PC Rules

There are A/D converters and software for transferring lps to computers and servers and I'm sure there will be more and better ones as time goes on. I think that one day most audiophiles will think that digital (not cd) sounds better than vinyl. Digital is improving rapidly.

I have read quite a few posts from people who think their cds converted to WAV or Flac files sound better than the original cds, same goes for lps. Don't be surprised if some of the vinyl enthusiasts around here don't receive this possibility enthusiastically though.

Few, if any, people know how to conduct a true A/B test, especially since it must include 'others' who will make the determination, not the person who sets it up.

Tomcy6, I'm glad someone else beside me, is aware of this phenomenon.

The LP I used was pristine and washed. If you played it on your "high end rig", you would say there was no noise; however, if you made a side by side comparison with a "blacker" background, you would discover there was noise you were unaware of.

Reviewers who reviewed FM Acoustics phono pre's described this phenomenon; they called it "outer space black".

Rather than comparing vinyl to a hard drive recording of that vinyl you actually may have compared the line stages of a solid state preamp to a solid state preamp running through a tube buffer stage and differences in turntable stands/supports. What you should have done was make recordings of the stock interface and then recordings of the upgraded interface and then compared.

I also have a problem with your declaration that one sounds better. A recording can only sound faithful to its original or not. If the recording doesn't sound like the original, then by definition there is distortion in the recording chain. For any number of reasons you make like the sound of those distortions better than the undistorted original, but you are listening to a distorted version.

The original recording is those "squigly" things on black vinyl. The quality of the components between those "squigly" things and your ear determine how good the sound is. Each time the signal goes from one stage to the next, a new signal is born; consequently, by the time it gets to your ear, it has been reborn many times.