When and how did you, if at all, realize vinyl is better?

It always sounded better to me.

Early on using digital recorders, I noticed that there was this weird distortion, which is an intermodulation with the scan frequency. If you record with an analog sweep tone, its easy enough to hear the distortion. Radio Amateurs describe it as 'birdies'; little chirps and cheeps the accompany the actual sweep tone, clearly not there in the source!

This type of distortion is also called 'inharmonic distortion' as it is not harmonically related to the fundamental test tone.

But the digital world does not like the idea that digital can make a distortion (after all, traditional IM and THD are almost non-existent). So they call this distortion 'aliasing'.

The thing is, the ear converts all forms of distortion into tonality and is particularly sensitive to the frequencies where aliasing occurs; this is why digital tends to sound bright compared to the LP, which inherently lacks this form of distortion.

When we started mastering LPs I discovered that a lot of what I thought I knew about the format was incorrect. For example, you can find people that think LPs can have 'saturation' which is nonsense! Here's why: the mastering amplifiers typically can make about ten times the power needed to turn the cutter head into a cinder. But the cutter head can cut undistorted grooves that no tone arm and cartridge combo could trace long before that cutter is overheated! So its arguable that the LP has more headroom than any other format.

Now when a lacquer is cut, if the stylus is set up right with the right angle and temperature (its heated), the resulting cut has a noise floor that is so quiet that no matter what your playback electronics are they will be the noise floor. IOW the noise floor of a lacquer is easily in the same range as a CD. The noise comes in with analog tapes and the pressing process (QRP, Acoustic Sounds' pressing plant, has done exceptional work in this area BTW, rivaling the actual noise floor of the lacquers).

We also found that any LP record combined with playback system made since about 1960 or so can do 30KHz without difficulty. So the LP has had superior bandwidth for a very long time. Most of its distortion comes in during playback and that is one of its weaknesses. 

I and an audiophile friend realized vinyl was not better when we did direct testing vs. well-recorded CDs.

vinyl is often better than poorly recorded CDs such as the first few years of most releases when CDs made their debut

You will realize vinyl is better if you like snaps, crackles and pops.

This is long, so bear with me.

Worked as a sound engineer for a band during my college years & got pretty good at mixing demo tracks from a TEAC A3440 down to a Tandberg TCD440A (still own that & it works wonderfully).  Used a Rega Planar 2 with an Ortofon OM10 as a basis of comparison and didn't do too badly, or so I thought.

Started selling hifi as my first real job after school and got introduced to Dynavector.  Put a Karat 23 Ruby on the Rega.  Went back to my demo comparisons and encountered an unpleasant surprise to my ego.  Ultimately traded the TEAC for a Sony CDP-101 in 1983.  Its sole advantages were convenience and the blessed end of surface noise.  Otherwise, the available source material was generally awful and the sound quality was just harsh.

In 1984, I lucked into a demo Sota Sapphire with a Magnepan Unitrac arm.  Mounted a DV 23RS on it and was simply blown away.  Open, spacious, natural, defined and every other positive audio buzzword you care to name.  The poor old Sony was not in remotely the same league, no matter how convenient it was.

The 90s rolled around, and I finally decided to try a new CD player.  Went with what was Harmon-Kardon's best at the time.  Dual 16 bit processors and 8x oversampling, I seem to recall.  It was much better than the Sony, but still paled next to my vinyl rig.  Regardless, CDs had begun to rule the shelves, costs were down and the convenience factor was compelling, so I started reserving my table sessions for special occasions.

Shortly after the turn of the century, I became disillusioned with audio.  MP3 files sounded even worse to me than CD, nobody seemed to care about production values and save for the jazz scene, most new music was not my cup of tea.  The H-K finally gave up the ghost and went to its reward. The Sony still worked and still sounded bad.  Life also presented its share of curves to be negotiated.  

Then vinyl started a comeback.  Some new friends began remarking about how "cool" it all was.  My wife and I looked at each other at that, thinking to ourselves "if you only knew..."  Dusted off the rig.  Discovered some entropy had affected my electronics and used the opportunity to upgrade.  Time had finally caught up with the Sony, so a new disc player was called for.  Sent the table out to be refurbished, got a new arm, cartridge & cable.  

Picked up what I believed to be the best all-in-one disc unit I could afford after demoing dozens.  I wasn't disappointed, either.  After nearly 30 years of unrewarding digital playback, my new deck was actually musical.  Natural, even.  And it imaged!  It even played SACD, DVD-A and all the video formats, too.  An elegant bit of engineering.  Then my table got back from refurb.

Time to do the A-B.  Plenty of material for it in both analog and digital, with digital being vastly improved through HD downloads.  Repeated the exercise with just about every new release that has piqued my interest since.  I can honestly say that digital has become much better, but I remain underwhelmed.  No matter what kind of digital source I use, the limitless soaring of the horns on Harry James' D2D Sheffield recordings, the wall of sound in the classic MFSL UHQRs like Crime of the Century, the definition in the Passport studio pressings, the genuineness and humor in the Zappa Barking Pumpkin first editions and the personal presence of Frank Sinatra shining through his first Reprise productions just aren't there.  

I can't give a more precise explanation of my view than that, and after much thought, I'm beginning to believe that's because it's ultimately not something that can be exactly defined.  Music is one of the most, if not the very most, concentrated forms of emotional communication.  Each of us has our own unique emotional mix and reaction set to stimulation of it.  That means there will simply not be a scientifically uniform consensus; it just isn't feasible.

If there is any kind of valid metric to be applied to the digital-vinyl conundrum at present, it might be in comparing the application of Edison's empirical science to that of Moore's Law.  The Edison principle now has 140 years of patient engineering evolution behind it.  Moore's Law posits a geometric progression and has been around for 52 years.  Its application to recorded music still hasn't managed to displace Edison despite far more accelerated development.  One day that may change, but that day isn't today.

Still in the end, it's all about what makes one happy.  We enjoy these kinds of musings because we're audiophiles.  Things that increase our understanding and stimulate our appreciation of music and musical reproduction make for happy listening!

effischer,

Great observations and wonderfully written.

Building my own components my digital system probably beats most vinyl systems.  But my vinyl system beats my digital system.  Happy Listening.