Which is best - vinyl or CD ?

MikeEnRegalia wrote: ^ let's not go there - at least not in this thread. agreed?

Well do you disagree that a cheap vinyl player for the price for forexample at $250 sounds better than a cd player for $250?

A common enough question in music forums -  but some may find my experiences useful i hope!

The case for vinyl.  Until recently i bought all my new and second hand music on vinyl. On good quality equipment you find recordings vary greatly due to the mastering techniques used in the studio, but in the late 60's and early 70's real hi-fi was for the rich and up till the 1980's most people played their music on dansettes and those awful music centres, and everything sounded the same. Many recordings were mastered for these things, especially singles. i have found many early lp pressings to be the most reliable in terms of quality. i have some original  Buddy Holly lp's that sound absolutely stunning, thick vinyl / audiophile / virgin vinyl  pressings don't all sound vastly different from their counterparts, i have found some thin floppy bargain bin discs that have been brilliant. The biggest drawbacks with vinyl concerns user-friendliness: noise during quiet passages, also they collect dust, are easily scratched and you can't skip from track to track with a remote or play them in the car, yet the thrill of owning an original shiny black disc and the artwork/ inserts to gaze at is uncomparable to cd packaging.

The case for cd. When cd's first came generally available in the mid - 80's Mark Knopfler said "now everyone can hear what our music sounds like to us in the studio" and the German conductor Von Karajan was equally enthusiastic and claimed digital and cd was the future of recorded music. in those days the technology was still in its infancy and had many shortcomings, longevity was one issue, mastering was another. Decent Hi-fi equipment was much more affordable by this time and everyone was dumping their music centres and marvelling how great the new cd's sounded on their brand new systems, a fantasic improvement over their old outdated ones! in recent years digital technology has come along in leaps and bounds but i have found overall digital is or can be better than vinyl (CD,SACD,DVD-A) but is not a general rule as some vinyl originals have sounded much better than cd/remastered cd's  in my own comparison tests (Layla, Rush's Hold Your Fire/Grace albums, Yes Big Generator all sound a lot better to me on vinyl, although the early Robert Plant and the Led Zeppelin remastered albums, also Rick Wakeman's Six Wives masterpiece, seem to have have been improved on cd). Saying that, the case is the same with vinyl it depends what you play it on - a good quality player (around £500+)  should be standard for the best sound quality.

Overall vinyl is not finished yet and even seems to have enjoyed a resurgence in recent years, so although i will buy all my new music on cd I won't be dumping any of my vinyl collection yet!