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A huge example is the Beatles 9/9/09 box set, which is an amazing, night&day remastering, with a wonderful balanced sound with out shouting or strange artificial peaks or piercing highs.
It almost sounds as good as Hi-Rez. If they can do it, why can't everyone else?
OK, my rant of the day is over.
Was there not a high res release of these on a USB key? Why bother with that when the CDs sound as good as it gets?
For those debating against vinyl, why bother? For those debating in favour of vinyl: I feel your pain. I grew up during the casette and CD craze. Cassettes quickly outsold vinyl during my youth and CD overtook cassettes during my formative teen years. Before I invested in vinyl, I had 1000 CDs and I wasn't keen on extending myself into the vinyl world without real merit. What did I do? I researched. I read through sites like Hydrogen Audio. I read though Audiogon and Audioasylum. I read Stereophile, and TAS and even EE journals. I went the academic route. The "scientific" route first. Then, I smartened up and made some calls, locally. I searched out folks who had obscene systems in all ways: grandeur and $$$$. They had it all (not unlike Mike up there with the best system I've ever encountered online or otherwise) and these folks, like Mike, seemed to prefer vinyl, even when digital was side by side and the money in digital was substantial and there wouldn't be any reason to prefer one over the other save for personal preference because - via experience - vinyl WAS better.
Wasn't Einstein who remarked about experience? Something akin to if one continually encounters the same result, repeating the measures is akin to insanity? Right.
So, here I was, sitting in various homes of folks who had vinyl rigs that cost more than the house I lived in at the time, and their digital setups weren't far off, and you know what? I liked the sound of the vinyl better than the digital almost every time. Why is that? I'm not sure, but I wasn't about to drop considerable coin into a new format given that downloads were the future, high res ones from speciality companies in particular. Buying into a pricey physical format seemed counter-intuitive and I'n not one to do anything blindly.
Well gosh darn it! EAch time I visited a new home, or a new shoppe, wherein I could compair side by side CDs vs, their purely analogue counterparts, I nearly always preferred the vinyl.
My last test then needed to be conducted before buying in: get a CD and an LP where, all things being equal, the sole difference would be at the very tail end of the process with one set of files dropped to a CD and another set cut to an LP. This was easy with many modern releases digitally recorded and processed all the way down the line save for the last step.
Guess what? Most often I was left feeling that the LP sounded better. Why this is I'm still not entirely sure of (though I have informed and pretty scientific opinions on the matter) but in the end I dove head first into an analogue rig and I haven't looked back.
Digital, particularly files are SO MUCH EASIER to deal with on a day to day play by play basis (though not in an archiving management sort of way), but the sound is at least a single step down, if not many times down, even from a rather dismal TT as compared with the CD playback chain. We can wax poetic about DVD-A or SACD or even Blu-ray, and true they are better (though not always and not always in an obvious way) but save for SACD which I find to generally sound better than PCM-based music, vinyl still comes out on top.
The decision then came down to: sonics vs. volume. I could own more CDs, I could upgrade my rig, OR I could divert the funds into vinyl. I didn't do it as some form of peacock dance. I didn't try to boast about my decision, in fact if I mention this to anyone I interact with routinely offline, they think I'm nuts, save for one gent. So then, why bother? Because it sounds better. That's it, that's all.
What I hate to read are absolutes wherein the science behind hearing and perception (which is still largely a mystery) is held to a higher level than the experience of those who can relate, with VERY high frequency, the appreciation for vinyl over CD. Had I listened to those who went by the raw numbers, I'd be missing out on what I consider a superior auditory experience. Why deprive this for someone else? When asked what I prefer, I respond accordingly with the anticipation that the questioner will give it a go themselves. Like Mike, I'm not here to preach and convert, but I think when asked, stating the obvious and with the hope of perpetuating positive experiences, why not? For those that can't hear a difference, or prefer CD, hey, that's cool too. But to declare that CD IS better and that those that think otherwise are delusional, insane, stupid or have an agenda, well.... that's simply vitriol at its foundation. I have no agenda, but I do have a passion for listening to music and I hope to better such experiences by bettering my gear over time. Until digital, to me, surpasses vinyl, I'll continue concentrating on my vinyl rig rather than my digital rig, if only because so many companies are releasing music on LP. Methinks in the near future the options will be: vinyl or downloads. In that case, vinyl every time, if only for the resale value for my heirs
