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

Music Hall MMF 2.1 (my first TT) on a freshly vacuumed copy of Rush 2112 (Nitty gritty 2.5) through a crappy RadioShack phono stage into a cheap Denon receiver and a pair of Mirage FXR-7's.  I have the same album on CD.  The vinyl sounded so much more smooth, the highs were not harsh...all the normal vinyl cliche's apply...liquid, dynamic, tight bass...Geddy's vocals sound amazing...Alex's guitar...

I have since upgraded everything...but vinyl still rules for me.  I have about 2,000-3,000 digital albums all ripped to my QNAP NAS, and I still listen to digital (mobile / car and when I'm lazy at home) but for critical listening, I love vinyl the best...particularly for jazz.  Pepper Adams all day long!

Current 2 channel rig is Music Hall MMF9.1/Goldring Eroica LX LOMC/Budgie SUT/Hagerman Bugle self-built-kit phono stage with dedicated power supply, Emotiva XMC-1/Emotiva XPA-1 Gen II monoblocks and GoldenEar Triton Ones.  I also have two pairs of Mirage M3si's with freshly re-foamed mids that I love and will never part with, and I sometimes put in an Audible Illusions Modulus II for the phono stage for some vacuum tube goodness added to the chain in lieu of the Hagerman.

Reviewing comments of those who abandoned vinyl in favor of cd only later to return to vinyl I am struck by how this reflects on the flaw inherent in blind a/b listening tests.

Like many others I whole heartedly embraced cd when it was first introduced.  Hard to deny it's convenience, lack of clicks and pops sharp highs and tight, impactful bass.   It was only after extended listening that digital's flaws became evident.  The air, bloom and smoothness just was not there.  In short most cd's were not musical.  This realization does not come from short term a/b comparison.

While more recent high rez digital files are very close if not the equal of analog, if I purchase music I want to be able to unpack it, hold it in my hands and place it in or on my player.  Knowing it is on my hard drive is just not the same.

The question is not yet complete, so we will likely not find the correct answer.

We are not finished defining the psychoacoustics of how the ear works - what the ear expects and needs to enable it to decode and identify a quality signal.

Engineering terms and weighting does not specifically or directly apply in perfection. That would be an assumption by those who use engineering terms, methods and weighting when measuring and comparing signal creation and reproduction methods.

However the generalization is strong.

That the ear does not use math, it uses a specific methodology in a physical realm.

Then we have the differences in each individual's physical aspects and their personal neural development and employment, as a genetic and upbringing scenario.

So we get to having different emphasis in desires and exceptions in those physical biological scenarios.

In that (the human biological package), the generalization is strong.

But both are not detailed specific related aspects, they are generalizations... and are laid on top of the scenario as if they are the perfected fundamentals of the question or equation.

Since the question obviously remains unanswered in a way clear enough for all involved, they are obviously not the specifics of a totally functional question.

But both are not detailed specific related aspects, they are generalizations... and are laid on top of the scenario as if they are the perfected fundamentals of the question or equation.

Since the question obviously remains unanswered in a way clear enough for all involved, they are obviously not the specifics of a totally functional question.

As best I can make out this statement is false.

We know that the ear converts distortion into tonality. Further, we know the kinds of distortions made by digital and analog systems.

We also know that the ear is tuned to be most sensitive at birdsong frequencies (Fletcher Munson). So any distortions occurring in that range will be easily detected by the ear.

The distortions of analog tend to be harmonics of the input signal.

The distortions of digital tend to be intermodulations between the scan frequency and the signal (aliasing).

Analog systems tend to lower ordered harmonics (particularly in the case of the LP, where the mastering process makes very little distortion; most of it occurs in playback). These tend to be less audible to the ear and are interpreted as 'warmth'.

The distortion (aliasing) of digital systems manifests as 'birdies'- so called because that's exactly what they sound like. These tend to be higher in frequency, and since the ear generally uses higher ordered harmonics as loudness cues and because the ear is particularly sensitive in this range, and also because the ear converts distortion into tonality, the result is a 'crispness', a brightness inherent in the recording.

Analog hiss, ticks and pops are not always inherent, and often sit in the speaker while the music itself exists in three dimensions. Thus its possible to listen past such artifacts (keeping in mind that the phono preamp can be a major contributor to ticks and pops if it has an unstable design, which is quite common), whereas with digital, the artifact is pretty well built into the resulting signal.

I am confident that this will change in time- it already has changed a lot since the bad old days of digital. Were this difference not there, digital would have replaced analog long ago, no looking back and no mistake and no endless analog digital debate (which is older than the Internet).

So in spite of my long diatribe, you really don't have to know anything more than the fact that analog is still very much here and alive when it really shouldn't be. The market likes it and kept it around for a reason.

So we can answer unequivocally that the highlighted statements are false and that we really do in fact have an answer on this. 

Industry wise, source wise, we’re looking at the takeover of the market by the one hit wonder.

A one hit wonder that will likely become a multimillionare overnight from said one hit.

The current leaderboard example of this coming trait, is in that most wired of countries, Korea. It is PSY, with ’Gangnam Style’.

Politics, business, and anything else you care to mention will move in the same direction. We’re seeing it happen now.

As the physical basis of memory and recollection in the masses is decreased to zero, their societal and cultural anchor points will be loosened and they can be changed (slowly) into whatever is of the will of the hands at the given controls.

Humanity will begin shifting fast in the next few decades. The question is into what. The physical mechanism of life in humans cannot change all that fast but the clothes of society and culture can change fairly quickly, in comparison. We now know, in recent work gone public (there is likely considerable work that may not be public) from multiple branches of medicine and similar areas (ie, genetics) that humans can change their genes fairly quickly and it is possible and in every person, that some minimum change in genetics can and does happen in the single lived life. Never mind that of passed on generational changes. So a careful manipulation of a society in a state of impermanence, ie a life in digital reflection, can and will inform genetics. It is our history that prevents this or slows it from occurring as quickly as it is truly capable of.

It’s like having the only copy of a program in active memory. If systems crash or mods and alterations fail or cause grief, there’s nothing left to recover. In such a scenario, the back-up is the physical reality of the physicality of the genotype in action. Which, at the given time, may not have a functional overlay in the thrust of the given society and culture.

This coming scenario, planned or not... will be taken advantage of by interested groups. Splits in humanity, or separations in to groupings that did not previously exist, may be the new norm. 500 years from now, we may have a new form of separation of genotypes that is so pronounced that it is easily recognizable and labelled. New science says it is not only possible and that minimal forms of it have always been happening, albeit in an atmosphere of noise so great that it levels out to moving toward a near zero. A micro upward trend, in some given direction. What we call evolution in an atmosphere of complexity.

The coming fluid or greased societies and cultures of a truly digital age, will allow for this phenomena to emerge in a more obvious fashion. The alpha-beta-delta-gamma nightmare, in it’s genesis point, possibly.

If those groups (of manipulators of scenarios) be nationalized, expect a nightmare of conflict, as the given manipulators, being humans, will make mistakes in their assessments of what they desire -and what they do.

Your records and CD’s going missing are only a small component of the signs of what is to come. They are a critical one, as they are about human desires and emotions, in the flow of life. Which are core components of human life. These sort of components (emotions and desires) are a core point in the how and why of those given genetic changes over time and in the given lifetime. It is most pronounced in the changes of the sperm of the male, at the time of fertilization. The male and it's life stresses and conditions prior to and in the production of sperm... are what enables these the most pronounced of these noted changes. That your stresses in life, at the moment of conception, informs your child's genetics. The past -70-100 years of conflict in the middle east serves as a potential example of how this works. There are other areas of the world that can show this effect, but the current one on most people's minds -who may be reading this- is of the Middle east. Baby boomers from war zones were actually the test bed that illustrated the genetic changes in sperm - as a reality.

So it becomes and audiophile (mostly male) scenario and question, to at least a small degree. Know what you are living through. Know what you are witnessing.

Music has always been that of living memory, so it is somewhat immune, in some ways, regarding manipulation. But digital overlays, a VR overlay of a sort, is a thing we are undergoing regarding this ’memory over time’ aspect of electronic music and the scenario surrounding it.

No answers here, just a logical expansion of the questions into their true space or envelope of connectivity in the overall human scenario.