CD's or Vinyl?

Kind of funny that Von Karajan was quoted as saying that Cd sounds better than vinyl. Ray Charles once said that digital kills the music. Both of these men would likely have very keen hearing. Ironically, any Von Karajan recordings that I have are on vinyl and are very well recorded and pressed. I do not own any Ray Charles recordings but I'm sure he was a stickler for quality recording. 

In the last year, I changed my preamp from SS to tube, likely a bit of an upgrade from what I used for the prior 20 years or so. My phono preamp has been a tube unit for about the same 20 years. During that 20 year period, I would have said that Cd was a big step down from the vinyl. With the addition of the tube preamp, it is a much smaller step. I'm able to enjoy Cd's a lot more than I used to and with all the tube rolling that I've been doing, in and out, I have found a great deal more detail in at least some Cd's. Most of the ones that were made in the beginning to replace old worn records, were terrible. Not so anymore. It's getting closer.

All that said, I still prefer vinyl 80% to 90% of the time but it is getting a lot closer. I do not stream and maybe I never will. Like a lot of other old timers on here, my collection and my setup is heavily geared toward LP's. I do see a lot of guys who are like myself in listening tastes and many are now streaming. I'm sure there is something to it but I really don't care. Like many here, I have a pretty extensive collection of Cd's and vinyl and will probably never stop buying more. Cd's are practically being given away and so is some old vinyl. As long as people think they can live without them, I'll be happy to buy them up. I've never sold a single album and do not regret that in any way. 

Look at the old rock stars vinyl collections. There is something to it. I and many others have amazed many listeners over the years. It never gets old. 

@mylogic Thanks for the encouragement. No worries, I will never sell my vinyl collection. I give away Cd's now and then, extras or ones that never get played.

@niodari Cassettes are a great medium. As mylogic posted, with 3 head decks, can be very good indeed. I used to record all of my new records onto cassettes and then play the cassettes most of the time to save my records from wear. I gave up on that idea when cassette decks started eating the tapes. My son still has a cassette deck in his system and has a lot of tapes. My wife has one in her office system. I do not have one in mine. With a good operating deck, it is still a very fine way to listen to music. 

I really don't understand all the talk about the inconvenience of playing records or owning them or for that matter, owning any media like Cd's, tapes or whatever. I'm old and retired and I am not so busy that I can't take time out of most days (evenings, normally), to spin some records or put on a Cd or two. Having thousands of records and hundreds of Cd's, it's hard enough to decide what it is that I want to hear. I think I'd be lost with streaming. Having too many choices might not work for me, don't know and am not likely to ever try. I do find things on Youtube now and then, listen on my computer and if I like it, I'll buy it on Cd or vinyl or both. Anyway, just a few ramblings from an old time avid listener. Enjoy the music, no matter how you choose to listen. It's all good. 

I just added a DVD player Denon model 2800, which is formatted for HDCD. It replaces my Denon 20 bit Cd player, which I used for over 20 years. It was a very fine Cd player but is getting old and has had a couple problems over the years. One dirty pot, simple fix and most recently the Cd tray often closes immediately upon opening. Annoying but other than that, it's been fine. 

I was noticing that several of my latest Cd purchases have been HDCD's. I thought most of them sounded very good on the old 20 bit Denon but maybe not better than other Cd's that had been well recorded. Adding the HDCD player to the system changed that. They are really very very good and now getting very close to or nearly equaling what comes from the best vinyl recordings. Very interesting, indeed. All this fun for buying an old DVD/HDCD player for $40 on ebay. Came with no remote and a missing stop button but was guaranteed to work with a remote, just didn't include one. I bought a remote for I think $15, also on ebay. My wife and I were pretty well blown away but what we heard last night, listening to Cd's that we're buying for $1 or $2 each on a bargain Cd player. Fun stuff.