Vinyl vs. top-notch digital

From what I've read, it appears there is a consensus in our community that a high-quality analog rig playing a good pressing will beat a top notch digital system playing a well-recorded and mastered CD.

That Vinyl is better than Digital is indeed the consensus of an extremely knowledgeable group of experts, such as Michael Fremer. Check out his website and while you are at it - how about a set of Pear Anjou cables?

Albertporter is so right. The goal of this hobby is to get to the music that moves you. I have an Ayre C5xe which is also one of the best digital players around. I remember working on my Masters in Music,when all of my music professors had very, very mediocre record players. When asked about that, they told me that they "fill in" what isn't there...they can actually hear what the second violins are doing by being an "active" listener. To me, however, I get a kick out of hearing what those second violins are doing...so, I listen at least twice to the piece...once for the music, and another time for the sound. I am able to get pleasure from both kinds of listening, but in truth, the music is formost. In listening to digital, it is convenient, and a no worry task. When the drawer opens, you put the silver disc in and listen. The turntable requires vast energy expenditures to make sure its as good as it can be. Cartridges settle, and with it comes more adjustments. Although I have a table that is known for its stability, and not needing adjustments, I seem always to check and slightly change something. There are times when just Redbook CD's can sound much better than SACD, or DVD Audio - or Vinyl, there are times when vinyl just trounces the CD, and SACD can be better or worse as well. I seem to prefer the vinyl sound as to digital - even at its best..and vinyl at its not so best. There seems to be a naturalness of air, that digital doesn't quite have - even if the lows may be lower, the highs sweeter, etc. As I write this, I just happen to prefer that naturalness that vinyl has. I experienced this naturalness with my old Rega P-25 with a Grado Sonata. Although the sound I have now is far better (the table, arm, and cartridge have all been very much upgraded), but I still preferred vinyl even then. This post is very circuitous, because there really isn't an answer. You gave up the big bucks for your Meridian, so - what the hell, get a good turntable setup.

Jeff, Albert and Stringreen offer excellent perspectives with which I concur. The challenge in answering your question is that the answer will be different for each of us depending on our listening priorities. Like Albert, I prefer listening to vinyl. I've listened to a lot of high end digital, but I continue to stay with vinyl as my preferred source.

Ultimately, the only way to answer your first question is with your own ears after listening to some systems that have been set up well for playing vinyl. That will not be most dealer setups, unfortunately.

To take a stab at an answer that I think is at least directionally correct: To match or exceed good high end digital these days, my experience suggests you should plan to spend as much on the vinyl playback as you have on the digital playback. Plan on investing something north of $10,000 for turntable, tonearm, cartridge and phono stage. Less or more will depend on how much the strong points of vinyl resonate with your listening priorities. (For me, the match point will be less because of my listening priorities.)

To address your second question: In my experience, "bad" LPs are not better than good CDs. OTOH, good LPs are common and their sonic virtues easily exceed those of the same recording released on CD. The quality of LPs is indeed variable, but the same is true of CDs. For both LPs and CDs, the quality of the work done by the original recording engineer, the mastering engineer and the pressing plant all impact the sonic merits of the finished product. If one shifts to listening to some of the 45 rpm vinyl reissues available (the 45 rpm jazz reissues from Analogue Productions and Music Matters, for example), I'm hearing about as close to master tape reproduction as I think I'm ever likely to experience. For an interesting discussion of this topic, read the comments from mastering engineer Steve Hoffman about his experiments when he had the "Waltz for Debby" master tape in house: What sounds just like the master tape: CD, Vinyl, SACD or an Open Reel tape copy?
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If you're happy with digital save your money for high-rez digital downloads, which I think is the next format we'll see.

You would think that vinyl is the only way to listen to music by reading the audiophile magazines, but the numbers don't back that up. Below are the numbers for albums shipped and albums sold for 2007 from 2 different industry groups.

1. According to the Recording Industry Association of America, manufacturers' shipments of LPs jumped more than 36 percent from 2006 to 2007 to more than 1.3 million. Shipments of CDs dropped more than 17 percent during the same period to 511 million, as they lost some ground to digital formats.

2. According to Nielsen SoundScan, of total album sales for 2007:
vinyl makes up about 0.2%
digital downloads are 10%
cds are 89.7%

The 0.2% equals 990,000 vinyl albums sold in 2007, up 15.4% from 858,000 units sold in 2006.

I think the number of used cds purchased compared to used vinyl purchased would also show that hundreds of used cds are sold for every used vinyl album sold. Just my two cents. I have no problem with anybody who prefers vinyl to cd. We all have different ears, tastes and gear. Listen to what you enjoy most.

I'm curious to hear from anyone who has been able to obtain superlative vinyl playback through a digital preamp/processor like the Meridian. I suppose it's possible, but it's certainly antithetical to the usual approach of analog uber alas.

If I were starting over & wanted to put short money in all the right places, I'd go cheap on TT with a replinthed Lenco idler, arm of choice, relatively inexpensive very low output MC such as Denon or Dynavector, with the majority of funds into a high-gain SS or hybrid phono section such as Klyne or VSE with 70db or greater gain. This approach gets very close to the best of what vinyl has to offer, while obviating the cost and degradation of a step-up transformer.