Madman! Digital vs Vinyl

Sounded like fun. I don’t have the Delux version. But I do have an audiophile 180gram pressing of Madman across the water manufactured by DCC. I have a great analog and digital ends… see my user ID.

It is easy for me to synch them and volume equalizes them and switch back and forth. They sound the same to me. I kept thinking I was listening to one and realizing it is the other.

I have:

Linn LP12, Koetsu Rosewood Signature cartridge and a Audio Research Reference 3 phonostage

Digital is a Aurender W20SE streamer, an Audio Research CD9SE DAC / player.

I don’t think there is a large population that have equally costly rigs that sound the same. Right mine my digital rig is about $5K more expensive than my analog.. ~ $42K for digital and ~ $37K for analog. I will be receiving $5K of analog upgrades soon… bringing them to equality. I don’t think it is going to be earth shattering improvement, they are both very good reproductions of the material they are fed.

One could argue that my analog / digital ends are the same by subtracting $5K for the transport in my DAC. On the other hand using the $22K Berkeley Reference DAC the results were the same. Choosing components can easily mitigate small differences in the cost equation.

I am a member of a forum that has lots of folks with $100K and much higher analog and digital ends. I think the consensus is that analog has about a 10% advantage in well chosen high end systems… all the way up… we are talking million dollar systems.

This advantage is small in comparison to what it used to be. So, depending how good you are at putting together systems you could easy consider it equal.

This advantage will not last for long. Qobuz offers lots of high Rez recordings, over time most will be. Aurender offer streamers capable of similar performance at the level of the turn table I have. Then you need a Phonostage for analog and DAC for digital.

OP:   ”I ask because I‘ve got a $5k TT with a $2k cartridge on it and am trying to figure out whether it’s worth investing in a really good phono preamp or not.”

This is a really important question to ask, particularly at this time. Digital is finally making strides to make parity with digital. The cost of acquiring disks, even if used is significant… while streaming is much lower ongoing cost with the benefit of a nearly infinite library. If you are future oriented, I think the answer is simple and clear… digital.
 

I have 2,000 pristine, many audiophile vinyl discs… and have experienced analog… well since born nearly 70 years ago. So I maintain and enjoy my analog end, but only 5% of the time or so since I have an equivalent digital end. If I was younger, no question I would put all my money into digital to get the best I could afford. It is now the future (as opposed to the CD promise 35 odd years ago). Splitting your money with two approaches is not going to be as effective as one.

OP: “Given that the age of the vinyl stamper impacts the SQ of a given copy of an LP significantly, wouldn’t it be true that if you stick with a single digital source, e.g., Qobuz…. ”

That is just one variable. Old albums can be remastered a number of times, or not mastered but produced from a secondary transfer as master. It is extremely complicated as to what you get.

On the other hand, in general if you double the cost of your system all the recording sound MUCH better making typical recording variance less important. So, it is a matter of proportional differences.

Also, when your only source of music had to be purchased… at a high cost per unit (I remember only being able to purchase one album every few months, or none) you tend to be really careful what you buy. Also, exposure only came from radio and friends. This tends to force drilling to find the very best music and recording and listen to it over and over. But in the digital world, you can sample tons of stuff… and follow interests. Don’t like the album you found, for whatever reason… move on.

Also, the catalogues are only going to get more robust. I am sure different mastering are in the future of streaming and more and more obscure stuff. So, to me, this still points to digital as the future. Although I have enjoyed the hundreds of spectacular vinyl recodings I have, some original and many audiophile.