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Another Analog v. Digital Thread? Not Really

I’ll try to keep this as short as possible. The premise is this: If the highest compliment that can be given to digital is that it sounds analog, why bother with digital? I would never have posted this question, but the other week something happened. After owning my Oppo 205 for about a year and a half, I decided to sell it given the fact I wasn’t that crazy about it and the selling prices were quite good, although I posted mine for significantly less than many others are asking. BTW - In the last month I owned the Oppo, I found it tremendously improved by placing a Vibrapod 3 under each foot.

So a nice young man comes by for an audition and he likes the Oppo very much and purchases it. He is into 4k and all that stuff, but also wants some better audio quality. So that’s that.

Before he leaves, he asks to hear a vinyl record played on my Basis turntable. It’s a nice table - 2001 with Vector arm and Transfiguration Orpheus. I would rate it as the low end of the high end. Well the guy’s jaw just dropped. After sitting for an hour listening to the Oppo, he says that everything is so much more "alive" was the word he used and he couldn’t get his mind around the fact that he was listening to the exact same system with everything the same except the source.

I was considering replacing the Oppo with something like a Cambridge transport and Orchid dac because I have to play my CDs, right? But then I starting thinking why I had to play CDs anymore at all. It’s not so crazy when you think about it. Many of us gave up vinyl when CDs started getting decent, so what’s so strange about going back in the other direction?

So I asked myself - if analog is so much better, why would I even bother listening to CDs anymore?
Convenience? Well, sure, but I don’t really consider putting on a record very inconvenient, so that’s not really it.
Many titles on CD that are not on vinyl? I think that argument may be largely dissipated nowdays. It seems that virtually anything I would remotely want to listen to is available on vinyl, either new or used. You have thousands of CDs? OK, but if they don’t sound as good as a record, why would you want to listen to them just because you have them. I know it seems like a waste, but it happens sometimes.

Let me just finish with this, so there’s no confusion. If you have some insane high-end digital rig that you believe outdoes analog, this is not directed to you. But, for anyone who believes the best compliment you can give to digital is that it sounds analog, why bother? Also, to you streamers out there, the freedom from having a large quantity of physical media in your home is definitely a good argument. We all collect too much stuff and it’s nice to get rid of some.

Hopefully, this will be taken in the spirit it’s given, but I doubt it.
Merry Christmas, really.
chayro

Showing 4 responses by millercarbon

millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Moving targets. Straw men.
Its not just a river in Egypt.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Yes, that perfectly explains why I play the Mobile Fidelity CD and LP both made from the exact same master by the exact same Mobile Fidelity and everyone hears and no one can believe how much better the record sounds. Because the digital source material is poor. Even though its not digital. Nor poor. Nor even different. Right. Got it.
millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
What I’m curious about is what makes LPs sound better to so many people, given that the vast majority of LPs are digitally mastered these days. Is it that most digital playback systems just aren’t up to the level of the gear used to produce the recordings, or is it that a good analog system adds a quality to the signal that can’t (or hasn’t yet been) replicated in the digital domain?


Well first of all in my experience its not so much "so many" people as nearly all. That’s based on years of playing records and CDs and the only ones who didn’t express that its flat-out no contest were, sad to say, audiophiles. Precisely zero non-audiophiles prefer CD. Wives of audiophiles have come up and told me privately how amazed they are. As one said, "I could listen to this all night!" Which I thought was the idea.

Its not the level of the gear. That’s not it. When my wife first noticed how much better records sound she didn’t even know she was listening to a record. Simply heard the music, asked what sounds so good? She was used to CD. As far as she knew it was a CD. She had no way of knowing I had dug my 30 year old Technics out of a cardboard box in the garage and hooked it up. So mull that one over. 30 years old. Patch cords. POC power cord. No shelf. No nothing. Versus brand new California Audio Labs CDP with Synergistic interconnect and power cord and sitting on BDR Cones. Should be no contest. Well, it was. But the other way. Its just not even close.

Except, remember, among audiophiles. So maybe the question should be What is wrong with audiophiles? Heh.

or is it that a good analog system adds a quality to the signal that can’t (or hasn’t yet been) replicated in the digital domain?


We report, you decide:

Jennifer Warnes, in an interview found somewhere on the web, is asked about the digital recording and mastering of Famous Blue Raincoat. Four master tapes were compared, three digital, one analog. The analog master was identical in all respects except the analog tape deck. Famous Blue Raincoat is supposedly an all-digital recording. Reading this interview I learned it is not. Warnes, the producer, and I’m forgetting if it was Cohen or who the other two were, but the four with approval all preferred the analog master.



millercarbon's avatar
millercarbon
12,531 posts
 
Big subject. If there's music you just can't live without and its only on CD then I guess you will just have to listen to CD. But if your enjoyment is in listening to really good music really well recorded and played back there's just no reason to subject yourself to substandard audio. ie, CD.

I'm old enough to have gone from records and tape (open reel) to CD, and to CD/records, and now all records. Just reached a point in life where doing just for the sake of doing no longer cuts it. Variety for its own sake is such a waste. What few hours I have to enjoy listening to music, by God, I'm gonna spend it listening to music. 

The OP is absolutely right about the sound quality. That one is so done beat to death its silly. The last guy who even questioned it was 20 years ago. Played both, never asked again. 

Pretty much all the complaints are made up out of whole cloth and easy enough to dismiss. Surface noise? With CD the signal is the noise. My wife pointed this one out to me, saying she was shocked by how much less noise there was with records. I thought for sure she was mistaken. Surface noise is a lot worse with records. Eventually realized she meant the music itself, the whole signal, was turned into noise by the CD. She's right of course.

Fiddly finicky setup? Get real. Of course you can do that. It sure is not necessary. Half the stuff they pretend matters, really doesn't, not so much. My vintage 1973 Technics SL1700 with Stanton 681EEE was set up by eye ball and Shure teeter-totter VTF gauge forty years ago. When I dug it out of a box and played a record my wife from the next room who did not know what was going on asked me what sounded so good. Well we had been CD only, this was her first time in years hearing vinyl. So get real.

The rituals of playing a record? I couldn't play a CD without cleaning it either, and demagnetizing, and coloring, and then after all of that sitting down and.... sorry, what were you expecting? No matter what you do its still just a CD.

So now I play records. Records only. Well, movies. And technically I do play CD. The XLO demagnetizing tracks are on CD. So I play that. CD is great for that. Mindless, repetitive, programmable, nothing you would ever want to listen to. The appropriate technology used appropriately.


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