As someone with a huge vinyl collection I’d definitely pick the newer remastered CD’s. The best vinyl I’ve heard can approach them but not surpass. Many of the best sounding records are cut from digital anyway.
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CD.
The sound quality on my system is Vinyl = CD = Stored files = Streaming. It is all in the components and how you put them together as to the sound quality you get out. You can see my systems under virtual systems.
One can assemble a warm, natural, laid back analog sounding digital system and a harsh, detailed, lean analog system if you set your mind to it, or visa versa. Things have changed greatly over the last ten years.
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CD only for me. Got rid of all other sources and media over the decades. Very happy with CDs, SACDs and HDCDs, especially remastered versions.
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No...no...no... I need both, so much great music has only been released on CD, and likewise, only released on LP. Why cut myself off from a part of our rich, recorded, heritage?
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Neither. Physical media is sooo 20th century.
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One reason I love vinyl is.... from the artwork, to an easy to connect with physical object. That connection can’t be reproduced.
I also love being able to make my vinyl sound better most of the time, by cleaning/flattening.
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I keep thinking CD, until I play a classic fully analog LP ...
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My digital setup is pretty good but my vinyl rig handily surpasses it...alot. Vinyl all the way
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To add LPs I would have to buy decent TT (not cheap) and phono section. For money spent I could replace my current speakers. Keeping both LP and CD is not the best way to go IMHO. I decided to go with CD, since LPs are more expensive, with smaller selection and require more attention. In addition I wouldn’t be able to take advantage of the computer server with room/speaker equalization I have now. Some of my CDs have fantastic sound, showing that media itself is not the limiting factor. The only worse thing I can see is possibly more compression (intended for smaller speakers), but it is not bad in comparison to pops and clicks on the scratched LP - that I cannot stand (they bring me back from the concert to my living room) . One more factor, that was never mentioned, is that CD can be copied. According to RIAA I can legally copy my friends’ CDs as long as I copy them for my own use on the media that paid royalties to artists, like "Audio CD-R". Tape manufacturing companies used to pay royalties to artist fund per foot of manufactured tape. That way tape recording of LPs or radio stations was legal.
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CDs hands down. I grew up listening to vinyl and dumped my collection decades ago in favor of CDs. Was sick of the warpage, surface noise and royal pain of maintaining vinyl and a turntable. Today, a high quality CD transport and standalone DAC costs less than an equivalent turntable, cartridge and phono pre-amp. CDs are way cheaper than vinyl and less risk when buying used. CDs have the benefits of physical media without the hassle.
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Whatever makes your ears happy.
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Too tough to decide, higher sonic quality of analog vs variety/convenience of a great digital sonics but not reaching my analog chain. I have both to a very high level.
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Vinyl all the way! I’ve had more than a few CD players but none have sounded better than a LP on a good analog setup. I don’t have a CD player anymore, but streamed hi-rez is sounding really good these days. Close to analog. Most of my records are pre 1980 and all analog, and I try to buy all analog reissues or new music when I do buy.
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On a blind test in my house of stereo, you would be hard pressed to differentiate CDs form vinyl. My vinyl collection is much larger than the CD one, so between the two it would be vinyl. However streaming wins it most of the time since that's at least 80 plus % of my listening. Variety is the spice of life.
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Hello all,
We enjoy both vinyl and cd sources. I have a superb system that I’ve assembled over many years including tube and ss components. As to preference for which media source it depends what mood that we are in at the time. Sometimes we spin CD’s and sometimes vinyl. To us the source is secondary to enjoyment of the sounds. Let me add that much of our vinyl is classic jazz and cds are more classic rock. We have a 50/50 split of classical performances on cd and vinyl. Let me add that my vinyl is enjoyed via tube equipment and cds via solid state electronics. But occasionally I’ll switch it up just because:) So I guess I did not help much as to which is better. Enjoy the music.
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I prefer listening to music, to the performance. Vinyl is a bit better but I enjoy music on either medium.
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Vinyl for me, if I was forced to pick just one. I like the larger size for the album art and I've got a great analog system... But I really like both, and there are some great CD box sets that will never be available on vinyl.
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@fuzztone
"Neither. Physical media is sooo 20th century." Very silly comment. If you like to listen to classical music there are often versions - conductors, orchestras, soloists etc of which there is only one version for streaming. Also unless you have a very high quality dac and streamer the quality is not in the class of either CD or LPs.
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1000's of used Rekkids and a Degritter- now go away.
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Vinyl for me. Prefer the medium and the ritual. No issues with CD but have a lot more records. Older analog LPs can sound magical.
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CD’s for me. Too much maintenance for vinyl, record cleaning, stylus cleaning etc not to mention flipping from one side to the other. Ticks & pops are a distraction I actually had an SAE 5000 impulse noise reduction unit back in the day to help mask that problem. High resolution CD’s for me any day.
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I think the question is a little bit too binary - but good question nevertheless. This is a debate I've been having with myself recently and have come to the conclusion that the choice is digital. The reason I say digital is that the ADC conversion used for a lot of CDs was sub par and, until recently, the provided a reason to maintain a vinyl system if one had those recordings on vinyl. However, streaming has advanced so much that it is far more economical to access more recent masterings via streaming rather than buying them twice on CD. I am in the fortunate position to be able to compare high end digital to high end record reply systems, and they are on a par. But vinyl has non-audio drawbacks, so digital now wins for me.
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CDs. LPs are too short. Flip every 20 minutes? No thanks.
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I play both formats and they are very close sound wise
I will say though that I find more cds with loud brick walled mastering or very harsh loud dynamics and don’t find nearly any records with those characteristics
My point is that vinyl seems to be more consistent when it comes to listenable
recordings. The cd era mastering was all over the map and vinyl mastering has been around much longer
Just my take
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Is the gun loaded? 
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As we get older, this isn’t necessarily going to be a hypothetical. I definitely prefer CDs and one advantage is that they can be easily burned to a server with no sonic compromises, which in turn saves space if health issues mandate having to move to a smaller place and can’t take our huge collections with us
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CDs but I would cry if I had to give up my records. I've got lots of both and really can't say which sounds better but one of them is definitely easier (too bad the art work is so small and it's housed in plastic).
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If the digital source were limited to CDs I'd probably choose vinyl. Between vinyl and high-res downloads I am not so sure.
Playing the downloads on my Aurender is so convenient, and the SQ so high it is a strong contender, but the sense of "being there" that pure analog playback gives might be the deciding factor. I have about 3,000 LPs and all but a handful are analog recordings.
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For many of us cd's have become redundant since we have at least equal sound quality via rips and streams. Vinyl not redundant since it has unique sound qualities, meaning all analog provenance. If vinyl has any digital provenance that uniqueness out the door so I'm picking streams and rips. Vinyl will become redundant when all vinyl mastering done in digital realm.
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Just starting out, I’d choose streaming. Phys-med takes too much room to store. And streaming can only get better over time, right? Downside, political editing.
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By my count, excluding the non-committed, it's:
CD's - 12
Vinyl - 13
I'll throw my vote in for vinyl too so that's vinyl by "2"!
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If you're a masochist then go for vinyl. It's exorbitantly priced now at $35-$100 per album so you can agonize over each purchase. Recording quality is all over the map so you can rush home to play your new $40 album to find its often highly compressed and noisy. Oh, and will usually need a scrubbing before playing and will still bring back the nostalgia and worry about your tweeters blowing with every "pop" it makes. You can plan to be unable to remotely change tracks and have to jump up to pick up the arm at the end of play- after every 4 songs. You can also buy upgraded plastic sleeves, cleaning equipment, an expensive fragile cartridge, often a phono pre amp, a really expensive turntable that looks cool and requires meticulous set up and often won't come with a dust cover, patch cords, a record clamp and after you learn that the $100 in sprays, brushes etc. you bought don't really ever remove all the surface noise, you'll be encouraged to buy a $3000 noisy, bulky cleaning machine that requires special solutions and frequent change outs of dirty and clean water/solution. Then when it's all said and done and you tire of finding that 3/4 of the records you bought sound outright crappy compared to their streamed versions you'll put the whole vinyl experience into the "been there, done that' bucket and cut your losses, looking nostalgically at the $7k you've invested into something that categorically is a huge pain in the ass and delivers sub standard sound. So. I'd stick with streaming which is excellent, cheap, fun, painless and encourages endless worry free listening. If you buy CD's - which used are now regularly pushing $15 or more each and no longer sitting around in bins for $2 each- I'd immediately upload them into something like a Bluesound Vault so they're copied and stored perfectly and then you can stream them too- while remembering that you could have streamed them and thousands more for a monthly total of $15 from Tidal or Quobz rather than having bought them for $15 each. lol- ask me how I know!
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CDs for me. The ability to stream millions of songs has changed my musical journey immensely but I will never be completely reliant on some corporation to supply me music. It is good to remember what they giveth they can taketh away.
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CD. They are much more convenient, last much longer, and most importantly, sound better.
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An easy choice…neither ! Streaming Is the best bang for your buck. Not going to spit shine vinyl then get up every so many minutes to flip or bypass a song I can’t stand, warmer you say, I’ll turn up the heat ! Cd’s arguably better sound certainly no ticks, pops, and cheaper to get into. Streaming.. give me the remote along with the largest music library available and a drink !
Cheers
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I know a few CD's who are into Vinyl.
DeKay
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Neither. Streaming is better and more convenient.
OK, you have a gun to my head. CD due to the clarity and lack of background noise, as well as convenience. But there is always a caveat that makes such a a
generalization inaccurate. Excluded are many digital masters in the 80’s to 90’s. Masters from this time need to be chosen carefully. Many had so much digital glare they were fatiguing, if not outright annoying. With this subset, the original vinyl was better.
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I’m CD’s all the way. I sold my TT and records decades ago. While I have occasionally been tempted to go back to vinyl, it would just cost way too much. I don’t have even one record.
And I have added a streamer to my 2,000 CD’s a couple months ago, I have access to plenty of music choices.
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Gun to my head = CD BUT, I'll take Streaming any day of the week & twice on Sunday as my primary source when there are no guns involved..
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I would not dream of going back to vinyl. It is not an easy choice. But I have hundreds of CD's. Over the years most of my L.P.s have been stolen from me.
SACD's are simply the best. P.S. I have got even with some.
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As much as I enjoy vinyl, I would have to go with CD's.
For me, the sound quality is on par, or better, than vinyl. And I own fairly high end vinyl and digital playback systems.
But my main reason may be, I am in the constant search and discovery of new: music, bands, composers, musicians, etc, and the vast majority of what I listen to* is only released on CD.
So, since the discovery of new music is more important to me, than any specific format, CD is my format of choice.
*Prog, jazz, contemporary classical.
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LPs - since their introduction in the 80's, I have heard thousands of CDs on hundreds of systems, including many > $100,000 systems. So far, only one of these systems has matched the quality that I hear from my mid-priced analogue system. I estimate that the aforementioned system exceeded $200k, MSRP.
That being said, I also have hundreds of CDs and a 'class-A' player. I usually play CDs when I need a longer hands-off period of time. For example, if I am cooking outside on the back deck, but still want some background music during the prep and eating diner, CDs are a better choice.
You may want to search the dozens of prior threads that asked a similar question...
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