Last Night I Did Something I Don't Normally Do............
Posted by: The Strat (Fender) on 22 February 2017
......in as much I very rarely compare a recording on vinyl and CD more just accept that both are excellent at what they do and there is little point. Also as a general rule earlier fully analogue recordings - jazz and 60/70s rock titles tend to be on vinyl and more recent stuff and classical are on CD.
However, Interestingly the first 3 recordings that I purchased on CD on the day I bought my first CDP - Arcam Alpha late '91 - were the Famous Blue Raincoat by Jennifer Warnes, The Nightfly by DF and On Every Street by Dire Straits I have subsequently purchased on vinyl. Anyway, last night I was dealing with some stuff on the iPad and so didn't want to be up and down every 15 minutes so put On Every Street on the CDP and it came to me on the 3rd verse of the title track - that great moment "the three chord symphony crashes into space" - that this was a shadow of how it comes over on vinyl. So out came the vinyl and despite not having the almost zero noise floor and perhaps the more accurate resolution of the CDP the soundstage was so obviously bigger, instruments were more authentic, there was more detail if not quite so accurate but it was just a fuller, richer musical experience.
Now perhaps this should not be a surprise for someone who has maintained that if everything else is equal prefers vinyl except that On Every Street is a DDD configuration and presumably DDA (?) on the vinyl so one might have expected the digital playback to be up there. Of course this means nothing really in as much that if tonight I play the Tennstedt Eroica on CD - no vinyl available
so no comparison to be had - it will still be wonderful.
I imagine I can improve the staging of the CDS3 by having the XPS DR'd or upgrading to a 555PSU but it was just the nature of the difference that somewhat surprised me.
Please guys comment and debate but try not to turn this into a polarised analogue vs digital because that's not my intent but I would be interested to know how much this is influenced by the engineering and mastering?
It's all good!!
Regards,
Lindsay