Early digital recordings on vinyl vs. CD?

I found a digitally recorded jazz LP on my shelf from 1988 on the Canadian Sackville label. Jim Galloway, Ralph Sutton, Milt Hinton & Gus Johnson playing 'A Tribute to Louis Armstrong'. It is a real gem musically, and sounds wonderful. I am encouraged by this!

I look forward to delving into baroque recordings from the early 80's. This is going to be fun!

I have put together what I think is an excellent system: Nottingham Space 294 TT, Transfiguration Phoenix cart, Luxman 509u integrated amp, and Verity Audio Parsifal Ovation speakers. Many thanks to John at My Kind of Music in Toronto, and to excellent advice from Audiogon as well.

I also have a Luxman D-06 cdp, but I have not used it much since my TT arrived in March. CDs have their place as so much became available on them in the post vinyl era, but it is wonderful to delve into that which did originally come out on vinyl.

And almost as important as a TT is my Keith Monks RCM. It makes 40 or 50 year old lps in decaying paper sleeves sound better than new, and removes the deep seated gunk - the effort is worth it, even with new vinyl.

We must all be crazy to put ourselves through all this fuss - but how does it differ from obsessing over gourmet food and fine wines? Well, good food and wine taste even better when vinyl is spinning...

Fangroups everywhere, true enough. Believe it or not, some people are even fans of Neil Young! :-D

As I suspected, he was talking about CDs, which doesn't address the OP's question. I wonder... did Neil what'shisname ever hear a Telarc or l'Oiseau Lyre LP record?

+1 on the Keith Monks. I use a "cheap" knockoff, the Loricraft, and yes... we're all crazy.

The early Soundstream digital recordings are primarily what is available...this technology dates from the mid 70s or earlier...with 16/50 resolution downconverted to 16/44...they even had superior sampling back then...ha

I have many and probably most of the early Telarc vinyl releases, and indeed many of them are outstanding.

Much of the credit for their sonic quality can be attributed to the "purist" microphone techniques they used. Rather than placing a forest of microphones in close proximity to the performers, as many of the major labels did, they used just two or three or so high quality omni mics placed at significantly greater distances. In addition to the inherent sonic advantage that approach can provide regardless of the recording technology that is used, it reduced the amount of high frequency energy being picked up that might otherwise have brought out to a greater degree some of the shortcomings of digital recording technology, especially in its early implementations, such as the effects of sharp-rolloff anti-aliasing filters.

I should add, though, that in a few of their releases that relatively distant mic placement resulted in what I found to be disappointingly "swimmy" acoustics.

A few other classical labels that come to mind as having in those days put out some very good digitally recorded classical releases on vinyl, if memory serves, were Hyperion, Chandos, Nimbus, and Deutsche Harmonia Mundi.

Oh, and if your system can't handle brief dynamic peaks that may reach 100 db or more at the listening position, without amplifier clipping or other issues, beware of that Telarc bass drum!

Regards,
-- Al

Although I would strongly disagree with Doug that digital recording is not inherently flawed, I do agree with him on his digital vinyl selections. Al also has some great ones, and he is spot on in his discussion of why the Telarc recordings were better. Many musicians still consider those some of the best digital recordings ever made. I would certainly say that early digital sounds better on vinyl. The performances are always the top priority for me, and really should be for any music lover, and there are a great many of them. Two from the early digital years that immediately come to mind not mentioned so far are Claudio Abbado's Mahler cycle (DG, not known for their sound quality, in fact sometimes the reverse) and also Charles Dutoit's many excellent recordings with the Montreal Symphony.