Turntable got absolutely crushed by CD

@moonglum well as the owner of a full Vivaldi stack (itself further tricked up with a boat load of extra gee gaws) I used to think it sounded pretty good -- until I upgraded my speakers (now M3) and pre-amp (now VTL 7.5III) -- I soon discovered that my prior speakers and pre had been adding a very pleasant coloration to CD playback that masked the shortcomings in red-book reproduction to a very agreeable degree (some added bass warmth and colorful splash around the treble largely from my ARC Ref40) -- with this stripped away the weaknesses in digital became clear and at the same token my LP reproduction took a great leap forward -- with the removal of that extra sheen and gloss all of the advantages of analog came out loud and clear (a wholeness of presentation, a seamlessness across all frequencies etc etc)

By the same token SACD now sounds that much better than red-book

What I'm getting at by this is that often times great sounding CD playback is about finding a set off complementary colorations that enhance the weaknesses in the medium -- with these in place CDs can sound really good, but once you get clued in to the extra spices and flavoring you are adding you soon hear them -- LPs on the other hand only keep getting better

It may be that the OPs Esoteric is designed to bring out the best in CD -- I will not weigh in on all the ways his LP playback system may be limited, suffice it to say that LP playback requires painstaking attention to detail in every aspect and any small error can ruin the whole thing

Is there any recording that exists as digital and analog at the same time? That would be the only way to compare without having objections that it is digital pressed on vinyl or vice versa.

Reminds me of the old Linn Analog/Digital issue of tracks from Ossian -- one side recorded analog and the other digital (albeit to the standards of the day) and no indication as to which was which ...
https://www.discogs.com/Ossian-AnalogDigital/release/7155877

It's been years since I listened to it but as I am a big fan of "Jamie Raeburn" maybe today I'll dig it out :-)

A more up to date example of the same practice (parallel analog and digital recording of the same sessions) is Yarlung
https://positive-feedback.com/Issue58/yarlung.htm

@glupson 

The deal would be in finding exactly the same recording, recorded simultaneously in both formats, and then have analog on vinyl and digital on CD or whatever other digital format possible

This is exactly what Yarlung offer. The same session recorded in analog available on LP or R2R tape, and digitally available on CD or hires dowload

And as regards the Aloi/Linn disc the joke was that Ivor wouldn’t say which side is which ... 🤔
https://books.google.com/books?id=aBUDS_G-SU8C&pg=PA688&lpg=PA688&dq=aloi+analogue+digit...

back in the day as well Linn was a far from disinterested party 😉