I don't really care about the lead-in groove or exit groove noise as much as I would if it were so dirty that it was damaging my stylus. Which reminds me: having a damaged stylus and causing permanent damage to my media has always been one of my greatest fears. I could ruin a good portion of my collection from simply playing if it went for a few months unnoticed.
I appreciate your sentiments,
@judgmentday, but you've backed what you've said with nothing except "just listen", which is indeed the point, I agree. If I listen to both and the specs say the vinyl is way less accurate but (edit: vinyl) sounds totally unnatural vs feeling like I'm in the room on the vinyl, am I supposed to believe that the recording just sucks and I'm hallucinating any sort of spacial experience? That seems a bit silly to me, I'd rather cater to the thought that there's a yet unmeasured or purely subjective psychoacoustical affect inherent to vinyl or that master that is bringing more detail to the table and to my ears. Well, I guess you could kinda sorta argue that that's a "hallucination", but I think you all get what I mean even if I'm not the best at directly explaining it.
What I'm trying to grapple with is which format to use going forward. I'm not going to purchase the CD copy and the vinyl copy and do an A/B on every single one (although that DR rating website seems like a decent start) and decide which one to keep every time, that's a bit ridiculous. I need to pick a prime format to target and then go to the other when I have specific knowledge that it is better.
So far, I have chosen vinyl for the sense of space it has given me. I listen to music to get a feel for being in another universe, just like a video game, well-written fiction book or (3D?) movie, so I'm a soundstage junkie you could say. I do like the big cover art and physical disc, but everything else about vinyl I simply hate: the cleaning and wear, expense and inconvenience, fragility, etc. I'd love to get away from it. The physical CD is fine for me too, and I am even willing to burn copies of digital downloads too later on. As I described, I've recently had experiences with digital that gave me a sense of space that I've only
ever gotten from vinyl. This has made me reconsider vinyl being my "prime target" format, since the main reason that was the case is no longer exclusive to the format.
I'm essentially here to get "expert" opinions on what format to "target" and why, pertaining to this. To highlight my new thinking:
How is this logic? It seems like based on that, I should go for CD unless it specifically sounds like something loudness-wars-y is going on. Which hopefully, I won't experience that much with the only genre that I listen to likely to get radio play being rock (or am I wrong on either that or radio play being a main factor in the first place?).
Senior Head-Fi'ers: what say you? Shall I continue under my previous assumption and dump money into an analog rig and time and effort into vinyl transfers?
I know this is subjective and
my personal decision, I'm just looking for input. Maybe this would be better:
What do you mainly buy and why? Did you have the same preconceived notions as I? Do they still hold up for you? If you mainly use CD, are you satisfied with it compared to vinyl listening you have experienced?
Thanks for your time and words everyone! I appreciate it