CD getting as good as LPs - recommendations

I do believe that the only thing which may convince dyed in the wool lp fans would be to have lp surface noise added as a form mega-dither to cds so that they would not miss the one significant characteristic of lps. I have received last Saturday my first three XRCDs and the sound is excellent. Due to the age of the original recording one does have a fair amount of tape hiss, but I have always felt that hiss was not as bad as ticks and pops, since the sound is continuous and not made up of sharp attacks. I still find that my el-cheapo Sony SACD player sounds a tiny bit better than cds, but the difference is so slight that the refusal by almost every audiophile to go for multi-channel sound allied to the infinitesimal gap between the best cds and most sacds does not bode well for the acceptance of the SACD format. The two XRCDs that I would recommend, based on the very small sample that I have heard, are Kelly Blue by Wynton Kelly and Art Pepper + Eleven.

There are following label that have great quality but unfortunately not like vinyl:

CMP even early ones sound great, Concord Jazz, ECM, Nonesuch...

Make sure to get original and non-club versions.
Also some of the experimental and small record companies such as Crammed.

I also figured that eropean versions of CD sound much better than US(probably due to the pressing quality i.e. less flimsy, thicker...)

Epic-Japan, EMI-Japan are superb.
For the experimental stuff I buy anything that is on Avan-Japan.

Chesky label solely oriented on sound and spirit of a voice and/or instrument but not the music... Sounds superb though.

Patricia Barber's last albums recorded too bass-y where acoustic bass so-loved by all audiophiles dominates even over her ehem... voice.

In general I want to point out that MUSIC is the ONLY thing that should be considered during recording and NOT the sound of instrument and/or voice.

Try Mapleshade Recordings and Opus.

I enjoy the Decca Legends series of classical remasters, but then my system is significantly lower resolution than yours, so I can't say how they sound to you.
Decca has always captured a good balance between spaciousness and imaging that I very much like for classical music.

I really don't think in a well set up system either CD or vinyl has any great advantage over the other, just differences. However, it takes a lot of expertise to set up and maintain a turntable to get sound to equal a high quality CD system. And, ultimately it just depends which sound you prefer. They do not sound itentical. I just assume when someone rants over one or the other they really haven't spent time listening to quality reproduction from the one they are dis'ing. For me its about the music - thats it.

For high quality CD's some labels which excel in classical are: BIS, Dorian, Delos, Harmonia Mundi, Hyperion, Chandos, Ondine, Telarc, Reference Recordings, and for jazz one label to investigate is Concord Jazz.