CDs Vs LPs

tattooedtrackman,

Thanks for this thread and All that have kept it civilized while expressing your opinions. Wish the rest on this forum would pickup on this.

 I am 66 years and that means vinyl was my start in music. 3000 LPs, 83 CDs. 

When CD came out; it did not sound good to most of us. But it did start to get better. Now we’re finding that CDs do sound pretty good. Lazy and no tics and pops really sold it before SQ happened.

 I bought my LP12 in 1988. My friends thought I was crazy to keep going the vinyl route and not switch to CDs.

 I moved to Juneau, AK. There was a Record Shop that specialized in audiophile vinyl. Still, people were dumping their vinyl collections and Seattle, WA was a clearing house for audiophile and Japanese vinyl. For 5 years, I made it a point to cleanup all the best that I could find and afford. $5-8 for mint audiophile and Jap. vinyl in those days. MoFi UHQRs $25 mint - $35 sealed.

 I have had my modded Technics 1200G with Triplanar arm for 9-10 weeks now. This will be my Final rig.

Yes, Vinyl is a lot more effort. Can’t play in a car. Can’t get the recordings you want, on and on.

So far, The recording that is on CD and not vinyl. Frank Zappa  “The Yellow Shark”;  MoFi, press a UD1S copy of this please.

Happy with my system and records. Have the time to enjoy. Been doing this for so long; I don’t really mind the extra effort. The Technics TT almost brings the ease of CD to vinyl.

Just my rambling thoughts. Enjoy the music. Best to All on this Journey.

I listen to both. Personally I believe a lot has to do with your play back system. I will sight an example with my system. I was using a Samsung universal Blue Ray player (CD's sounded like crap), then I borrowed a Parasound CD player and ran it through my Parasound DAC, (better but no cigar), vinyl still much better, then I bought an Oppo 203 I run direct into my VTL 5.5 preamp and the improvement was dramatic. I now actually enjoy CD's. As far as clicks and pops with vinyl that simple shows lack of care for the album, I do not have clicks and pops and some of my collection goes well into the 60's. 

I like vinyl; just sounds better to me.  I have about 400 CD's and about 250 LP's, some of which are duplicates.  When I want the best sound, I always go for the LP.  If I am sleepy, though, as others have mentioned, I  go for the CD.

I don't have any doubt that records require a lot more effort to sound good.  Hating pops and clicks, I clean each record on my SmartMatrix Pro by Clearaudio before each use.

I think that you need to spend quite a bit to get really good sound from vinyl.  You need a good phonostage, turntable, cartridge and record cleaning machine.  A Pass Labs XP-15, Rega RP10 with Apheta2 cartidge and Clearaudio record cleaning machine retails for nearly $12,000.  For a middle class guy, that's painful, if not simply out of reach.  Sounds great, though.

I have a Modwright Oppo 105D cd player with the upgraded tubes, and it sounds among the best of CD players I have heard for $5,000 and under.

Whenever I listen to a well recorded album, when it's over, I just lift the queuing arm and smile.  

A very subjective question. Personally I prefer..............wait for it...........both. I may be somewhat nostalgic, I run two seperate systems, one strictly analog ie tube equipment, TT, Cassette  (soldRTR) and one digital ie CD, Processor, Server etc. Both have awesome sound and SQ. Depending on the mood I prefer one over the other. I certainly prefer the simplicity of digital all the time but I enjoy the labor intensity of analog at certain times. I have noticed that some recordings just sound better (warmer?)on vinyl than Cd at least to me. Maybe it's the recessed memories. Either format is fantastic.