Does Anyone Think CD is Better Than Vinyl/Analog?

This is a subject that routinely comes up for discussion and the main comments never changed. I have been associated with the "high end" audio community as a consumer since 1969, owning various audio systems at all price points that included both vinyl and CD formats. At the end of the day, whether vinyl or CDs sound better is about as subjective as the audio hobby that we love so much. You can analyze all the specs, and do all the comparisons that you desire but at the end of the day the format that one thinks sound best will be a reflection of your individual taste in sound. If it is not based upon how it sounds to you then ones opinion is rather academic. In the end, it seems to be that every person will have an individual opinion of which format is best and they are neither right nor wrong with their thinking. 

Without reading the whole thread. And without going into lengthy explanations.

If we use data terms. LP is a lossy format or let me correct that it is worse than just to be a lossy format.
LP is the equivalent to mp3 plus that it adds sounds that were not in the master to begin with.

The bad reputation CD has it is mostly from bad content that is stored in the CD. When we are in the digital domain it is far easier to apply compression that many record labels want to have on the content. And AFTER compression (loudness) store that data on the CD.
But that is not the fault of the format when that is done. If the content is made to be used in noicy environments (in cars, and as like) and not in a quiet man cave.

In my experience you do not need to plow down so much money into CD playback.
Take some old oppo 85/95/105/205 and use it as transport that plays all formats. Get the digital output from the HDMI out. Connect that to a break out box. So you get the digital your external DAC. Now you can plow money into a good DAC that you also can use for decode when you streaming.

That way you do not need go down that rabbit hole to buy expensive units called CD players. That consists of a transport and a DAC. So more or less when upgrading to a new CD player you logically not upgrading the transport but only the DAC and it surrounding electronics. So you waste money on buying yet another transport that do nothing for the sound quality despite what the marketing wants you to believe. In other words you just upgrading the built in DAC.

Despite all of that above I have plowed down far more money on buying LPs over CDs. But that is of different reasons than for the sound quality.

Like:
I want to hear the new pressing of Adele 25 album. That I heard that are in its way.
(In other words I just want to hear another variant and compare what the differences is against the first pressing. And my old first pressing is getting worn.) 

Talking about wear.. The CD from the 80-ties has NEVER before sounded so good as they do today. When our DACs and electronic is so much better today. 

With my higher end system, I have yet to discover the differences in sound quality via different CD transports.   After I purchased my COS D2v DAC, I use my old EAR Acute as a transport and it sounds great!   

Can someone with a modestly higher end system tell me how much I will gain if any, improvement in sound using a more recent, potentially better transport?  

You will get an improvement from either playing from SSD or streaming. I suggest you explore Innuos, Lumin, Auralic, Aurender streamers. They come with SSDs to which you can load your CDs if you chose not to switch to streaming Qobus or Tidal

fleschler1:
" Can someone with a modestly higher end system tell me how much I will gain if any, improvement in sound using a more recent, potentially better transport?"

Hello fleschler1,

     I agree with antigrunge2, I believe your money would be better spent elsewhere. I think a better transport would offer, at best, only a subtle improvement in sound quality performance.
     This thread has been about cd vs vinyl, which of course, is just a matter of personal preference as it should be. If you already know that you prefer the higher performance capacity/potential and convenience of digital, however, I believe a more significant system improvement would be gained by upgrading your current Redbook digital cd playback system, consisting of a separate cd transport and dac, to a digital system with a digital file storage device/streamer along with your current COS D2v dac.  As antigrunge suggested from his post:

" You will get an improvement from either playing from SSD or streaming. I suggest you explore Innuos, Lumin, Auralic, Aurender streamers. They come with SSDs to which you can load your CDs if you chose not to switch to streaming Qobus or Tidal."

     Since you already have an excellent COS D2v dac, I'm assuming you'd probably want to keep it  If this is the case, you'd only need a good quality hard drive storage device and an interfacing method to remotely organize, display and control storage and playback.
     In my modestly higher end system, I utilize a Synology storage device with 2 TB of hard drive storage capacity, an Oppo 205 universal disc player, a Lumin D2 dac/streamer and an Apple iPad as a GUI (graphic user interface) and remote control for the digital portion of my system. 
     All 3 of these component parts are attached to my wi-fi and, therefore, are able to communicate with each other.  I utilize the iPad, loaded with the very good and included Lumin software app, to remotely view and select what to playback.  I've copied/ripped my entire cd collection to the hard drive that are stored as 16 bit/44.1 KHz lossless APE files and I also have numerous high resolution music downloads stored as 24 bit/96 KHz lossless FLAC files on this same hard drive.  It currently contains over 20,000 hours of music files from all the music genres.  
     I'm not sure how much knowledge and experience you have with the differences between the performance capacities and sound quality levels of regular Redbook cds and the higher resolution digital formats ranging from SACD to 24 bit/96 KHz to DSD playback, but I've discovered that the higher resolution formats are obviously and significantly superior. 
     Not only are the natural high dynamic ranges of musical instruments and voices not compromised by poor engineering/mixing decisions present on many cds, such as the 'loudness wars' and uni-volume, but I perceive the whole presentation as being more highly detailed, with extremely solid and stable stereo sound stage imaging that's much more realistic, palpable and natural overall.   
     I've also found it's very important to realize that the quality and method of recordings, however, are just as important with hi-res recordings as those on any other format.  I've discovered the hi-res downloads/recordings from the Sound Liaison Music Shop in Europe are exceptionally good.   Anything from Carmen Gomes I highly recommend:
https://www.soundliaison.com/ 
 
     They utilize high quality but limited miking and mixing techniques and record performers direct to hi-res digital as the musicians play live in their fairly large and acoustically very high quality studio before a small audience.   The quality of these recordings, that I typically download as 24 bit/96 KHz FLAC files are extraordinary and obviously superior to any of my ripped cd files. 
     The only downside is that their unique recording techniques limits their catalog to newer, lesser known musicians and groups.  The reason is that the 'provenance' of a master recording, which just means the entire specific history of the master recording, is critical in determining the playback quality of the subsequent recording copies made from the original master. 
   The important characteristic of a recording's provenance to understand is that it is basically set in stone once it has been originally made.  For example, all masters originally recorded on reel to reel tape are limited to the optimum capacities of that format, which includes such factors as its signal to noise ratio, frequency and dynamic range as well as any other limiting optimum specifications and capacities.
     This means transferring a reel to reel original master recording to a higher capacity hi-res format, and claiming it has been "remastered to high resolution digital ", results in absolutely no actual performance or sound quality improvements since the original provenance of the original master format dictates its optimum performance and sound quality.  
     As I understand it, HD Tracks is not alone in using this very ineffective and dubious method of transferring standard resolution original masters to a hi-res digital format and claiming their retailed copies and downloads are "remastered to high resolution digital format". 
      It's why I never purchase from these companies and probably explains why many individuals claim to not perceive any differences between the same band/song on their original cd and the "remastered to hi-res digital" cd they just purchased at 3-4 times the price.  It makes much more sense once it's understood they're comparing the original cd track to a virtually exact copy of the original track transferred to a higher resolution bucket or format. 
      Lastly, I hope relating my personal experiences with the extremely high quality direct to hi-res digital master recording downloads I've utilized properly explains why I believe its an ideal method of recording masters.  I hope this method becomes the predominate method of recording new music asap since it's not only sota in my opinion, it's a much more durable medium that doesn't degrade with usage and you're literally purchasing an exact copy of the original master with each download. Ideal, right?
I hope this was useful to you fleschler1,
Tim