CD Got Absolutely Crushed By Vinyl

I would rather carry a hard drive full
of hi res digital files than 800 lbs of
vinyl. DJ’ing all vinyl and moving it all around when you move gets old. Throw tubes into the fold if you seek that warmth vinyl gives. 

All day I have been comparing Analog to HD Drawdown; now that's where you have more of a level playing field.

The first record up was Santana "Abraxas" on HD Drawdown. It was fantastic in every way; 3D and all.

Next came my 5K analog rig. That included at least 1K of tweaks; plus as a result of my experience and knowledge, it hits above the 5K expenditure. Before I began this contest, I thought it would be a draw, but the analog had "slightly" more air and black background.

Where the analog clearly exceeded the digital was in "gestalt". Sometime ago, when an audiophile fanatic would call me over to listen with him, he would use this word "Gestalt" a lot, that was before I even knew what it meant.

"Gestalt"
an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts. This is a very important word to an audiophile; it's one that you learn the definition of by "Osmosis"; that's when you listen to music with such intensity that you hear into the depths of the musician; that's the difference between sound and music.

While the HD Drawdown sounded as good as I thought it could get, the rig put me in a trance. Here again, we are talking about a subjective emotional response. The bottom line is; the analog was only better after you reached another level of listening and hearing into the music.

If a person didn't already own a ton of vinyl, I wouldn't recommend analog over digital, when you can get so much without plunking down 5K. No, I don't have time to listen to anyone who is going to tell me you can get it cheaper than that, and that's 5K plus experience and knowledge, which is every bit as important as the 5K, because just plunking down 5K will not get you what analog has to offer; that's why some guy will say I plunked down 10K and still didn't get what was promised.

So Orpheus, you’re saying that CD is good for lazy people who don’t want to learn how to do new things? You’re probably right. Most people are simpletons who don’t know much of anything and have even worse judgement. Thanks for the compliment!

I know what Orpheus means about the "Gestalt" of vinyl.

It really gets me as well. There’s just an "it" factor that draws me in and gives me this big "aaah..." when listening.

That doesn’t make digital sound bad to me though. Sometimes I really enjoy going back to digital for it’s own virtues.

My previous vinyl rig was more modest - a Micro Seiki turntable and cheap old Rotel phono stage. At that point vinyl still had an "it" factor that made it different than digital - a classic "warmer, crisper" sound.But it also sounded a bit on the nostalgic, slightly lower-fi side vs digital. I’d still tend to listen to a lot more digital.

But when I upgraded my vinyl rig to a much better turntable, cartridge and phono stage, that’s when vinyl seemed to leap ahead of digital in terms of what I wanted to play. Now it doesn’t have that slightly creaky nostalgia sound, but rather the noise floor is so low, the detail so clear and smooth, the sound so big, rich yet punchy and focused, that it just tends to sound "better" or more satisfying to my ears than digital (generally speaking). It’s not better technically, but it has a texture, heft and sense that it is that much more detached from the speakers making the sound while simultaneously having a "right there in the air in front of me" texture that blows me away.

I just received 3 albums I bought on discogs, from 1977, 1980 and 1984.All three are mint condition and dead silent wax, with absolutely gorgeous sound quality and the musical content just makes me giddy.Flicking through pixels looking at selections to play via my phone app (streaming to system) just isn’t nearly as fun and satisfying a way to interact with my music collection. And...choke...CDs. Yuck! I don’t mean yuck for sound quality - CDs are great and I ripped all mine lossless. But CDs themselves as physical objects just absolutely suck IMO. I was just down rifling through some of my many hundreds of CDs stored in my basement, and they aren’t pretty lookin’, don’t feel nice in the hand, always feel on the verge of snapping (which they often do), and just have no appeal to me these days.

I get that others, of course, have different experiences and really enjoy everything about CDs.


And also I would not ever try to push anyone toward vinyl.  If you aren't in to it, it's a hassle of sorts.  And can be expensive.  But if someone asks why I like it so much, I'll tell them.