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Vinyl VS Digital

After 20+ years I broke out my turn table from the 70's again.  I have been mostly listening to CD and streaming music for the last 15 years on higher end gear in a dedicated and treated home theater room.  I also have a dedicated two channel system in the same room.  

All the hype surrounding analog has prompted to me to purchase a dedicated preamp so that I could once again hook up my TT.  I also purchased an Aurlic Aries to compare.  I'm ready to upgrade my old Technics SL 1600 MK2 running a Grace Cartridge.  But I have concerns.  

I could care less about the additional hiss, crackle and Pop thats not in digital.  I think its cool to put on an album and just listen to my 30 year old small collection from when I was a teenager.    

I started doing A/B comparisons by switching between the TT and the Aries (FLAC).  I even bought new vinyl to do so.  The thing keeping me from going "All In" is the imaging.  No matter what I do with (aligning the cartridge), I cannot get the imaging to match that of digital.  Specifically, voice and instrument that stems from center stage with digital cannot be reproduced with the TT as source.  One might say the stage is wider but its too wide to point where definition is lost.  Don't get me wrong it still sounds good but is it right?  Is it my TT or is it in the recording.  Or is this the difference I am suppose to be hearing?


  
ap_wannabe

Showing 4 responses by basement

basement
245 posts
 
wow. It's been awhile, but I guess the debate still exist. 

Short version: there is much more actual information on vinyl than there is with digital, so it takes a lot less money and effort to build/buy an analog rig than a digital one. But once a certain "level" is obtained in an analog (records) rig, there is no digital that can sound as good. 

It's been a long time for me, just getting back into it, Barely learning about streaming and such. But what is surprising, is nearly 10 years later, digital seems to sound worse than it ever did. Even though more "bits" are available, the streamers and streaming systems I have heard don't sound as good as the cd players to me. 

Shouldn't be hard to get an anolog record player to blow away the imaging and pinpoint soundstaging of a digital rig, as well as being nuetral at it. And fun to get there.
basement
245 posts
 
Indeed Mr. Wolfy. And it's also my understanding not everything is available to stream or be found on the net? 

To play your music, you have to have it in the first place, right? 

And also, if you are wanting to listen to something wouldn't most prefer to listen with the highest fidelity possible at the moment? 
basement
245 posts
 
I'm a bit confused:

Going "all" in for one doesn't mean having to give up the other. I can see not wanting to spend half on two as opposed to all on one. But why give up or get rid of something? 

Some choices just don't have to be made.

One way to maybe look at it...you have 200 albums. makes sense to at least have a bit invested to take advantage of being able to listen to them. 

Back in the day, the only reason it was important to me to have a CD rig was to have the most music available to me.
basement
245 posts
 
EJR1953:

That's a valid point, however, just because something exist on a format, doesn't mean it exist or makes it to the speakers or system. 

For example, components that publish specs often show they can reproduce bass and treble and such, but upon listening, they don't deliver. The difference between resolving the complexities of music and a simple signal. A CD player or record player may be able to measure deep bass, but still miss the deep bass in the drum whack completely. 

In my experience, the information available from digital compared to the information available on vinyl is a big gap. Trying to extract as much info and fidelity from 16 bits (or less) requires effort, and doing the same with vinyl is less effort, and with a higher standard that surpasses it more definitely. 

By the time a system is capable of resolving enough detail to hear the compression done at the mastering level to make a difference, you are WAY past what digital is capable of.
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