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What is the reason for this? (Digital vs Vinyl Question)

I recently bought new speakers - GoldenEar Triton One.R towers - to pair with my Naim Uniti Star. My set-up for digital is the Naim with Ethernet, Qobuz & Tidal HiRes organized and played through Roon. With all of my other systems until now I preferred the sound of vinyl over digital. I have a Rega Planar 3 tt with Rega Fono preamp. I spin the highest quality records you can get - Mofi 1 Step, Analogue Productions, Classic Records, etc. etc. I've been listening for days trying to convince myself otherwise because of the $$ I've spent on records but the digital chain just sounds better to my ears. The question is: Is this because my new speakers are revealing the disparity between digital and analog better than lesser speakers I've used in the past (Monitor Silver, PSB Platinum, etc.) or is it because some speakers just match better with digital vs vinyl or is it because with the Naim streamer / DAC I've just put together a better digital front end and need to upgrade my tt and / or phono preamp?  
jdm11
charles1dad's avatar
charles1dad
10,250 posts
 
"Simply enjoy both and upgrade as needed, I don't get the angst over which format is best. Both are capable of artist in room amazement"

@sns,  so true!  Concise and excellent summation.
Charles 
headphonedreams
527 posts
 
@sns
"Simply enjoy both and upgrade as needed, I don’t get the angst over which format is best. Both are capable of artist in room amazement"

I agree with the genral thought that both are good but I don’t really think "needed" is the right word. "Upgrade as *wanted*" may be better. We generally don’t need better sound but boy do we want it. And that want includes taking budget into consideration.

My advice for op is to think about how much more money you are willing to spend. If it is not very much than keeping everything as is is a very good choice. Maybe buy a new cartridge to try to improve the analog side. You may of course then end up wanting to also upgrade the digital again. My thinking is that the future investment in digital will serve you better since you have a lot of cd’s and can start to stream also. That is a lot of music that already sounds good and might sound even better. But back to budget, a better dac may cost $1k - $3k and maybe that is too much, at least for now. Then just enjoy what you have.
mahler123
3,367 posts
 
  I'm  late to the thread and I agree with a lot that has been said here.  I embraced CDs when they were new and immediately preferred them to vinyl.  Around 20 years ago used record stores became big and I spent a lot of time in them, coming across many records that had never made it to digital or were only available in lossy formats.  So I bought a tt and began buying lps and steadily upgraded my analog front end.  Eventually all my sought after recordings became available losslessly in digital and it took me a few years to have to admit that despite I all I had spent on the vinyl end, I always preferred the digital version, even if I was using a cheap digital front end.  Eventually I sold off the analog front end and the records and due to the resurgence of vinyl made a nice profit which I turned into a killer DAC.
   My point is that we can become so emotionally invested in a format that we lose our objectivity.  
jnovak's avatar
jnovak
425 posts
 
CAKYOL,
"I still like listening to vinyl but recently i discovered that i like actually "looking at it" more than the listening part."

CAKYOL, you hit the nail right on the head! The one thing you missed is;
People "want" to want vinyl". My stepson was explaining to me one day why records sounded better. I asked him whose system he heard this on?
He didn't. He read about it! So much gets perpetuated by ink rather than our ears. 

 
verdantaudio's avatar
verdantaudio
1,500 posts
 
Someone above mentioned Dynavector.  That is a perfect upgrade in terms of cartridge.  10x, or 20x. Whichever you can afford.  You will get no noise issues with that Dynavector.  Rega grounds differently than some other tables and you can get some noise with Grado or say Ortofon Cadenza cartridges. 

Then get the best phone stage you can.  Once you move away from Rega cartridges, you will find that Rega phono stage will not deliver at the same level. Not sure where your budget will fall.  Vet with the group here to flag any big issues in terms of quality.  There are a few units I can think of that would be in your budget that I would avoid as not very good.  

Chord, Musical Fidelity and Rogue are all very safe in terms of phono stage quality.  
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