I have been back and forth. In my system, I cannot fault digital, as it sounds very nice, neat, impressive, organic, and seemingly close to perfect even? With my prior phono stages and turntables, I could like/dislike things about digital and vinyl playback both. Until I got into a new transimpedance phono stage and a very upgraded (by Boothroyd) Technics 1200MK5 that I had purchased new when they disappeared back in 2010.
I have experience with 2 of the transimpedance offerings. The Sutherland Engineering Little Loco, and the yet to be released Big Loco. The former requires a good linestage to really shine, where the Big Loco has linestage built in for an all in vinyl system solution directly to amps. This has been revolutionary for me, in that even poorly recorded albums seem to transcend and sound very good. Something I cannot say for my digital, being somewhat ruthless to poor recordings. I would encourage one to look into a good turntable, low impedance MC cartridge, and these transimpedance offerings for vinyl playback at a level that I did not realize was possible.
The biggest difference between the two for me and my system is emotion. The analog does this at a level the digital cannot seem to get to. The worst part of this is knowing if the vinyl is in good shape, and an original recording, it will sound at least good. Hard not to buy a ton of records now!! The only detriment I find to my analog rig is that it is unforgiving of a poor press, and an album’s previous life.
Summing up, the digital sounds like amazing HiFi, while trying not to sound HiFi. The analog is impossible to describe in the HiFi sense. It connects with me instantly, and I cannot use HiFi descriptors at all, as in it turns off my HiFi brain completely.
I have experience with 2 of the transimpedance offerings. The Sutherland Engineering Little Loco, and the yet to be released Big Loco. The former requires a good linestage to really shine, where the Big Loco has linestage built in for an all in vinyl system solution directly to amps. This has been revolutionary for me, in that even poorly recorded albums seem to transcend and sound very good. Something I cannot say for my digital, being somewhat ruthless to poor recordings. I would encourage one to look into a good turntable, low impedance MC cartridge, and these transimpedance offerings for vinyl playback at a level that I did not realize was possible.
The biggest difference between the two for me and my system is emotion. The analog does this at a level the digital cannot seem to get to. The worst part of this is knowing if the vinyl is in good shape, and an original recording, it will sound at least good. Hard not to buy a ton of records now!! The only detriment I find to my analog rig is that it is unforgiving of a poor press, and an album’s previous life.
Summing up, the digital sounds like amazing HiFi, while trying not to sound HiFi. The analog is impossible to describe in the HiFi sense. It connects with me instantly, and I cannot use HiFi descriptors at all, as in it turns off my HiFi brain completely.