Oregonpapa, I am your age and still remember when mono records were a dollar and stereo ones, two dollars. I have about 1500 records and about 1000 digital discs. I have owned at least 30 cd players with many of the more recent ones also playing sacds, but right now I have none.
But, I presently have both the best vinyl and the best digital sources, I've ever had. The turntable is the Nantais/Lenco Reference with Ikeda tone arm and 9TT cartridge. These go to the BMC MCCI phono stage. The digital is from a pro guy with the company name of Archiving Vinyl. Originally, this was derived from my interest is getting my many 45rpm reissues into the best possible digital with post digitizing RIAA.
This has resulted in their AMS music server. It allows running up to quad native DSD, which is a sampling rate of 11.2Mhz per second. These files are quite large, of course, but my hard drive are 3.5 Terra bit. Soon I will have two SSD which will hold most of my music data. One of the design goals was to have the very lowest "latency" possible. Basically, this is a measure of how much time the computer has to devote to processing the data off the hard drive or the SSDs. This means that you don't get the displays of album covers, etc. Also it has several atomic clocks to assure accuracy within the change of digital to the dac and into analog.
It uses JRiver MC20 plus Signalyst playback systems.
What I hear with the two sources playing the same music is entirely different. Vinyl is very pleasing with great holographic presentation. The only fault I find is having to get up so often and changing the record. Digital using Signalyst has greater dynamics, better bass, and top end and an amazing sense of being there. You also get much more detail and sense of where exactly the musicians are and slight mistakes they make. But the perspective is that of the microphones not being in the audience. I should say that this is more evident on older recordings than new ones.
So what do I listen to? When I am reviewing something, I use digital exclusively as it allows clean repeat listening with and without the component being reviewed. I have many LPs of old jazz that have never been released in digital as well as some where the digital version is quite poor. I do go on kicks where I listen for many days to nothing but vinyl.
But, I presently have both the best vinyl and the best digital sources, I've ever had. The turntable is the Nantais/Lenco Reference with Ikeda tone arm and 9TT cartridge. These go to the BMC MCCI phono stage. The digital is from a pro guy with the company name of Archiving Vinyl. Originally, this was derived from my interest is getting my many 45rpm reissues into the best possible digital with post digitizing RIAA.
This has resulted in their AMS music server. It allows running up to quad native DSD, which is a sampling rate of 11.2Mhz per second. These files are quite large, of course, but my hard drive are 3.5 Terra bit. Soon I will have two SSD which will hold most of my music data. One of the design goals was to have the very lowest "latency" possible. Basically, this is a measure of how much time the computer has to devote to processing the data off the hard drive or the SSDs. This means that you don't get the displays of album covers, etc. Also it has several atomic clocks to assure accuracy within the change of digital to the dac and into analog.
It uses JRiver MC20 plus Signalyst playback systems.
What I hear with the two sources playing the same music is entirely different. Vinyl is very pleasing with great holographic presentation. The only fault I find is having to get up so often and changing the record. Digital using Signalyst has greater dynamics, better bass, and top end and an amazing sense of being there. You also get much more detail and sense of where exactly the musicians are and slight mistakes they make. But the perspective is that of the microphones not being in the audience. I should say that this is more evident on older recordings than new ones.
So what do I listen to? When I am reviewing something, I use digital exclusively as it allows clean repeat listening with and without the component being reviewed. I have many LPs of old jazz that have never been released in digital as well as some where the digital version is quite poor. I do go on kicks where I listen for many days to nothing but vinyl.