2. analog
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Am I nuts or what?

I am a dedicated analog listener but have an open mind and am willing to give digital a chance...again and again...so I decide to listen to McCartney's Tug of War. I pull the vinyl off the shelf and give it a good cleaning noticing that I hadn't taken very care of my discs in the 80s. Anyhow, I slap it on the VPI TNT and start listening...not bad, but not great either due to the occasional tick - I notice on the cover that the album was digitally mixed. Hmmm - I go and pull the CD off the shelf - late 80s purchase when I got sucked into replacing my vinyl collection - made in Japan...I slid it into my ARC CD player and was shocked at the noise that came out of my speakers...it was so thin sounding that I thought that something must be wrong with my CD set-up - metallic, tinny crud...I was thankful to have even a mediocre copy in vinyl.
I just can't believe how an album that was digitally mixed could sound so bloody awful on CD. I do have some CD's that sound great but the vast majority can't even come close to the original vinyl. Sorry for the rant, but it's been awhile since I've listened to a CD.
ntscdan
onhwy61's avatar
onhwy61
5,208 posts
 
Ntscdan, sorry for my lack of clarity earlier. What I intended to say was that you can't draw any meaningful conclusions about the overall quality of digital vs. vinyl by comparing any given CD to its vinyl counterpart. Obviously, you could make a comparison and determine in any individual case which version you prefer.

I'm not at all surprised that you could prefer your own vinyl to CD conversions to commercial copies. I've converted a large part of my vinyl collection to digital and came to roughly the same conclusion. Surprisingly, I also found that about 30% of converted music actually sounded better in digital than the original vinyl. Heavily processed rock and pop took to the conversion best.
bomarc
501 posts
 
Ntscdan: What's nutso about that? ACDR made from vinyl will carry all of vinyl's distinctive characteristics. If you like those characteristics, your CDR will sound better than the commercial CD. And there are several things you can do to the digital sgnal, like removing pops and clicks, to make the CDR sound better than the original vinyl.
markelemal
5 posts
 
After reading many posts like this I finally picked up a very basic analog set-up for my system. I had not listened to a record in probably 15 years (in part because I left my 200+ record collection in the basement of my dorm figuring I'd never need them again with the advent of CD's.) All in, I spent about $500 ($275 for sota comet with LMT III arm) ($100 for a new Grado Gold cartridge) and $100 for a new Sumiko Phono Pre amp. Hooked this stuff into my system (BAT VK3i, VTL 185 monos and Revel F30's) and wow!! All you analog guys were right on. I could not believe how more lifelike everything sounded. Needless to say my Christmas list is pretty simple this year - LP's, Lp's and more LP's.
gregm
3,405 posts
 
Markelemal: wait till you actually CLEAN some of those vinyls (if you ever get down to doing it)!!!
detlof
1,899 posts
 
Of course you aren't nuts. Perhaps partly though on second thoughts, because it took you so long to find out. (-:
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