actually am, extremely lazy, is not the point, LOL.

Dave

Do you think that you are hearing aliasing or the phase shift introduced by the brick wall filters, which are there in an attempt to prevent aliasing?

I know it was audible in the old days. I've not run a test recently to tell if its still a thing.
How I did it years ago to prove that I was not making it up to the pro-digital guys is I recorded a 20-20KHz sweep tone from an *analog* sweep generator, set to a slow sweep. The playback contained what is known in the analog world as 'birdies', chirp tones that were present along with the actual sweep tone. They are interactions with the scan frequency- IOW, aliasing. But in any other world, they are distortion, also known as 'inharmonic distortion' since they are based on the scan frequency and an interaction with the fundamental tone, and IME a special case of IMD.
So very easy to hear as brightness, since the ear converts all forms of distortion into some sort of tonality.

A bit of the aliasing is built into the recordings, so no matter how good your playback is, some recordings will have more than others. I think the pro audio ADC I used simply was not that good, but it was a long time ago and certainly made the point, since it was also a popular unit.