[sonitus mirus]

  Have you even seen a TT in your life?
If you can't beat digital playback, then you know you need a better TT, cart, or phono stage. A decent TT sounds more real, natural with a better stage front to back, and better separation of instruments and voices.
More emotion is conveyed via a good vinyl recording, compared to a good digital recording...
Even with a low end cart and phono stage vinyl spanks the ass of  CD or any digital recording any day.

 
I moved on from records to CDs a long time ago and could not be happier with the sound quality.  Digital music has a lot more potential and is technically superior to vinyl in practically every measurable way with regards to audio quality.  I did not think that this was even a serious debate anymore.  My emotional conveyance meter shows that I am in pure bliss at times with digital music.  I guess we are just cut from a different cloth. 

 

[Mambosenior]

More emotion is conveyed via a good vinyl recording, compared to a good digital recording...

Judgement, with all due respect..."C'mon man!"
 
The day my turntable starts spewing emotion, I'll call my local exorcist.
 
(Turntable owner here. Ok?)

 

[safulop]

I think that debating the superiority of vinyl in general was not my intent.  I do believe that many vinyl records can provide a superior sound and listening experience over their CD counterparts, particularly in the rock/pop/electronic kind of genres.  What I would say is that someone who embraced CDs and sold all their records in the 1990s did not make a very good decision if their record collection consisted chiefly of rock/pop/electronic music from the 1970s and 80s.  Those old records, in particular, were generally turned into horrible-sounding CDs.  This is why so many are now being reissued as "remasters" in the 21st century, because the first crack at making a CD out of them was so bad.  In many cases, however, the remasters are still not measuring up to the original vinyl.  This is painfully true of the Led Zeppelin CD box set  issued in 1991.
 
Some people here are so passionately against playing records that their solution is to "stop buying music" from record companies that can't seem to put out good CDs.   I'm not such an audiophile that my listening preferences are governed by sound quality, so I choose to solve the problem a different way, by playing records. 

 

[sonitus mirus]

  I think that debating the superiority of vinyl in general was not my intent.  I do believe that many vinyl records can provide a superior sound and listening experience over their CD counterparts, particularly in the rock/pop/electronic kind of genres.  What I would say is that someone who embraced CDs and sold all their records in the 1990s did not make a very good decision if their record collection consisted chiefly of rock/pop/electronic music from the 1970s and 80s.  Those old records, in particular, were generally turned into horrible-sounding CDs.  This is why so many are now being reissued as "remasters" in the 21st century, because the first crack at making a CD out of them was so bad.  In many cases, however, the remasters are still not measuring up to the original vinyl.  This is painfully true of the Led Zeppelin CD box set  issued in 1991.
 
Some people here are so passionately against playing records that their solution is to "stop buying music" from record companies that can't seem to put out good CDs.   I'm not such an audiophile that my listening preferences are governed by sound quality, so I choose to solve the problem a different way, by playing records. 

 
I'd love to have my AC/DC Highway to Hell and Back in Black albums again.  Those albums and Queen's The Game just never sound the same to me now.  CD, and now HD audio, can easily handle everything from an audible perspective that vinyl can produce.  Yes, there is a lot of loudness war material that was released on CD, but I don't believe the mastering on a majority of the CDs is terrible, just different than some of the original releases on vinyl.  By the way, Led Zeppelin has released updated versions of all of their studio work, and most agree that it sounds terrific on all formats: vinyl, CD, or HD audio files.  I've read that many of the original Atlantic CD releases had the left and right stereo channels swapped.

 

[Mambosenior]

  This is painfully true of the Led Zeppelin CD box set  issued in 1991.

The Jimmy Page remasters on CD trump any/all LPs I have of the group, including Japanese pressings...among others.
Due to poor vinyl quality on some pressings, I can't quite agree with your hypothesis that older LPs sound better.

 

[Leporello]

  In classical it is not hard, although as I've shown here you can get trouble with "remasters."  
 

In my opinion you have not shown it. You have posted two sound snippets, one from cd and the other from vinyl. You prefer the sound of the vinyl snippet over the cd. That is perfectly ok. Nothing more has been shown.

 

[safulop]

Excuse me but I posted waveform plots of the two masters which showed plainly that the CD version had its musical dynamics altered.  Only the vinyl version preserved the crescendo in the last part of the movement, the CD version had its loudness "equalized" artificially.

 

[safulop]

  The Jimmy Page remasters on CD trump any/all LPs I have of the group, including Japanese pressings...among others.
Due to poor vinyl quality on some pressings, I can't quite agree with your hypothesis that older LPs sound better.

Awesome, so the 3rd time's the charm.  Literally 3 tries to get CDs that beat the records from the 1970s.  I'm not that in to Zep that I'm going to blow my dough on new CDs.  I'll just drag out the perfectly awesome-sounding records whenever I get the urge.  My CD box set is destined for the recycle bin.

 

[Leporello]

  Excuse me but I posted waveform plots of the two masters which showed plainly that the CD version had its musical dynamics altered.  Only the vinyl version preserved the crescendo in the last part of the movement, the CD version had its loudness "equalized" artificially.

What are the timings of this crescendo in both versions?

 

[reginalb]

  Have you even seen a TT in your life?
If you can't beat digital playback, then you know you need a better TT, cart, or phono stage. A decent TT sounds more real, natural with a better stage front to back, and better separation of instruments and voices.
More emotion is conveyed via a good vinyl recording, compared to a good digital recording...
Even with a low end cart and phono stage vinyl spanks the ass of  CD or any digital recording any day.

 
I have to chime in. You're claiming to be a purist, yet you're the 180 degree opposite. Tubes introduce distortion. Granted, many people find it more pleasing to the ear. That's fine, but it's not purist. CD's are able to far more accurately reproduce audio. This is demonstrably true. CD's also have more dynamic range, they can therefore accurately reproduce a waveform across the entire audible spectrum, solid state gear is a mature technology that takes a signal, amplifies it, and passes it back out unmolested. Tubes don't do this. Again, all of this is measurable. A $1,000 system can more accurately reproduce sound than your snake oil system can. 
 
But you like it, so who cares? I love my turntable (it wasn't expensive enough for you or anything, and I'm passing it through a system you would likely find to be ghastly - so I can't comment on your $100k system, I've indeed never heard one) because it's fun. But it doesn't more accurately reproduce music. 

 

[cjl]

  Excuse me but I posted waveform plots of the two masters which showed plainly that the CD version had its musical dynamics altered.  Only the vinyl version preserved the crescendo in the last part of the movement, the CD version had its loudness "equalized" artificially.

Assuming you're right for a second here, how does hamfisted mastering have anything to do with the superiority of one format over the other? You can have a poorly mastered vinyl too, and it'll sound just as bad. The question isn't whether one particular recording is better on vinyl or CD, the question is which one between vinyl or CD has the technical capability to sound better, and the answer to that is clearly the CD.

 

[safulop]

 
Assuming you're right for a second here, how does hamfisted mastering have anything to do with the superiority of one format over the other? You can have a poorly mastered vinyl too, and it'll sound just as bad. The question isn't whether one particular recording is better on vinyl or CD, the question is which one between vinyl or CD has the technical capability to sound better, and the answer to that is clearly the CD.

That has never been my question in this or any other thread, because I understand that CDs are a technically superior format.  My question has always been, can we exhibit a recording whose vinyl release *sounds better*, meaning *provides a nicer listening experience*, than the CD release of the same recording.  Naturally the answer to this question fundamentally hinges on the mastering process, since that is the only *reasonable* reason that we would encounter such a thing.  I'm saying that I've found examples of this, too numerous to count.  The one example I posted here so far merely shows that the phenomenon even plagues classical music, which is a genre we thought safe from the "loudness wars" and other forms of bad mastering.  But no!  Bad mastering for CD is a scourge, an epidemic.  And this epidemic is single-handedly responsible for the continued utility of vinyl records, even to *reasonable people* who understand that CDs are theoretically better and therefore *should always* sound better.

 

[safulop]

  What are the timings of this crescendo in both versions?

It's not really one crescendo.  Basically it appears that every loud passage after the 280 second mark is a good bit louder on the vinyl, in relation to the previous part of the movement.  It's almost as if the mastering engineer for the CD release said to himself, "gee, it looks like Karajan and those other dumb Germans played the last part of the movement louder than the first part.  Can't have that, so I'll just crank up the volume for the first part and then taper it for the conclusion."   This may even explain why the loud string parts in the early portion sound almost "clipped" with a severe harshness.

 

[RRod]

  That has never been my question in this or any other thread, because I understand that CDs are a technically superior format.  My question has always been, can we exhibit a recording whose vinyl release *sounds better*, meaning *provides a nicer listening experience*, than the CD release of the same recording.  Naturally the answer to this question fundamentally hinges on the mastering process, since that is the only *reasonable* reason that we would encounter such a thing.  I'm saying that I've found examples of this, too numerous to count.  The one example I posted here so far merely shows that the phenomenon even plagues classical music, which is a genre we thought safe from the "loudness wars" and other forms of bad mastering.  But no!  Bad mastering for CD is a scourge, an epidemic.  And this epidemic is single-handedly responsible for the continued utility of vinyl records, even to *reasonable people* who understand that CDs are theoretically better and therefore *should always* sound better.

 
Plagues is too strong a word, and even this example isn't really convincing that it's a "problem" in classical.

 

[Leporello]

  It's not really one crescendo.  Basically it appears that every loud passage after the 280 second mark is a good bit louder on the vinyl, in relation to the previous part of the movement.  It's almost as if the mastering engineer for the CD release said to himself, "gee, it looks like Karajan and those other dumb Germans played the last part of the movement louder than the first part.  Can't have that, so I'll just crank up the volume for the first part and then taper it for the conclusion."   This may even explain why the loud string parts in the early portion sound almost "clipped" with a severe harshness.

Not really sure I can see that in the graphs (or hear it), I'll have to check carefully. Another interesting possibility is that the original recording engineers or contemporary vinyl mastering engineers have done some manual gain riding (not sure about the correct word, either). But the case seems rather weak. Cd version sounds perfectly ordinary to my ears.