Does Anyone Think CD is Better Than Vinyl/Analog?


I am curious to know if anyone thinks the CD format (and I suppose that could include digital altogether) sounds better than vinyl and other analog formats. Who here has gone really far down both paths and can make a valid comparison? So far, I have only gone very far down the CD path and I just keep getting blown away by what the medium is capable of! I haven’t hit a wall yet. It is extremely dependent on proper setup, synergy and source material. Once you start getting those things right, the equipment gets out of the way and it can sound more fantastic than you can imagine! It’s led me to start developing a philosophy that goes something like this: Digital IS “perfect sound forever”; it’s what we do to the signal between the surface of the CD and the speaker cone that compromises it.” 
So I suppose what I’m asking for is stories from people who have explored both mediums in depth and came to the conclusion that CD has the most potential (or vice versa - that’s helpful too). And I don’t simply mean you’ve spent a lot of money on a CD player. I mean you’ve tinkered and tweaked and done actual “research in the lab,” and came back with a deep understanding of the medium and can share those experiences with others.

In my experience, the three most important things to get right are to find a good CD player (and good rarely means most expensive in my experience) and then give it clean power. In my case, I have modified my CD player to run off battery power with DC-DC regulators. The last thing that must be done right is the preamp. It’s the difference between “sounds pretty good” and “sounds dynamic and realistic.”
128x128mkgus
It depends on your hearing, or what’s left of it in my case. The point is, play what you enjoy in any format. Life is too short now to become over absorbed in background noise or some other audio imperfections. Have a Coke and put on something that you haven’t hear and imagine yourself in the studio or hall. 
even on top notch equipment, i still find surface noise to be bothersome. the odd click or pop startles me like a firecracker would amidst the calm. i find that only PERFECT analog [everything top-drawer and in top spec/adjustment] is "fatigue-free" while all the rest irritates me after a while. when program content analog tape hiss pops up between the comparatively hiss-free [but still broadband-noise-laden] "silent" grooves, that bugs me also, they should IMHO put the hiss all through the record and not just during the music tracks. off-center pressings [the rule rather than the exception, i have found] bug me as the pitch wavers. the pinch effect towards the end [engineer tom dowd expressed frustration with this aspect of LP reproduction] makes the music with the rotten luck of being put there near the end of each side, sound frankly subpar. being a hunter of good old musics, i can't count the number of discs i've found that look shiny clean but have been ruined by blunted needles/accumulated mistracking damage, that are fit only for airborne target practice. for all these reasons plus some others not mentioned here, i much prefer digital, even compressed [not lower than 320 kb/s VBR] digital is preferable to all those aforementioned music-wrecking nasty little hummers. 
Thoughts from the dark side.
Of course it is, why do you even need to ask the question. Just look at the hassle you go through to purchase, maintain and play vinyl. Look at the pain you go through to set up a high end turntable! Then there’s finding the perfect pressing or long sought album, only to get it home and find it off centered, warped and twisted with a nice noisy run-out (ah don’t mention surface noise)! Then there’s storage (spare room anyone), cleaning them before use and of course if your are serious you have your ~$3K Degritter record cleaner!
And we are supposed to believe that a Turntable with its power supply, tone arm, cartridge, stylus, tone arm cable, phono cable, phono stage, excluding vodo record mats, dampers and isolation issues is really better?

Hi end vinyl is pressed the same way cheap vinyl used to be - by hand! Modern cheap vinyl is pressed automatically. I used to work for a record pressing company (many years ago) and did Quality Control for the physical presses (rather than the sound quality), so I had plenty of first hand experience of trying to produce decent vinyl and procure it for my collection. Anyone that thinks their vinyl is flat think again!
As soon as Meridian produced their MCD Pro, I stopped buying vinyl and gradually replaced the vinyl I had with CD’s.
So when you say "better", for me it’s never even been a question. And, the quality/musicality of digital audio is (and has been) gradually tracking upwards. Given how long "LP’s" (in their various incarnations) have been around, digital audio is, well not nascent, but still improving.
I’ve been doing studio quality LP to digital (CD) transcription and remastering, often for commercial release, for nearly 25 years. It’s been an interesting and insightful journey.

Technically, there is no reason whatsoever why Red Book CDs shouldn’t be superior to LPs in nearly every respect. Not that it’s perfect, but digital signal communication is superior in essentially all ways to analog.There are far more possible audio pitfalls along the way in the analog production of LPs from initial recording to playback. That the medium has been so perfected over the decades is remarkable.

THAT SAID, there are several often overlooked points where digital sound recording and production can be problematic, and where LPs have some ameliorating features.

FIRST, technically, jitter results from a very slight variation in the sample clock rate. In most cases, jitter is a non-issue that can and should be ignored. HOWEVER, any jitter that occurs during analog to digital conversion becomes hard coded into the digital file and AFAIK there is no way to remove it. Any mathematical manipulation of that jittery file necessarily assumes that the sample rate is completely constant. Thus, jitter can increasingly distort the digital sound as it’s processed, and it gets significantly worse the more times the music is bounced from digital to analog and back to digital as often happens in many studios. For the first few decades, ADC was often very jittery yet this problem was largely ignored. The result was that both DDD recordings and digital sound boards somehow just didn’t "sound right." Current technology has reduced jitter to vanishingly low levels so it’s ceased to be so much of a problem in digital recording for the last decade or so.

SECOND, very well produced and mastered digital recordings can sound unnaturally perfect. No one sits at the perfect distance from every instrument and vocalist in a perfect acoustic environment. Older LPs especially can sound more "real" simply because they haven’t been overly perfected.

THIRD, digital technology is wondrously powerful, but like the sorcerer’s apprentice it’s all too easy for it to be abused and get away from one in manifold ways. The "loudness wars" are but one infamous example. Again, the results can be untoward in ways that were never possible with analog recording and playback.

FOURTH, the types of distortion and significant limitations in analog recordings, LPs especially, are often rather congenial to the ear. Digital recording has a number of other technical concerns besides jitter which, while typically occurring at much lower and minimal levels, can be more subtly disturbing to the ear due to the intrinsic transparency and low noise floor of the digital medium. In this case, digital’s advantage may be something of a disadvantage.

LASTLY, there’s stochastic resonance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stochastic_resonance_%28sensory_neurobiology%29 Simply put, a certain amount of completely random noise can serve to amplify an otherwise undetectable low level signal. I’ve never seen this considered here, but I believe it’s a very significant reason why many people enjoy LPs and tapes. It’s that low surface noise or tape hiss that allow a person to more sense than hear that "inner detail" or whatever. Stochastic resonance in analog and biological systems is somewhat analogous to dither in digital systems. In any case, I find that completely removing the surface noise from an LP transcription has a rather "deadening" effect to the sound. A small bit of surface noise seems to really help.

There. Enough. Just one more little thing for millercarbon. I just sold my old Technics SL-1700, still in good working order, two months ago. Got good money for it!
mijostyn said:
   "In the future all music will be downloaded."
Yes, and some years back, many said that analog was dead. I think that in the future, there will be quality CD players available for those who want them.