Does Anyone Think CD is Better Than Vinyl/Analog?

Hello,
To start with the basics. It comes down to the recording. Garbage in, garbage out. Some remastered recordings are good like Abby Road. Others make good frisbees. As far as what we hear I have to say records as long as you have a pretty good TT and phono preamp. We are talking $1000 to $1500 minimum for both new and a good resolving system. If you don’t have that kind of budget then it’s CDs. Especially if you have a nice DAC and a decent transport. I am bot going to get into the cost of each media. My motto is- buy once cry once. Budget limiting I say try to get to the next level if you are close. Do you know how many people buy a Rega P3 for $1150 only to spend a $1000 dollars on upgrades to basically turn it into a Rega P6. In the end you still don’t have the P6 plinth. They trade or sell the modded P3 for $1000 to get a P6. I call it the $3000 Rega P6. Just buy the P6 and spend the $1000 on records. 

" Does Anyone Think CD is Better Than Vinyl/Analog?"

     Mkgus,
     You do realize that the title of your thread is mistitled, right?  I think everyone participating on it thus far understands that a more appropriate title, that would be much more honest and just cut to the chase already, would be:
" Does Anyone 'Like' CD Better Than Vinyl/Analog?

     So, with your true inquiry and intent now more explicitly revealed, I'll continue to proceed down this more honest and constructive path. I think skyscraper made 7 good points about cd vs vinyl. The main points that I and probably numerous others consider, when deciding on their preferred source material and gear, are his following points:

1) The pops, clicks and and other surface noises of vinyl are too distracting and appear even on albums that look to be in perfect condition.
7) You can't beat the ease of use of CD's, and don't need a record cleaning machine for them like you should use with your records.

     Many individuals choose and like cds and other digital sources, in other words, due to the lack of surface and background noise and the greater convenience with cds and digital in general. As I stated on my previous post, however, cds certainly do not represent 'perfect sound forever' mainly due to poor master/mixing decisions and the fact that they don't take advantage of the superior performance specs and capacities of cd technology.
     I also believe that the viewpoint, that home audio enthusiasts are making a binary choice between digital cds or analog vinyl for their preferred playback sources.  As many posters have mentioned, many utilize both playback formats. 
     But there are also many individuals, including myself, who realize the original high technical capacities and expectations of the digital cd format were sacrificed due to poor master mixing decisions (the loudness wars and uni-volume) and the inability to take advantage of the benefits of recording direct to digital.  Many cds are just transfers of the original multi-track reel to reel tape master recordings to the cd format.  These transfers result in zero sound quality improvements over the original rtr master version, but they are at least in a format less susceptible to degradation with each playing.
    As a result many, including myself, have progressed beyond the use of just the compromised digital cd format to the use of higher resolution digital downloads that were recorded direct to digital.  
     It's very important to realize, however, that the recording of the music, whether played live at an event or in a studio,  needs to be directly made to high resolution digital to capture the musical event in the clearly higher capacity and higher sound quality resolution. 
     Often, companies will advertise recordings as "remastered to high resolution digital" even though it is actually just a transfer of the original music event captured on rtr tape in the older, inferior and regular resolution format.  But the original master recording is like a photograph, captured at the resolution the recording equipment was capable of.
      Subsequent transfer to a higher resolution format does nothing to improve the sound quality of the original recording. This also explains why some people claim not to notice a difference between a cd and the same song/group "remastered to high resolution digital"; they're just comparing the original to a virtually identical copy/transfer of it. 

Tim

Djones  +1

as for the poster that said he never got the same emotional response from digital as he got from analog, I concur.  I don’t know how many times I had the urge while listening to an lp to kick my turntable in frustration after hearing a favorite passage of music ruined by warping in the lp and the sound of bacon frying.  I have never had the urge to kick a CD player

Foremost to mention that nowadays every recording is digital. Secondly, unless they are cut directly to vinyl, LP’s went through further analogue conversion adding hum and hiss, not to even to speak about the same limiters on dynamics that supposedly affect CDs.

The real problem with digital is actually not digital but analogue: added EMI/RFI interference and imperfect clocking adversely affect the reconversion to analogue. A good digital system has to therefore spend inordinate amounts on accurate clocking and signal clean-up.

On a direct comparison between the two it is ultimately the individual care taken in the final mastering that wins the day.

Between Vinyl (Zyx Universe on Dynavector DV507Mk2 to Zyx Artisan) and Digital (Innuos Zenith Mk3, Intona Isolator to Antelope Zodiac Platinum with Audiophile Rubidium 10M clock) I can demonstrate superiority of either depending on the source material chosen(in each case comparing Vinyl to the streamed version of the same recording)

Finally, after a lot of tinkering streaming is starting to beat CD transfers to the Zenith SDD. But there again, it was a long way of trial and error to get to that outcome.

I would just like to add that you do not need to spend $50K on a vinyl playback system to get SOTA performance. $30K will do the job nicely. The only problem with this other than most people still can't afford it is that a SOTA digital file playback system costs $4K. They are trying to juice it with dedicated Streamers and rippers but nothing beats a Mac Mini and a big hard drive. People with limited resources can get excellent sound from very inexpensive digital equipment. Why spend so much more on a vinyl rig? The extra money would be better spent on upgrading loudspeakers. Those of us over 55 grew up with vinyl and have an emotional attachment to it. While there are young people getting into vinyl
it is a very small minority compared to the young people who only listen to their phones and computers. I think vinyl took off again because those over 55 have discharged their children an now have extra money to burn and they want to relive their younger day playing vinyl. Once we are gone what happens? Will vinyl survive in the end? I won't be around to find out.
Will manual transmissions survive? I say no. Not enough cars around to learn on.
Sous vide then Torch!!