Does Anyone Think CD is Better Than Vinyl/Analog?

Acoustic piano has always sounded more natural to my ears on vinyl than on cd, although I foolishly pulled the trigger and dumped all of my vinyl and turntable before I realized the difference. I jumped mainly due to surface noises, even on ECM vinyl, cleaned properly, played with a SME tonearm and Dynavector moving coil cartridge. Now years later, I find many, but not all, SACD releases played through my OPPO to be superior. A comparison of Keith Jarrett’s Sun Bear Concerts in Vinyl, cd, and SACD is quite interesting but that release does sound best to my ears in SACD.

I think the original question was reasonable and sincere. Here's my take on the issue.

I have dived pretty deep into this rabbit hole. One of my eccentricities in this hobby is that I like to collect formats and versions of my favorite recordings. For several tities I have some or all of the following formats: regular vinyl pressing, audiophile vinyl pressing, R2R tape version (usually 7.5 ips), CD, HDCD, SACD, and BluRay. The only format I can't play is DVD-A. My system is capable of good resolution - Thiel CS6 speakers driven by Krell amplification. I have a Denon DP47F Direct Drive turntable with a Hana SL cartridge that goes through a Krell KPE phono stage. I've got 2 CD players and one DAC that will decode HDCD, another player that will do SACD, and another redbook player. The last one is a PS Audio PerfectWave II DAC and Transport which is what I listen to most of the time.

Overall I want to make the point that in my system the CD version and the vinyl version usually sound pretty close. Rarely does one "blow away" the other (they both sound really good). The sound became much more similar when I upgraded to the Hana cartridge. The cartridge I was using before had a hot top end and it sounded better on some recordings and worse on others. The Hana cartridge seems to have a very flat frequency response.

For example, I have several versions of SRV's Texas Flood including the MoFi UltraDisc One Step, Analog Productions 45 RPM pressing, Analog Productions 33 RPM pressing, regular vinyl, MoFi SACD, and regular CD. Comparing the MoFI One step to the SACD (Marantz SA 8005 player) they sound remarkably close. But to be honest the regular CD sounds pretty darn good. The version that stands out is the original vinyl which sounds inferior to the MoFi vinyl and SACD. I have dozens of titles where I have compared different formats to hear the difference. The results are not consistent. As previously mentioned the mastering on different versions can make a huge difference and easily swamps the difference between vinyl and digital. I can safely say that in my experience vinyl is not clearly superior to CD. Sometimes it's better, sometimes it's worse.

When I see someone proselytize that vinyl is absolutely superior to digital I roll my eyes. My theory is that an analog rig is tunable but a digital rig is much less so. The difference in sound between two cartridges can be magnitudes greater than the difference between two DACs. I also agree with a previous post that a vinyl playback rig incorporates significant distortions which are pleasant to the ear. Nothing wrong with that but it means that one vinyl rig may sound very different than another. I just don't trust anyone who expounds absolutes in this hobby. When somebody says tubes are always better than solid state or horns are better than cones I turn my attention elsewhere.

I have several thousand CDs and over a thousand records - many of which I don't have on CD. I don't stream except to use Spotify to try out recordings that I buy in physical format. I love my records but I have not found that my emotional response is any greater for vinyl vs. digital. Both routinely give me chills and both occasionally bring me to tears. However, that's also true for my car stereo so maybe I'm just an emotional mush brain when it comes to music.

If I went out and spent $50,000 on a vinyl rig would records always sound better than CDs played through my $8000 CD player or my $1200 SACD player? I don't know but I kind of doubt it.To answer your original question, I think the preference for vinyl over digital is personal and is wrapped up in a whole bunch of emotional baggage that we all carry. The quality of the equipment that we can buy for reasonable prices these days is incredible. There are a lot of bargains in turntables, phono preamps, and cartridges and you won't have to get a second mortgage to give it a try. You aren't going to know if you will achieve a deep seated emotional connection with vinyl records until you try it.

The cartridge I was using before had a hot top end and it sounded better on some recordings and worse on others.

Yes and it will always be this way as long as you try and stuff the square peg in the round hole.

@8th-note  

Overall I want to make the point that in my system the CD version and the vinyl version usually sound pretty close.

This could be because most of your vinyl was made from digital? I don't even bother to buy vinyl unless it was cut using the original analog master tapes.  You want to experience the source as it was created, not digitized.  If it was digitized and then put on vinyl then a record has no advantages over CD to my ears - in fact it can only be unnecessarily noisier.

@ three-easy-payments

Quite the contrary. The vast majority of records I own are completely analog. It's true that some of the newer vinyl releases were recorded digitally or a digital master was used for the vinyl production but 90% or more of my vinyl collection is way before they used anything but a tape to manufacture a vinyl record. I'm a geezer and most of my records were manufactured in the 60's through the 80's. Later stuff is mostly CD.