Its not vinyl

I have been into vinyl for over 50 years and digital 40 years.

There is a lot of history and progress. Both of the basic amplification and speakers as well as source components.

We have reached the point where either digital or analog can sound the same or better. It depends on your equipment (and values). Because so much depends on the whole system. Also each of us have our conclusions based on our system and past experience and that varies widely. But every day that goes by digital gains ground.

My most recent upgrades finally brought my digital and analog into equality. Both spectacular, musical, and satisfying. While one can argue that there is an analog or a digital sound mostly from a historical perspective. I am going to ask you to suspend that for a moment.

Vinyl and digital are recordings of some original. The sound character… not the notes, and timing, but the tonality, presentation, musicality is determined by either the cartridge, arm, TT and Phonostage. Or the streamer and DAC. If the absolute resolution is roughly similar and greater than your equipment then the sound you get is entirely determined by your equipment.

You can have a really detailed cartridge that scrapes to much high frequency, put into a cheap phono stage and make it sound horrible, edgy and “digital”… a character of old digital. Or you can overly warm digital.

I have a cartridge that is very natural sounding while detailed (Koetsu Rosewood Signature), and I have a very good streamer (Aurender W20SE). My Phonostage and DAC are both Audio Reserch Reference (as are my other components). The result is the same character for both ends. Because Audio Research worked very hard to produce a detailed natural sound… and that means the Phonostage an DAC have the same character. So both digital and analog sound the same. 

So, increasingly as digital matures, the “analog” vs “digital” sound becomes a thing of the past.

Budget digital and analog tends to still have a bit of these characteristics. Also, analog has a bit more detail, so at the really high end, analog has an edge. But not for long as higher resolution become the norm.

So, I hope you can see the controversy will continue for quite a while longer because of system differences and the limited experience of most audiophiles… but that we are at the cross roads and the distinction is no longer really valid.

People that want their digital playback to sound like an LP are deluding themselves! LPs have the inherent problems of surface noise, limited channel separation and summed bass, inner groove distortion and cartridge mistracking, limited dynamic range. 

Tell me a lot isn't lost from a master tape when a master lacquer is cut using a cutter head/stylus/amplifier. Then plating the master lacquer to yield the mothers and thence the stampers. The stampers in use have a limited life. This is how LPs have been made since their invention in 1948 at CBS Labs. 

From a slightly different viewpoint, in most of the LP v. Digital comparisons one reads, they are comparing a commercial LP against the CD version, or perhaps a download or stream.  Particularly with classic rock material, the two releases are often decades apart and few have any clue as to what differences there were in mixing and mastering.

My view is based on my own conversion of hundreds of LPs in my personal collection to digital over a ten or more year period.  That meant I knew exactly where the digital file came from. My experience is that those digital conversions sounded just like the vinyl. As others noted above, the process of making LPs involves a LOT of mechanical steps, each adding its own flavor.  I've also been lucky to hear some open reel tapes over the years direct from recording studios, and they have a flavor that is different than the LPs made from them.  When I converted a few of these open reel that were direct copies from the studio tape, I again found that the digital copy captured the tape's qualities.

In my mind, most of the complaints I hear about digital have more to do with the intentional choices made in the production of the CD or digital file than any inherent incapability of the digital format itself.

I think that if you are using both streaming and vinyl as sources it’s not that one needs to sound better than, or as good as, the other. Both just  need to sound good enough so that you listen to them both.