Is vinyl dead ?

Sorry you took that personal - you will note that I included "for the most part". I note from your past posts that you have at least had an interest in some music which appeared on CD's. There are some contributors who do not listen to CD's at all because they do not like the format. These are the folks to whom I was referring. They are missing out on a lot of great music which has appeared only on CD over the last 20 years. I have not lost that opportunity because of a format change, not will I despite my recent observation that the identical performance that I have on a Living Stereo Lp and CD revealed a warmer, fuller sound and more enjoyment with the LP than the CD, which was some what thinner and lacked midbass warmth. But I can cry in my beer that Tilson - Thomas's Mahler 6th isn't on LP and disregard it or I can buy the CD and enjoy the performance. I will always do the latter, only the sound is different, not the music.

Vader007
I feel the same way for the most part.
Have a fairly expensive system by most standards and the best I have heard...so far anyway! Gave vinyl another try but just didn't get it...I did not use the most expensive vinyl setup for sure, but what I did use just didn't seem to be worth the extra work for a sound that didnt seem to be as good as an XRCD or SACD.
Do have to admit though it did have a certain something so I can see what the fuss is about. Just wasn't for me for now.

The system sound outstanding and it was perfectly matched. Yeah, right. Vader, if you ever come to Toledo I'll have my humble system ready for you--as well as the paramedics.

Newbie, you are a newbie.

Vinyl rules in my system. My belt driven CD transport is a piece of art, but the modded 1200 (aka The Creature) is the one who really brings the emotional involvement. This afternoon I was waiting for the auto shop driver to pick me up and I played a reissue of a Cheo Feliciano album (not José) with some serious love ballads. My Forté is down so I'm using my backup Yamaha A-1 integrated (1980) without my Monolithic phono stage. My left Swans has a blown tweeter. The recording was bad, the pressing was even worse and I was in front of the left speaker. When the driver honked the horn it was like when the alarm clock rings. I was in a trance. I can't say that from CD. I wish...

Vader, I apologize if my comment was hurtful. I would edit or withdraw it if I could, since it was uncivil. Mea culpa.

Let's start again with something we both agree on: our analog devices need protection from digital ones. Doesn't this tell us something? Can we learn from this?

Music is sound. Sound is analog. Digitizing analog waveforms to store them compels us to to un-digitize them later to hear them. No process now in use does that without changing the waveforms in ways that humans can hear. Our ears are so sensitive to variations in analog waveforms that the only acceptable sampling rate is infinity, ie, the waveforms themselves. Everything less that's been tried to date is audibly different, ie, audibly inaccurate.

If our goal is the accurate storage and reproduction of analog waveforms, an all-analog chain is the only currently available process that gives us a fighting chance. Obviously system iteration will matter, but if we violate this basic fact we'll have no chance of achieving accurate reproduction.

This is not to say that I don't listen to CD's. I do, sometimes for convenience like TWL, sometimes because no analog copy is available like Newbee. But CD's don't play real music, they play a low resolution facsimile of it. Despite a pretty decent system only half my CD's are listenable. Many literally hurt my ears, and even the best of them cannot match a decent LP.

YMMV of course, but that's what I hear and I think that's why I hear it. Sorry once again if I was harsh.

Hey, Psychoanimal, call me anything you wish, but at least spell my pseudonym correctly. It's Newbee - not newbie - and FYI I haven't been one for a while. I passed my BS test a long time ago. :-)