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
@gone  Your response coincides with mine (except for 78s).  I listen to 3,000 ethnic music 78s and LPs, most never to be seen in any future format.  I have 25,000 LPs, 7,000 78s and 7,000 CDs, mostly CDs being accumulated in the past decade.  The reason is that there are bargains in well remastered classical and jazz that I did not appreciate until I purchased my EAR Acute and last year, the COS Engineering D2v DAC.  About 30% of my CD collection never was and probably never will be issued in any other format (Marston, Biddulph, Romophone) 78s of opera, vocal, violin and piano 78s expertly remastered from rare recordings.  I have a moderately high end analog rig for LPs (VPI TNT VI mod./SME IV mod./Benz Ruby3 and appropriate high end electronics).  

To all those who just state that CD is unlistenable and cannot hold their attention, it's probably your equipment or you just listen to post 1995, compressed and poorly mastered pop and rock.  There is some poorly remastered classical as well (RCA opera mono series from last decade had hyped up mids, shrill compressed dynamics, bass-less lows-totally inferior to the early CD remasterings which sounded like the original LPs, not quite as good but certainly clean).  I prefer rock LPs to CDs because the rock remasterings are generally inferior.   

As to listening to 78s on a victrola, nope.  I use a Grado elliptical cartridge on a Ultracraft 400 arm on a VPI 19-4 turntable feeding a Marantz 7 in 78 setting through my main system.  Especially post 1925 78s sound dynamic and tonally rich.  My system is very dynamic so I don't miss not having horns.  Pre-1925 78s require different stylus sizes and speeds (my VPI SDS adjusts for speeds).  So, I'm not wearing out the 78s or the stylii compared to a victrola and get very superior sound.

I will not give up any of these formats.  I only have about 100 R2R tapes with a Technics 1500 R2R.  It would be nice to have half track 15 ips tapes, but I don't.  I don't plan to stream.  Also, the booklets that accompany many of my historic 78s CDs are magnificent, better than the backsides of an LP.  
@unreceivedogma  Yeah, that was my CD sound in the 1990s.  I hated it.  It all changed in 2006 with a superior analog sounding tube output EAR Acute CD player.  Last year, the new COS DAC changed it to no competition between formats-all depends on the mastering.
Regarding Manfred Eicher of ECM fame, here is how it happened:

Once CDs effectively killed off vinyl, Eicher was all-too-ready to terminate LP production, which is exactly what he did. He preferred the sound and convenience of CD to LP, which I recall him stating at the time in interviews. Years later when the production of CDs become a losing financial proposition, Eicher was forced to re-start LP production. But it is a limited affair, designed to deliver trophies to record collectors who refuse to listen to digital in any form. ECM’s core audience (the music lovers) continue to buy the CDs, although the necessity of opening the catalogue to streaming is certainly starting to hurt ECM’s core business.
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My analogue experience is only with vinyl.  My digital experience is with CD, SACD, digital downloads of PCM (CD resolution and Hi-rez), and DSD.  If I may be permitted a small boast I have a high-end turntable, cart and phono stage.  Prior to that I would have said that digital is easily better.  One has to go very far up the food chain for vinyl to sound superior.  If you stop and think about it vinyl is a mechanical method, and has to be done very very well to catch up with digital.  But now  at the broadest generalisation I would say they are equal.  They are different but equal. 

I have several instances where I have a digital and a vinyl copy of the same music.  My experience is that sometimes the vinyl is superior and sometimes the digital is superior.  What I have discerned is this:  in the early days of CD it was inferior.  This was typically because they were issuing digital copies of music mastered for vinyl.  Claudio Abbado conducting with the LSO conducting Le Sacre was a striking example.  In the late 80s this was the Le Sacre to beat.  I thought to 'improve' on that with the CD.  Fail.  The CD was crap.  Then just last year the Sydney PYT (pretty young thing) put out a fabulous album  (Don't Let the Kids Win).  I thought to myself 'Andrei, why don't you support the artist and get the LP as well?'  Feeling all noble I did just that.  The LP was crap.  Crappity crappity über-crap.  Forty bucks down the dunny.  The circle was complete and I am convinced the moral is the same.  In each case the original finished product was mastered for a particular medium.  Then the 'suits' get a cunning plan.  A plan so cunning you could pin a tail on it and call it a weasel.  They reissue the same music on a different medium but do no work - read spend no money - on making allowance for the different medium.

This is my long-winded way to say: it is a crap-shoot.