My experience is that the biggest SQ differences we experience are down to the recording, and its subsequent mix and mastering.
I have fabulous sounding LPs, and mediocre ones. I have fabulous sounding CDs an mediocre ones.
This is very unfortunate if one is an enthusiast of a particular band, since you are stuck with what is issued. Ironically, if there is an LP and CD of the same album the LP is often less dynamically compressed than the CD, presumably because the mastering engineer knows the LP won't be listened to in a car, train or whilst jogging. It is a shame since the potential of CD is much greater than is usually exploited nowadays.
Older CDs and not "remastered" tend to be better than recent ones IME.
I mainly listen to classical music. I do have some fabulous sounding LPs but here I reckon CDs are more often best, and in any case there are usually many versions of the same work, so unlike with pop music one usually has a choice of sound quality and interpretation when buying.
Microphone choice and positioning make a bigger difference to the SQ than anything else IME.
I do not attribute the differences between CD and LP to differences between digital and analogue since a digital recording of an LP sounds just like the LP.
FWIW whilst people are giving their experience history, my main experience in audio started analogue, I was a noise and vibration research engineer who worked for a short time for Garrard on how and why record players work the way they do.
I have been an amateur recordist for 50 years or so, starting with a mono valve reel to reel recorder, finishing with a Metric Halo digital recorder and using many technologies in between.
As a professional I have used analogue and digital methods for recording data, I was the first person to use a digital recorder on a Formula 1 car, and wrote my first significant software in 1971. I had to write most of the software I used for the first 15 years of my career.
My experience is quite different from Antoine's, btw.
I did not find huge differences between normally engineered DACs when I last did a careful comparison, far, far less than, say, the difference between my CD and LP copies of a favourite Liszt Piano concertos recording I enjoy.
I have yet to hear a difference between any cables which do not act as filters or aerials.
I compared a very expensive linear power supply on my Metric Halo recorder in place of the supplied (presumably extremely well designed) switched mode supply, I heard no difference. Interestingly (to me anyway) Bob Diament of Soundkeeper recordings (who uses the same recorder) wrote almost the same though he felt the bass was be a bit better with the smps, which is logical.
http://soundkeeperrecordings.com
I have fabulous sounding LPs, and mediocre ones. I have fabulous sounding CDs an mediocre ones.
This is very unfortunate if one is an enthusiast of a particular band, since you are stuck with what is issued. Ironically, if there is an LP and CD of the same album the LP is often less dynamically compressed than the CD, presumably because the mastering engineer knows the LP won't be listened to in a car, train or whilst jogging. It is a shame since the potential of CD is much greater than is usually exploited nowadays.
Older CDs and not "remastered" tend to be better than recent ones IME.
I mainly listen to classical music. I do have some fabulous sounding LPs but here I reckon CDs are more often best, and in any case there are usually many versions of the same work, so unlike with pop music one usually has a choice of sound quality and interpretation when buying.
Microphone choice and positioning make a bigger difference to the SQ than anything else IME.
I do not attribute the differences between CD and LP to differences between digital and analogue since a digital recording of an LP sounds just like the LP.
FWIW whilst people are giving their experience history, my main experience in audio started analogue, I was a noise and vibration research engineer who worked for a short time for Garrard on how and why record players work the way they do.
I have been an amateur recordist for 50 years or so, starting with a mono valve reel to reel recorder, finishing with a Metric Halo digital recorder and using many technologies in between.
As a professional I have used analogue and digital methods for recording data, I was the first person to use a digital recorder on a Formula 1 car, and wrote my first significant software in 1971. I had to write most of the software I used for the first 15 years of my career.
My experience is quite different from Antoine's, btw.
I did not find huge differences between normally engineered DACs when I last did a careful comparison, far, far less than, say, the difference between my CD and LP copies of a favourite Liszt Piano concertos recording I enjoy.
I have yet to hear a difference between any cables which do not act as filters or aerials.
I compared a very expensive linear power supply on my Metric Halo recorder in place of the supplied (presumably extremely well designed) switched mode supply, I heard no difference. Interestingly (to me anyway) Bob Diament of Soundkeeper recordings (who uses the same recorder) wrote almost the same though he felt the bass was be a bit better with the smps, which is logical.
http://soundkeeperrecordings.com
Devialet Original d'Atelier 44 Core, Job Pre/225, Goldmund PH2, Goldmund Reference/T3f /Ortofon A90, Goldmund Mimesis 36+ & Chord Blu, iMac/Air, Lynx Theta, Tune Audio Anima, Goldmund Epilog 1&2, REL Studio. Dialog, Silver Phantoms, Branch stands, copper cables (mainly).
Oxfordshire
