In the early ‘80s I shared a house with an amateur recordist who had a collection of tapes made on a modified ReVox A77 with a dbx 224 compander NR unit. They were documenting a local orchestra that was very good, and the recordings were totally uncompressed live to 2 track with the best Nakamichi Tri-mic Omni capsules. These tapes were FAR better sounding than any commercial LPs even played on my SOTA Sapphire with Dynavector Ruby and PS Audio preamp, which was pretty good then. Then he switched to a Nakamichi PCM processor and Betamax using the same front end. Remarkably little changed. We even did a live vs. digitized event with a chamber ensemble and there was no definable difference.
BUT, when CDs were compared to LP very few were preferred to the vinyl. This using a Nakamichi OM5 II player. Something in the corporate production process was detracting from the quality possible with even Red Book digital. Things have improved, but alas my hearing has not!
Analog vs. digital
I’ve found that on my system the digital side is more finely etched than the analog side. Both sound great in their own way, but records just don’t sound so finely defined.
What is your experience?