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!
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!