Vinyl vs. CD & HD from A.C.A...

Wow! Great post!!!

Thank you!!!!

Skaloumbakas, I'm so glad that you were honest enough to do what you did.
I've said for years that vinyl is better than digital hands down.
CD or digital which ever you want to call it was gimmick from the start. Designed so that record companies could make more money!! It cost much less to make a cd than an Lp bottom line. It never had to do with so called superior technology, that was the hype that record companies threw out that a lot people who couldn't hear in the first place latched onto.
Here are some things for digital diciples to consider:
(my personal observations)
The knock on digital has always been that it is cold and sterile sounding as well as harsh as opposed to analog which is characterized as warm and natural. While digital has come a long way in improving in those areas, it still has not totally done so.
The other thing that I and others noticed about digital is that it sounds compressed compared to analog. Why is that?
because your're trying to put the same amount of music(or more) from a 12in" disc on a 4 in" disc. and the only way to do that is by compression. Then they increase the dynamic range to play it back but have never been able to put back all that was taken out by compressing,that's why your panel noticed a 2-3db louder difference that analog had over digital. The other thing that compression does is remove noise, which is what you hear as a complaint by most digital fans about analog( the ticks and the pops)but what you also remove with the noise is a lot of the music that was in the recording as well.
So,essentially what you have with digital is quietness/clarity, dynamics and heavy bass or the perception
thereof, which a lot of folks seem to like or been fooled into liking.
What you have with analog is warmth, naturalness, presence, air, timbre and as you have mentioned dynamics, which I will take any day over the other.
Just as and aside, I use live music(recordings and club settings) as my reference when comparing the two formats, not studio recordings only which unfortunately most folks do.
The one question I have for digital diciples is this?
If digital is so much better than the old antiquated analog technology, why is it when you are trying to describe how good a digital player is you use words like warm and analog like? Why are you trying to sound like an old antiquated technology?
Just some of my observations.

Analog and digital sound different and always will.

Comparing them is lame and an exercise in futility.

I have never compared one to another. I own a digital system and am pretty happy with it. But I have heard a very expensive analog gear - Clear Audio+Piega+Nagras and the sound was impressive!! The gear totaled more than $40K.

There surely must be reasons why people prefer analog to digital. I am not denying that or anyone's preference. But I feel that some comparisons may not necessarily be correct.
"Size matters" may not be a correct example. Computers - when they made them first were almost the size of a room or building. Today's desktops and laptops are so small and far more powerful.
People try to say that digital "sounds" like analog, may be because they have been "used" to that sound.
LP's have had much more evolution than CDs. They started way back. From what I have read, the turntables from 50/60s were way different than what technology is being used today.

You may argue that, it has already been mentioned that Sony/Philips accept that CD was not the "audiophile" format. Well these are marketing firms and they really do not care about the consumers. All they care about are their profits. (If they cared about consumers, our hobby would have been more widespread and in it's hey days). When they made the statement about CD, they surely must be eyeing the SACD license and the associated profits. What I am trying to say is that I do not trust someone's statement. What ever sounds good to my ears is good enough for me. Maybe I don't have "golden" ears!!

The biggest factor for me is the "way" we are "used to" as we grow up. Honestly for me, going to the CDP and changing the CD provides more satisfaction rather than browsing on the screen and selecting the MP3 or WAV (or whatever) file. Holding or owning a physical medium is more gratification than a downloaded file. (Isn't it the same case with photographs?) So however much the downloaded files improve in the future, some of us will have a very hard time switching to them. We might find reasons why not to own the music file servers. Disk crashes may be the biggest reason (though it can be avoided). And this I believe is the case between LP and CD. The teens of today will looks at music/files/formats in a different way than what we perceive them.

I feel it really does not make any sense comparing formats. Rather, our community should focus on the recording methods and the pros/cons related to that. Like natural acoustics rather than studios, etc.

Enjoy your music!!