Does Anyone Think CD is Better Than Vinyl/Analog?

" Does Anyone Think CD is Better Than Vinyl/Analog?"

     Mkgus,
     You do realize that the title of your thread is mistitled, right?  I think everyone participating on it thus far understands that a more appropriate title, that would be much more honest and just cut to the chase already, would be:
" Does Anyone 'Like' CD Better Than Vinyl/Analog?

     So, with your true inquiry and intent now more explicitly revealed, I'll continue to proceed down this more honest and constructive path. I think skyscraper made 7 good points about cd vs vinyl. The main points that I and probably numerous others consider, when deciding on their preferred source material and gear, are his following points:

1) The pops, clicks and and other surface noises of vinyl are too distracting and appear even on albums that look to be in perfect condition.
7) You can't beat the ease of use of CD's, and don't need a record cleaning machine for them like you should use with your records.

     Many individuals choose and like cds and other digital sources, in other words, due to the lack of surface and background noise and the greater convenience with cds and digital in general. As I stated on my previous post, however, cds certainly do not represent 'perfect sound forever' mainly due to poor master/mixing decisions and the fact that they don't take advantage of the superior performance specs and capacities of cd technology.
     I also believe that the viewpoint, that home audio enthusiasts are making a binary choice between digital cds or analog vinyl for their preferred playback sources.  As many posters have mentioned, many utilize both playback formats. 
     But there are also many individuals, including myself, who realize the original high technical capacities and expectations of the digital cd format were sacrificed due to poor master mixing decisions (the loudness wars and uni-volume) and the inability to take advantage of the benefits of recording direct to digital.  Many cds are just transfers of the original multi-track reel to reel tape master recordings to the cd format.  These transfers result in zero sound quality improvements over the original rtr master version, but they are at least in a format less susceptible to degradation with each playing.
    As a result many, including myself, have progressed beyond the use of just the compromised digital cd format to the use of higher resolution digital downloads that were recorded direct to digital.  
     It's very important to realize, however, that the recording of the music, whether played live at an event or in a studio,  needs to be directly made to high resolution digital to capture the musical event in the clearly higher capacity and higher sound quality resolution. 
     Often, companies will advertise recordings as "remastered to high resolution digital" even though it is actually just a transfer of the original music event captured on rtr tape in the older, inferior and regular resolution format.  But the original master recording is like a photograph, captured at the resolution the recording equipment was capable of.
      Subsequent transfer to a higher resolution format does nothing to improve the sound quality of the original recording. This also explains why some people claim not to notice a difference between a cd and the same song/group "remastered to high resolution digital"; they're just comparing the original to a virtually identical copy/transfer of it. 

Tim

     My perspective is that cds have always had the potential, and had the advantage spec capacity wise, to outperform vinyl and to be an excellent source medium but have failed to live up to their potential for several reasons.
     One of these reasons or issues, as mijostyn already identified, is that the cd record companies virtually forced their recording engineers to mix their cds to attain a higher average SPL level which sacrificed the very good dynamics the digital cd format is capable of, resulting in 'uni volume' and the 'loudness wars'. 
     The cd format, after all, is just the lowest resolution current version of the lossless digital recording and playback format.  As such, it still has numerous distinct advantages over both vinyl and  reel to reel tape formats, such as lower distortion, lower noise floor, a greater frequency range and greater dynamics. 
     I have no reason to doubt teo_audio's claim that there is a fundamental flaw in all current analog to digital converters except for my personal experience listening to hi-res downloads recorded direct to digital and with minimal miking and mixing, mainly from The Sound Liaison Music Shop in Europe.
     These are all recorded direct to digital as the music is played live at their fairly large studio that has excellent acoustics.   However, I have no idea about the analog to digital conversion technology or equipment they utilize. I've only downloaded the 24 bit/96 KHz FLAC file versions thus far, but all of these recordings are clearly superior to the hundreds of ripped cd recordings on my hard drive.  The most obviously superior attributes I notice are an extremely low noise floor, very high levels of detail, stereo sound stage imaging that is very well defined with a natural 'you are there' presentation and the naturally high dynamics normally only perceived on music played and experienced live. 
     I should also note that I have nothing against vinyl and know it can also be extremely good.  I just perceive high resolution digital, that's recorded direct to digital and played back at 24 bit/96 KHz or higher resolution, to be superior in overall sound quality and a heck of a lot more convenient.
     I understand that my post doesn't strictly adhere to the OP's thread question, but that's my take on what type of sources I prefer to listen to.  I believe the fact that most cds are mixed poorly and very few are recorded direct to digital, explains why their overall sound quality performance level is not consistently superior to vinyl.

Tim

        Good points mijostyn. There's also the facts that a very high quality high-resolution digital playback system can be near sota sound quality wise and also convenient to the extreme.  I've discovered that the key for extremely high sq performance on my digital system is to use high resolution digital file recordings, usually downloads of at least 24 bit/96 KHz, that were recorded direct to digital. All 3 components are connected to my LAN wi-fi and communicate with each other instantaneously.
     My system was not nearly as expensive as a high quality vinyl setup would be.  I spent less than $5K for a Lumin D2 dac/streamer, a Synology hard drive component with 2 TB worth of Western Electric hard drives as a storage device and an Apple iPad as the GUI and remote.
     How convenient?  The iPad remote rests on its recharging station on the table next to my listening chair along with my preamp's remote. If I want to listen to music, I just use the preamp remote to change the input and set the volume, then use the iPad remote to select what music to listen to and press play.  It's literally a hi-res audio jukebox with over 20,000 hrs of musical content consisting of all musical genres from classical to The Clash and everything in between.
     Sorry vinyl lovers, no moving, cleaning, adjusting or fiddling involved.  The Lumin D2 turns itself on with the first detection of a signal and the music emerges from a dead-silent background in a very dramatic and impressive fashion. 
     The sound quality of the music is full range, full bodied, powerful, dynamic, highly detailed, with very accurate and natural tones, textures and timbre.  This is all within a wide, deep and very realistic stereo sound stage illusion with solid, stable and palpable images, including the spaces between them.  Overall, a very satisfying and enjoyable musical experience.
     I understand, however, that I tailored my system to my personal preferences and that it's only my version of an ideal home audio music system.  I also have no illusions that my system is the best and I certainly have no intentions of convincing anyone that they should do anything other than follow their own preferences when building their own ideal systems, whatever playback method or methods they may include. 

Tim

fleschler1:
" Can someone with a modestly higher end system tell me how much I will gain if any, improvement in sound using a more recent, potentially better transport?"

Hello fleschler1,

     I agree with antigrunge2, I believe your money would be better spent elsewhere. I think a better transport would offer, at best, only a subtle improvement in sound quality performance.
     This thread has been about cd vs vinyl, which of course, is just a matter of personal preference as it should be. If you already know that you prefer the higher performance capacity/potential and convenience of digital, however, I believe a more significant system improvement would be gained by upgrading your current Redbook digital cd playback system, consisting of a separate cd transport and dac, to a digital system with a digital file storage device/streamer along with your current COS D2v dac.  As antigrunge suggested from his post:

" You will get an improvement from either playing from SSD or streaming. I suggest you explore Innuos, Lumin, Auralic, Aurender streamers. They come with SSDs to which you can load your CDs if you chose not to switch to streaming Qobus or Tidal."

     Since you already have an excellent COS D2v dac, I'm assuming you'd probably want to keep it  If this is the case, you'd only need a good quality hard drive storage device and an interfacing method to remotely organize, display and control storage and playback.
     In my modestly higher end system, I utilize a Synology storage device with 2 TB of hard drive storage capacity, an Oppo 205 universal disc player, a Lumin D2 dac/streamer and an Apple iPad as a GUI (graphic user interface) and remote control for the digital portion of my system. 
     All 3 of these component parts are attached to my wi-fi and, therefore, are able to communicate with each other.  I utilize the iPad, loaded with the very good and included Lumin software app, to remotely view and select what to playback.  I've copied/ripped my entire cd collection to the hard drive that are stored as 16 bit/44.1 KHz lossless APE files and I also have numerous high resolution music downloads stored as 24 bit/96 KHz lossless FLAC files on this same hard drive.  It currently contains over 20,000 hours of music files from all the music genres.  
     I'm not sure how much knowledge and experience you have with the differences between the performance capacities and sound quality levels of regular Redbook cds and the higher resolution digital formats ranging from SACD to 24 bit/96 KHz to DSD playback, but I've discovered that the higher resolution formats are obviously and significantly superior. 
     Not only are the natural high dynamic ranges of musical instruments and voices not compromised by poor engineering/mixing decisions present on many cds, such as the 'loudness wars' and uni-volume, but I perceive the whole presentation as being more highly detailed, with extremely solid and stable stereo sound stage imaging that's much more realistic, palpable and natural overall.   
     I've also found it's very important to realize that the quality and method of recordings, however, are just as important with hi-res recordings as those on any other format.  I've discovered the hi-res downloads/recordings from the Sound Liaison Music Shop in Europe are exceptionally good.   Anything from Carmen Gomes I highly recommend:
https://www.soundliaison.com/ 
 
     They utilize high quality but limited miking and mixing techniques and record performers direct to hi-res digital as the musicians play live in their fairly large and acoustically very high quality studio before a small audience.   The quality of these recordings, that I typically download as 24 bit/96 KHz FLAC files are extraordinary and obviously superior to any of my ripped cd files. 
     The only downside is that their unique recording techniques limits their catalog to newer, lesser known musicians and groups.  The reason is that the 'provenance' of a master recording, which just means the entire specific history of the master recording, is critical in determining the playback quality of the subsequent recording copies made from the original master. 
   The important characteristic of a recording's provenance to understand is that it is basically set in stone once it has been originally made.  For example, all masters originally recorded on reel to reel tape are limited to the optimum capacities of that format, which includes such factors as its signal to noise ratio, frequency and dynamic range as well as any other limiting optimum specifications and capacities.
     This means transferring a reel to reel original master recording to a higher capacity hi-res format, and claiming it has been "remastered to high resolution digital ", results in absolutely no actual performance or sound quality improvements since the original provenance of the original master format dictates its optimum performance and sound quality.  
     As I understand it, HD Tracks is not alone in using this very ineffective and dubious method of transferring standard resolution original masters to a hi-res digital format and claiming their retailed copies and downloads are "remastered to high resolution digital format". 
      It's why I never purchase from these companies and probably explains why many individuals claim to not perceive any differences between the same band/song on their original cd and the "remastered to hi-res digital" cd they just purchased at 3-4 times the price.  It makes much more sense once it's understood they're comparing the original cd track to a virtually exact copy of the original track transferred to a higher resolution bucket or format. 
      Lastly, I hope relating my personal experiences with the extremely high quality direct to hi-res digital master recording downloads I've utilized properly explains why I believe its an ideal method of recording masters.  I hope this method becomes the predominate method of recording new music asap since it's not only sota in my opinion, it's a much more durable medium that doesn't degrade with usage and you're literally purchasing an exact copy of the original master with each download. Ideal, right?
I hope this was useful to you fleschler1,
Tim

mijostyn: " Hold on there Tim. Most music after 1990 is recorded in hi res digital.
Older issue may still be analog but much of that has been digitized."

Hello mijostyn,

     I do not believe it’s true that most music after 1990 is recorded in hi-res digital or, more specifically, most music has not been generally recorded ’directly’ to hi-res digital. My reasoning is that, if music recorded after 1990 actually was recorded direct to hi-res digital, it would be obvious to all since they would perform and sound a whole heck of a lot better than they actually do.
     My main point is that the provenance of master recordings, if accurate, are excellent tools in determining the actual sound quality potential of those master recordings and the source material copies made from them. Statements that "the master was recorded direct to hi-res digital", or even "the master was recorded and mixed direct to hi-res digital", are very good indicators of high quality performers.
     Statements similar to "the recording was remastered to hi-res digital", are very good indicators of music, originally recorded directly to a non-hi-res bucket or format, and then merely transferred to a much higher capacity hi-res digital bucket or format. In my previous post, I was stating my opinion that these transfers are best avoided for optimum results.
     I only mentioned HD Tracks, as a prime example of a purveyor of these source material recordings with poor performance due to poor provenances, because it was my disappointment with their "remastered to hi-res digital" products that initially spurred me to investigate and discover the critical, but rarely mentioned, importance of master recording provenances.
     I don’t believe HD Tracks is the only seller that tends to obscure, or at least avoid mentioning, the critical importance that master recording provenance plays in determining the quality of their products. I think this is a marketing mistake and that a better strategy would entail educating consumers on the truth, emphasizing the very obvious sound quality differences between transfers and direct to hi-res digital recordings and increasing profits by charging a premium for the good stuff. I’d definitely and gladly pay a premium.
     My current opinion is that provenance is destiny concerning the sound quality of recordings. Ideally, recording companies and musicians will recognize this fact and make recording masters directly to hi-res digital the new standard method.

Tim

dave_b:" Maybe it depends a bit on how you listen as well. I have always strived for an immersive listening setup....seating position at or slightly closer than distance of speakers apart, which should be significantly larger than usual, i.e..10 to 12 feet (maintain solid center image). Soundstaging, imaging and dynamics are paramount, followed by accurate tone and low level detail. Lights off and volume up to a realistic level is also key! Another trick is using as little toe in as possible while maintaining a solid center image, which increases dynamics and soundstage size/dimensionality. Using components that can bridge the gap between overly detailed and euphonious sound is key...live music is an elusive animal somewhere in between. Get all that right, plus a good room and either format can move you emotionally!"

Hello dave_b,

     Excellent post! I agree with you completely.
     My favorite main characteristic of a high quality home audio system is its ability to create a very realistic three dimensional stereo sound stage illusion that is as wide and deep as possible. This very realistic three dimensional quality also requires that the individual musicians’ images within this overall soundstage are being perceived as appropriately sized, solid, stable and palpable for the perception to be created that the entire musical performance is taking place in your room or that you’ve been transported to a very good seat at the original venue.

dave_b:" Another trick is using as little toe in as possible while maintaining a solid center image, which increases dynamics and soundstage size/dimensionality. Using components that can bridge the gap between overly detailed and euphonious sound is key...live music is an elusive animal somewhere in between. Get all that right, plus a good room and either format can move you emotionally!"

     I agree with these statements, too. As I believe almost every experienced audio enthusiast can likely attest, while attaining the physical parameters and aspects of a virtual reality stereo sound stage image in one’s room is very challenging. it’s still only half the battle, since as you wisely stated: "Using components that can bridge the gap between overly detailed and euphonious sound is key...live music is an elusive animal somewhere in between. Get all that right, plus a good room and either format can move you emotionally!"
     That sounds about right to me, I definitely agree that good quality vinyl systems can also create high quality stereo sound stage illusions. It’s just been my experience that utilizing high quality direct to hi-res digital recordings and playback equipment are significantly better at facilitating, and even enhancing, these high quality stereo sound stage illusions than vinyl playback is capable of.
     I believe hi-res digital’s higher signal to noise ratio and higher detail levels, combined with its inherent lower distortion and lower surface noise levels, are key factors in its ability to create significantly more realistic and palpable virtual reality stereo sound stages.
     Lastly on a related topic, I’ve also discovered that the accurate reproduction of the power, impact and dynamics of the bottom 2 octaves, bass technically from 16-32 Hz, in a home audio system and room is perhaps the single most important characteristic in distinguishing between a home audio system being perceived as decent with an acceptable facsimile of good bass and one perceived as exceptionally good with bass that sounds and feels like it does when played and heard live in person. High quality deep bass is typically the most difficult frequency range to get sounding and feeling right and natural in a room.
     It also seems to me that good bass performance, in general,  is one of the most neglected portions of the audible frequency spectrum in home audio systems. I’m not certain exactly why high quality bass performance is not more of a priority for more individuals; whether it’s due to a lack of space for the required multiple subs in their rooms, a lack of willingness to spend the extra funds or perhaps just a lack of knowledge of its importance and how to attain it.

Tim

mijostyn:  "Like I said Tim, that is the responsibility of whomever controls the rights to the recording. HD Tracks has to have permission and pay for what they do. The last thing HD Tracks wants is to get embroiled over pirating substandard copies of recordings for profit. They have a good thing going, why ruin it. Within the normal realm of recording quality I have been very pleased with their product so far. Of over a thousand files there have been two clinkers that I can think of and I do not think it was their fault. If there is an issue with the download they have always made it right. One more thing, any transfer at 24/192 ( the studio standard) is totally invisible. It is not like analog where everything you do adds damage."

Hello mijostyn,

     Yes, I agree with your comments that "HD Tracks has to have permission and pay for what they do. The last thing HD Tracks wants is to get embroiled over pirating substandard copies of recordings for profit. They have a good thing going, why ruin it."
     My main points are:
1.  Yes, HD Tracks has to have permission and pay the recording company for access to the artist's existing master recording.  And that it's in the best interests of the recording company, as well as all other parties involved, for the record company to deliver the highest quality master recording of the artist's music that they possess.
2. The main issue, as I understand it, is that the highest quality master recording of the artist's music in the recording company's possession is highly likely to be no better in quality than a standard resolution master, most likely in the form of a reel to reel tape. The provenance and sound quality level of the recorded music on this master tape, of course, is limited by the optimum specifications or capacities of the medium the master is originally recorded onto.  The quality level of  the recorded music, in effect, is set in stone after it's been originally recorded and cannot exceed the quality levels of the medium it was originally recorded on. 
3.  HD Tracks subsequently transferring this analog reel to reel master tape recording in standard resolution to a hi-res digital master recording format, therefore, has absolutely no capacity to improve the sound quality levels of the original master tape.  An analogy is a photograph that is limited by the camera technology and capacities of the camera utilized when the photo was originally taken.

     Unfortunately for music lovers, this means that original older music recordings, from artists that are no longer together or even alive, cannot be improved upon by transferring them to the higher capacity format of hi-res digital.  The only benefit of these transfers is that these recordings are in a much more durable format that does not degrade over time or with each use.

Tim