Turntable got absolutely crushed by CD

@dynaquest4

When digital photography was limited to 4 to 8 megapixels, "purists" said film was better; despite all the many disadvantages and expense of film and film processing. Now with 24 megapixels being the standard, nobody (hardly) argues that film is a better medium.

You can go on instagram to realize how many young people taking pictures on film today (simply follow tag #filmphotography). You may never understand why they don’t need your 24 megapixels when the instagram picture size is limited to 2048 x 2048 pixels maximum and the actual size today is just 600 x 600 pixels. You can not upload your huge digital file on facebook, it will be compressed like those mp3 digital files people are sharing. Those huge digital pictures are for your home computer or for the actual prints in the frame on the wall, but not to share online on social media.

All digital pictures became cool ONLY after analog filters became popular, those digital filters simulate the analog film effects, some of them are stupid (like default instagram filters), but some of them like VSCO Cam® are really cool. People who never really took any picture on film enjoying analog film filters for digital photography. Withoiut those filters digital phogography for majority of the people was extremely boring. Because of the instargam and companies like VSCO Cam® (and related) who developed apps to make digital pictures looks like analog film we have popularity of instagram etc woldwide. Now everyone is a "photographer", film photography is extremely popular in Japan as much as Vinyl in Japan. This is the county who invented DIGITAL, so what ? 

Those huge digital cameras are for professionals in fashion industry, but normal people are on iPhones. But actual film photography is not dead at all, many professionals still prefer analog film, many amateurs are happy to take pictures on cheap film cameras, because it’s unique experience for artistic people.

Same with vinyl. Though I’m not sure why it came back at all, other than being retro-cool, soon most vinyl aficionados will realize that it just isn’t worth it to put up with the long list of reasons of why digital audio is so much better and convenient.

Vinyl is like gold, it’s not only the best media format that lives longer than the actual owner, but it’s an investement, the price for rare records goes up every year. If you don’t understand why "it came back at all" the record collectors know well what they are doing, they are getting rich every year with their favorite music on original vinyl, they can buy/sell/trade it with a lot of benefits compared to digital.

Your digital media is free to enjoy all kind of music online in the car or in the cell phone streaming all albums in mp3 right from youtube without paying anything for it. We already have all that.

Vinyl is just something more, no matter how good is your high-end digital set up. Vinyl is highly collectible, this media for vinyl lovers is not just about fidelity like for audiophiles, it’s a culture that you can not replace with digital crap, never.

chakster: 

You covered too many bases and a response from me would just take too long.  I'm glad, though, that my post got your chops churning and interested you enough to provide such a verbose reply.

I used film from 1972 to 2004.  After digital reached 8mp I never looked back at film.  

I would recommend that when you make a point that is an opinion, you state it as such.

Not so fast on doing a comparison. When I first got a TOTL sacd player this summer I thought it was going to slay my TT when I first heard it. I was impressed at first by the clean digital signal. Kinda like being blown away when u heard your first CD player especially if your TT was under par. After awhile I noticed that clean digital signal was not so clean on a lot of CDs. There was distortion jitter call it what you like. Some CDs are better engineered and will beat analog but on others that colored but warm analog sound is hard to beat.

I own the same SACD player as blueranger. I have to say it is really great.
(My analog main TT is a Kuzma Stabi Stogi S with a Dynavector 17D3)
I would say any problem is in the original album mastering. same as on LPs Try to listen to original Laura Nyro LP on a high end system. try. The mastering is terrible. If you have an average system, not nearly as problematic.
One thing having the Marantz SA-10 has given me, now I can really hear the differences way better in CD mastering than any time prior.For example, I used to really enjoy Tori Amos CDs.. Now with the SA-10 I can hear more, how the producers buried her voice in the mix and added some kind of fake quasi reverb to her voice, which just is terrible to put up with. Worse with some more than others of hers. But they all have it. Compare to Ani DiFranco recordings... clear, beautiful and perfect.
The beauty and curse of high end.

I'm going to offer this for comparison:

The MoFi 45lp release of Dire Straits "Brothers in Arms" against both a Tidal streaming and a reissued cd version. 

Analog: VPI HW-19 Mk 4 with a Hana SH through a basic Lehmann Black Cube phono. 

Digital: Tidal lossless FLAC through an Oppo 105 and AcousticZen XLR's through the Pathos Classic One. 

That 45 pressing completely outsized any digital version. 

Some digital Versions are better than their analog counterparts, especially with a poorly pressed vinyl version. But I tend to research the best pressed vinyl version of a release and they almost always sound more complete and the digital version. 

And, then again, some inferior pressed versions of LPs can sound absolutely horrible. Like, I played REM's LP of Life's Rich Pageant, and that just sounded awful through the system. but the streaming version through TIDAL sounded incredible.