Should I buy new vinyl or the CD?

[rockafellar]

To my ears it is just pot luck. Some new releases sound good, others sound shit. I stopped buying new vinyl years ago as it was too expensive to justify the inconsistent results. Saying that though, When vinyl is at the top of it's game it's by far the most enjoyable source for me. I now use premium spotify in the first instance, if I really like something I then buy the CD and when I find the time I go hunting for old vinyl. This works well for me.

 

[sonddek]

My copy of the English Riviera by Metronomy came with a CD in a little pocket. I compared directly between lossless/Macbook/iTunes/AirportExpress/TOSLINK/DACMagic/MaplinsPS/XLR-out and Well Tempered Simplex/DV17mk3/Uphorik. The DACMagic was better. There appears to be no difference between the two masterings of this recording, but the digital version was crisper and more tuneful in the bass. I didn't want or expect it to be the case. Just one datum, so ymmv with other recordings.

 

[sq225917]

DV I'm in the same boat, Weiss dac vs very decent vinyl. I try to find out if they are mastered differently and buy accordingly. There's no hard and fast rule unfortunately.

 

[TubeFanPhil]

I bought a copy of The Zombies "Odyssey And Oracle" from them last year. It arrived in large box. Unfortunately the box was only about 11 inches wide, but it was deep enough so they could bend the LP to fit. Needless to say it was unplayable. I returned it for a replacement and that arrived in exactly the same packaging and condition. Since then I don't buy vinyl from Amazon. Maybe I'm just unlucky.

I buy all of mine new from Amazon and they are always perfect

 

[Warren Day]

I think it is source dependent.

For me vinyl, especially since my last turntable improvement.

Actually for me preference is: vinyl, 24-bit download, CD.

 

[Paul Mc]

Vinyl if the artefact is more important than cost.

 

[Robert]

This is a serious question for those who have what might be called 'high-end' equipment.

I use a Weiss DAC202 to play ripped CDs and a high quality vinyl spinner equipped with a DV XV1-s cart. What I notice is that when a recording is good there really isn't anything between them in sound quality other than 'wine tasting'.

So I notice some stuff being released on both vinyl and CD. In the past I've gone for the more expensive 180g vinyl but its so variable in quality and sometimes not really worth it. In your experience when the same stuff is simultaneously released on both medium is the recording the same or has the CD been compressed to death?

Cheers,

DV

PS I am almost out of room for much more vinyl.......

If we are tasking about material that was originally released on vinyl/tape only, I'll generally prefer the CD/file version if and only if the transfer has been made by someone who understands the transfer process.

Ultimately your DAC202 has the ability to stomp all over every vinyl front end ever made because it can faithfully reproduce a digital studio master 'as is', something vinyl can never do because of the multiple levels of processing needed.

I don't buy currently produced material on vinyl at all but do make a judgement call for older recording that would been made using analogue kit. Often this sounds better on vinyl but only because some wazzak has ballsed-up the transfer to digital, which if done correctly can be transparent IMO.

So you need both formats and need to keep them on the pace. Or in your case, you need to keep the vinyl front end on the pace. A Weiss is really 'job done' for the digital side off things.