Vinyl v CD

[eggontoast]

I just wondered if digital had got a bit closer, in terms of musicality and involvement.

I don't get this I'm afraid, digital recordings sound far better to me.

I can understand the sense of occasion from getting your vinyl out (love the sleeves and artwork), placing it on your deck and dropping the needle down but unfortunately for me that's where it ends. Vinyl sound quality/musicality is just poor, I can only liken it to listening to a digital source with a pair of foam bungs in my ears, it fails on all levels.

 

[The_Lhc]

I just wondered if digital had got a bit closer, in terms of musicality and involvement.

I don't get this I'm afraid, digital recordings sound far better to me.

I can understand the sense of occasion from getting your vinyl out (love the sleeves and artwork), placing it on your deck and dropping the needle down but unfortunately for me that's where it ends. Vinyl sound quality/musicality is just poor, I can only liken it to listening to a digital source with a pair of foam bungs in my ears, it fails on all levels.

Then you've been listening to a very bad system. I've got vinyl and Sonos, the Sonos gets used in the rest of the house but in the living room, where I have the TT and a Sonos Connect we only ever listen to vinyl now. I did a comparison once with a boxset I bought which had CDs and vinyl in it, cueing up the same track on both the TT and the Sonos and switching between the two, the difference in absolute quality wasn't particularly noticable, what was noticable was the depth of the soundstage, on the Sonos (lossless CD rip) everything sounded like it was coming from the same plane or level, switching to the vinyl you could hear the drums move back in the soundstage, as if they were sitting behind the keyboard and bass player, it was quite a stark difference and not one I was even looking for. In terms of involvement the TT won hands down, with that recording at least.

 

[Sospri]

I have done the same test and got the same result , the soundstage was vastly improved.................

 

[Frank Harvey]

This is something I've mentioned many times. Vinyl seems to have a more three dimensional soundstage - not all CDs sound flat, but a surprising amount do.

I can understand those that don't like vinyl because of scratches, warps, having to get up to change sides, etc etc, but when people state that vinyl fails on 'all levels', then there's an agenda. I've seen it a few times, particularly from 'the one who shall not be named'

Regardless of whether CD is any good or not, it's been around for thirty years, and it is now on the way out. Records have been around for over 100 years, and like Phil Collins, shows no signs of disappearing, despite a downturn over the last twenty years. So there's not much point to the vinyl bashing, as those who enjoy it will still continue to buy it, and considering there's far more choice now than there was ten years ago, we'll be buying much more of it.

 

[Freddy58]

"Sounstage", interesting. That's something I'd forgotten about. I can only speak from memory, but I can only recall hearing those voices as if suspended in mid-air from vinyl, not digital. I'm probably wrong though

Much is made (rightly so) about how fragile vinyl is, but I can recall how frustrating it was loading up a cd into my Denon DCD500 only to get the message "Error", or words to that effect