Vinyl vs. top-notch digital

"If there's a better format for listening to hissing, popping, and crackling, then on a cumbersome, yet fragile 12-inch piece of vinyl, I'd love to hear it." -THE ONION

Like the man or not,
Harry Pearson of the Absolute Sound has repeated over the past few years the Very best digital has not equaled the Very best analog play back.

You can contact the man directly yourself via his e-mail address in TAS or AV guide to tell him he's a fool if you like.

Whom Else on the planet have equipment available to him on a scale like this?

Just recently he took delivery of ClearAudios Statement turntable, to his absolute delight there's even more musical information on these 50 plus year old Lps in his collection.

The best digital player that I have heard to date is the Canadian made emm Labs cd/sacd.
Affordable to many and easy to use like any digital player at this price. Very nice for short term listening.

However, I will put up with the maintenance level of my record player and vintage and reissue Lp collection over digital any day.

If you read the Hoffman link provided above it will descibe the difference very well in the favor of vinyl. I recently had an experience while listening to Bill Evans 45 RPM Acoustic Sounds pressing of "Everybody Digs Bill Evans". We put the recently released remastered CD (Keepnews Edition) on right after listening to the vinyl. The difference in tone was quite noticeable. We turned off the CD and returned to a night of vinyl listening. Also, Violin has it right about listener fatique. Plastic, be it SACD or CD, tire my ears well before vinyl does, which is hardly ever.
If you love music and have the money you owe it to yourself to try vinyl.

Jeff,

Here is a commentary on the misconceptions in the wired article. It tries to point out there is most likely a subjective basis for preferences.

For those who have a DSP preamplifier with any half decent DAC's from the past ten years, I would suggest trying to listen to your Vinyl rig through 'direct path' versus A to D and D to A (with no filtering or tonal adjustment from the DSP). If you have the volume levels matched precisely and a good quality DSP then it should be impossible to tell which one sounds better or when the DSP is in the loop and when it is not (best to do this blind). If this does not convince you that digital is transparent then I don't know what will.

The easiest way is to do this is with a remote - so you don't move your position - but it is best to have someone else make the switch in case bias creeps in from knowledge of what you are listening to. Frankly, most modern D to A and A to D has a precision of reproduction that is far beyond human hearing.

either this is reality.....

Frankly, most modern D to A and A to D has a precision of reproduction that is far beyond human hearing.

or this is reality...

a month ago a friend, who owns a record label, used my tt to record some direct-to-disc Lps to make an K2HD recording. he had purchased the rights to these Lps and no master tape exists. he brought 3 pro audio guys and 2 hi-rez recorders; a Pacific Microsonics II (recording at 176/24) and a DXD (recording at 386/32). during this session; we did many test recordings back and forth between the tt and the two state-of-the-art digital recorders.

you would think that these ultimate digital recorders could make a digital recording indistinguishable from the original Lp. if you thought that you would be very wrong.

as good as the digital sounded; the Lp still smoked the hard drive based recordings. digital (at whatever resolution) simply cannot get the whole picture.

the fact is that even at 386khz with a 32 bit word length it is easy to hear the shortcommings of digital's attempt to reproduce music compared to vinyl.

just listen.