Vinyl or wait for the new stuff??

Several years ago, my kid and I did his science fair project on "Vinyl Vs. CD." We had 4 LPs and CDs with the same source material, both classical and rock. Front ends were VPI HW19 Mk III with Benz Glider and Marantz 65 SE playing through a Musical Fidelity X 10D. Rest of system was the same. We had 10 listeners do A-B comparisons. I carefully matched the sound pressure levels.

Result - Vinyl smoked the CDs in all respects. Everyone preferred the vinyl sound.

Now, a more expensive CD player might have been a different story, but those were the results.

Besides, where else can you get great music for only a few bucks a pop? Get a good record washer and replace the inner sleeves after washing and you get great sound for alittle money.

Joe

It seems silly to post this to a thread that's almost a year old, but...I can't resist. I've had the great pleasure of comparing top flight digital and analog front ends. Hi-end digital smokes low end digital by a long shot. Makes the unlistenable actually pleasureable. But a mid run turntable setup outperforms a top notch CD rig even worse. A top tier turntable you ask. Fuhgedaboudit! I suspect this lies mostly in the crappy software the record companies feed us, but that's a discussion for another day. The harmonic structures, decay, ambiance, musicality, fluidity and engaging nature of the analog disc has yet to be replicated, even by SACD. One day, somebody will have the b*!!s to spend $40 or $50 grand on an ADC and put out some decent CD's and maybe we can find out what digital is really capable of. Till then, vinyl will be king. Long live the king! I hate to admit this, but the ritual of putting on a record really makes listening to vinyl all the more involving. If you're finding that life is making more and more demands of your time and the treasured moments you spend in front of the stereo are being whittled away, shouldn't you spend those moments listening to the best medium there is? Well, as Forest used to say, "That's all I have to say about that".

tfta,great post and dont feel silly bringing back an old thread.....Now,as you are "new" here,please visit WHO R U in the "Best of" and tell us ALL about you!
WELCOME tfta!!!
Dave

If I hadn't had several hundred LP's that I never got rid of, I would not have gotten back into vinyl. New LP's are expensive. Selection is good, but not great, and the care and feeding of the whole thing is a bit of a pain.

I do prefer the sound of vinyl when everything is right.

Jphilips, bravo for doing your comparison and telling us the results. As you know, you are not the only one to have done such a thing--UHF magazine comes to mind, and also a German researcher who additionally used tubes vs transistors as a parameter. And many of us have done it too.

These comparisons are all needed, because of the snap judgements we humans like to impose based on what we think is consensus. In other words, we don't trust our own ears, and the proof needs to be demonstrated. I am sure nobody who has heard such a shootout goes away unchanged, but you have to hear the difference, not just hear about it.

Bravo for doing such a public demo.

If I were newly dissatisfied with CD ( maybe after Jphilips' demo ), I would be looking into vinyl and SACD as alternative sources. I would like to say that my own experience with hi-res digital, both SACD and DVD-audio, has not convinced me to add yet another source.

What surprised me the most was the relatively small difference between first-class CD and hi-res. I conclude that vinyl can remain a priority for me, because it's better than both when all three are done right.

Two questions arise about high resolution digital audio, of course.

First, is hi-res digital being done right, that is, to or near the limit of its potential? Both vinyl and 16/44 digital needed twenty years to reach theirs.

Second, if it is not yet being done right, what should be corrected? Perhaps the recordings chosen for issue on SACD don't offer genuine high-res, or higher-res than what you can get on vinyl and CD. Perhaps the playback technology has trouble extracting part or all of the extra info.

I have been told that both are quite likely. And this, plus my small listening experience, plus my own nature which is excessively prudent, leads me to conclude that I should not bother yet with SACD.