I saw this on another forum and figured it'd be a good discussion here.

Personally, I prefer vinyl for overall sound quality. I also think vinyl has a warmer, more natural feel than CD.

On the other hand, CD is convenient.

I do enjoy the warm sound of vinyl, but I enjoy the more dynamic sound and detail of CD's more.  Plus, as nice as your turntable might be, there is always the occasional static.  So I respect vinyl listeners and enjoy the sound, I would have to vote CD.

I would vote that the end-all for pure sound quality would have to go to vinyl.  However, for purposes of cost, convienence & ease, I stick with CD playback.  IMO, you have to spend a lot more money and effort to get great LP playback, CD may never acheive these sonic goals, but for the $ it bests LP's.

It's funny the things we used to do with vinyl trying to achieve the fidelity that we now take for granted with CD's. Upgrading cartridges, arguing straight tone arm vs S arm vs tangential tracking, moving from belt drive to direct drive and back to belt, careful cleaning of the vinyl before each listen, as well as the needle. And no matter how well we took care of them, each listen caused deterioration.  I used to record a lot of my albums onto reel to reel to preserve them and so that I could listen for more than 20 minutes at a time (especially important for parties). And even for that, I'd use only certain tape, DBX noise reduction, higher tape speed, etc. A lot of work...

So for convenience, CD's win hands down. You can listen to hours of music and not even touch a CD, and the 20th listen is as good as the first. And no need to jump up in 15 - 20 minutes to turn the record over.

For dynamic range, low noise floor and true high fidelity potential, CD's again come out on top.

But there is something to be said for the warmth and natural sound of vinyl. Give me a well recorded and engineered vinyl recording over a mediocre CD any day (and vice versa). I have a MFSL copy of DSOTM on vinyl that imo blows away the CD (though I'm looking forward to hearing the sacd version). I even like the sound of the needle gently touching down to start the album, although I realize that's probably just part of the whole vinyl ritual and shows my age.

I guess each has it's place (especially if you have a large vinyl collection). The vast majority of my listening is to CD's so that says something right there. You can't beat the convenience, they sound great (for the most part) and let's face it, we ain't going back to vinyl.

With the right turntable, cartridge and phono stage, nothing to me sounds better than Vinyl. Of course, that's vinyl that's in mint condition, that's been cleaned, with a clean, dust-free needle, a good amp and preamp, etc....

I'm just starting to get into the nuances of good vinyl playback though. It's becoming sort of a hobby for me right now. I've found that I can get some pretty great-condition used vinyl (no scratches!) a lot cheaper than CD. And since used vinyl is usually OLD, like from the 60's, 70's and 80's, I get a little musical history lesson while I'm at it.

We just picked up the Music Hall MMF-5 turntable on the recommendation of our good friends at Echo Audio, and it sounds awesome. Apparently is still needs another 20 - 30 hours of run time before it becomes amazing.

 

I hope to eventually put together a nice vinyl system. I did a bit of looking when I was in Echo Audio a few months ago looking for a subwoofer--they recommended the Aperion 8. They were right about it, that thing puts out some nice bass.

Anyway, one of these days I'll get back in there to do some more looking at turntables and amps.

One of the main things that sounds great about old vinyl recordings is that they were recorded onto tape (analog) and mastered onto tape (again, analog).  This way the vinyl can be considered a true analog representation of the original recording.  Nowadays most albums are recorded and mastered digitally on a system like pro-tools.  Even if you press records, it's a digital recording, so it's kind of feudal! 

That being said I still love vinyl and have to agree with Ben that you can find records cheap and expand your musical knowledge this way.

If you look on a cd or LP there is usually a little code that says AAD, ADD, or DDD.  That is referring to the recording method, mastering, and finally the medium you are listening to.  A is for analog, D for digital.  Of course, on a CD the last letter is always "D"

And recording in the analog domain (like 1" tape for instance) has a much larger and higher frequency range than digital, so you get those lush harmonics or overtones into the recording. That is where the nuance of the instruments and voices are.

 

 

I have a few vinyl LPs that I also have on CD.  When I'm at home, I always like listening to the vinyl over CD.  If you can liken the sound to a material, the LPs sound like wood and the CDs sound more metallic.  And I only have a cheap $150 Denon turntable with a cartridge you can't swap!  The records seem like they have better stereo separation than the CDs also.