Is vinyl still a "perfect" source?

“Perfect” means a lot of different things to different people. Nothing is perfect, that said, Lps are relatively speaking, the most outstanding source of high fidelity reproduction in the modern world.

Trust me, the problem is in most folks TT rigs and not the vinyl, old, new, or reissue, the vinyl is still THE greatest overall consumer medium available. I find that vinyl continues to show with each improvement to our turntables that there is still more untapped music and nuance to be mined from those grooves.

Now whether or not someone will want to fund a good analog source or not and deal with the complexities of the medium is a whole different issue. No one suggested it was the cheapest or easiest.

There is still good vinyl, great vinyl, and yes, bad vinyl today as there always was BUT, again, most of the time it’s the turntable that is lacking, not the vinyl IMHO.

Happy Listening!

04-08-07: R_f_sayles
There is still good vinyl, great vinyl, and yes, bad vinyl today as there always was BUT, again, most of the time it’s the turntable that is lacking, not the vinyl IMHO.

I'm finding this out more and more with my first TT rig in 25 years. My current TT setup is much better than anything I had in the old days, but is definitely entry-level (Technics SL1210 M5G, Shure M97xE or Ortofon OM 10) compared to a lot of the rigs you guys have.

Still, I am totally blown away by how good vinyl generally sounds. Many of the same LPs that I thought sounded mediocre in the '70s sound really good to me now, with low noise, lots of slam, deep, full bass, smooth treble, and dynamic range.

And much of the vinyl I listen to now is from the 99-cent bins at used record stores. I clean them up and they sound fine. For a sanity check, I occasionally play the LP and CD versions for my wife, and to her, "there's no comparison" (her words) in favor of the LPs.

Even though we have digital source, remastered recording, Lps, cd's tubes etc. Our ears listen to analog sound, just my 2cts. I recently did the switch to vinyl hopefully the journey will be fun but I have alot to learn and hopefully I will have the patience to committ

Vinyl and CD share have a lot in common. Both are media which became popular with the public because of the convenience and lower cost (cheap to manufacture) than available alternatives. The lp was a cheap and convenient alternative to reel-to-reel tape; the CD to lp.

I have a lot on lp that is not available on CD, and a lot of lps, jazz in particular, clearly sound better than the
CD reissue. This is also true of a lot of pop/rock reissues. Whether the master tapes have gone bad, or the mastering is just different these days, I don't know, but I am MUCH more pleased with classical CD reissues.

That said, if I had to give up one or the other, I would give up on LPs first. I have FAR fewer lps that cannot be found on CDs than CDs never issued on lp. Almost no new classical releases come on lp, and frankly, if they do, I would still go with the CD. I like the long, uninterrupted "sides" of CD (I have a Taneyev CD that is more than 82 minutes long), I like the ease of finding my place in an opera libretto by using the track number, and the huge dynamic range of classical music does make noise intrusive during quiet passages on lp.