More convinced of analog than ever

I'll kick the dead horse just one more time...... Applebook makes some good points. And I am one of those who have yet to hear (in my system) CD's or Sacd's match vinyl for realism, immediacy, transparency, and so on. OTOH my digital front end isn't exactly state of the art (sacdmods dv555es).
None of this means I hate digital, or am a snob, or consider myself more intelligent than the next man.... It just means that I prefer vinyl to digital.
It's an opinion, and I don't need statistics, data, or any other hogwash to back it up. However, I'm warning you, I will be back when I get my Modwright Platimun truth!!! (I've heard waaaaaay too much good stuff about this unit)!
peace, love, and damned good music, Harv.

By audiophile standards, very high quality analog to digital converters are fairly cheap, under $3k. Depending upon the quality of the vinyl and the care taken, home vinyl to digital conversions can meet or exceed many commercial CD offerings. This is particularly true if you convert at high sampling/bit depth. The current issue of Stereophile has a detailed article on one such method.

Both formats are pretty much necessary for most modern audiophiles. Only folks who listen to nothing but oldies can live on vinyl only. I think that CD can sound excellent with correctly matched gear and a quality CD production; SACD is even better, and the future for digital is ridiculously high bit-rate formats on Blu-Ray.

Maybe one day, digital will finally overtake vinyl, but for now, the black plastic platter remains my choice for ultimate fidelity, especially with regards to classic rock, jazz, and classical recordings from the '60s to the early '90s.

The surprising thing for me is that in my experience, even current digital releases sound more detailed and resolving on vinyl than on CD --with comparable digital and TT as sources.

Dear Jhonnyb53: This is a post that I posted many time ago on other thread but I think we can use it ( I still think in the same way about ):

+++++ " Dear Musicaudio: +++++ " I dont own a single record, but I have been curious why so many have kept the LP's alive for so long after the digital revolution ..."+++++

Many people, like me, already own hundreds/thousands of LP's when start the CD technology and we already own our analog system. There are a lot of music that we can't get in other way but LP, it will never a realese in CD's.

These between others ( about quality sound reproduction ) are some of the reasons why still alive the LP.

I don't think that your question: +++++ " Is Digital actually better than Analog? " +++++, could have a precise answer because both mediums are totally different and you can't compare apples with bananas or a car with an airplane: it does not have sens.

Today, both mediums have its own advantages and disadvantages and both can live together in an audio system and we can use it often depending our CD or LP priorities.

95% of the recorded music comes through CD technology and this fact tell us that it does not matters about CD vs LP if we want that music then we have to buy CD and we have to have a decent CDP, no question about.

Now, you don't own a single LP: stay where you are try to make upgrades on your digital audio system ( btw, in your audio system ) and buy every single CD you like. The today 24/192 ( upsampling ) technology makes that we all can enjoy the music through CDP. Of course that if you have the money/time/patience to buy the software and analog hardware then is your call. " +++++

It is unfortunate hat the DVD-A/SACD technology are almost " dead ". IMHO and through my experiences about a native DVDA recording is " something " that aproach/even the analog experience and that could/can surpass it in some way, but is " dead " and we can't do nothing about but to wait till the Blue-Ray technology comes ready to audio.

Anyway if we care about music IMHO we must to own both source rigs and try to enjoy in the best way both formats. From my point of view it is useless trying to ask ( like tread after tread ) which is better.

I enjoy immense the analog experience but I like too the right digital one.
There are a lot of recordings that you can get only in one or the other format then if you want/like it you buy it it does not matters the digital/analog subject, right?

Regards and enjoy the music.
Raul.