CD vs. Vinyl

My analog source is better than my digital source because I built it that way and because I hate digital recordings. So for guys like me their is no debate. Never has been. I like reading these threads solely for the purpose of free entertainment.

I think it is pretty obvious to anyone who is not deaf that the spring drive Victrola was and still is the pinnacle of audio quality.

For starters, stereo is just a gimmick. Worse, electrons are not natural sound vibrations and never ever will be. So any system that uses the modern A to E or E to A (Analog to Electron or Electron to Analog) converter approach can't possibly ever sound correct.

There are several $100,000 systems here on Audiogon and none of them can hold a candle to a good 1920 Victrola (where mechanical vibrations are used directly from the vinyl to make sound - a completely natural and lossless approach).

Shadorne I've got one of those together with a pile of steel needles and shellacs of Amos & Andy and Princeton fight songs. I assure you the Victrola is over-rated outside of Antiques Road Show.

LOL Shadorne, nice post. Mapman, you say one thing I find a bit strange - "When digital is done well, transients and microdynamics are more challenging for amps to reproduce accurately. When all this works well though the overall dynamics of the resulting sound is more vivid and lifelike than vinyl in general, IMHO". Exactly what do you mean by "the overall dynamics of the resulting sound?" If you are speaking of dynamics in the musical sense, as in soft to loud, I would have to strongly disagree - vinyl has so much more dynamic range than CD. This is easily proven by comparing the same recording in both formats, say with a Mahler symphony where there are dynamic extremes in close proximity.

I would also very strongly disagree that digital is more life-like - it is very much the other way around IMO, due in part to the dynamics issue I just mentioned, as well as the resolution of instrumental and vocal timbre. Vinyl also almost always creates a better soundstage than CD, again directly comparing the same recording in the two formats. Yet another reason for me is that many engineers will edit out ambient noise when they digitally process the recordings - I think they think it makes the recording sound cleaner. This is a biggie for me as far as the sound being more lifelike. In some of the orchestral recordings from the "golden age," you get a real sense of the original recording space from the vinyl, and this is very largely lost in a digitally re-mastered version.