The arguement can be settled very easily.....
Audiophiles think the Analogue sound of vinyl IS the best, warmest and best reproduction of the original sound.....in a live situation.
Digital is more convenient and with electronic music does not realy compromise the quality too much as most production is electronic also.
Compression of the audio file is the issue and results in a massive drop in quality, noticable at low volume/close field however completely unusable on large installations which have been designed for an analogue signal. My brother was resident in a Shanghai club for 3 months a couple of years ago and anything (including WAV files) digital sounded awful due to the rig being designed at great expense for an analogue signal.
For me, vinyl is best an reproduces the sound exactly as it was intended by the producers but that is only because my music is old, nothing younger than 15 years old. New tracks are produced, released, sold and played digitally which to me is a pitty.
In regards to the comment on Trax pressings, rule of thumb anything on a red label is likely to be shite as this is when Larry Sherman had run out of money and was recycling vinyl ie 87 to circa 91. Black label pressings are original and therefore have limited numbers and therefore were from virgin vinyl. Some of the green, orange and other colours are also originals and generally sound good.
The only advantage with digital other than being portable is that it does not degrade and requires no mainatance. CD's well fairly useless (although I am going to start using mine again after burning a load of WAVs to cd) and vinyl needs cleaning (I have my Loricraft RCM for that) and equipment needs setting up correctly and maintaining with fresh stylis etc.
Conclusion...
Vinyl is how it should be for pre circa 2000 releases. Needs mainataining but sounds best
Digital, could argue thats how it should be played today as produced, released etc all digitally. Retrospective transfers will never sound as good as vinyl but convenient and easy.
CD's sort of fall in the middle and only reason CDJ's are still wanted is they are a good interface for Serato etc.
S
Audiophiles think the Analogue sound of vinyl IS the best, warmest and best reproduction of the original sound.....in a live situation.
Digital is more convenient and with electronic music does not realy compromise the quality too much as most production is electronic also.
Compression of the audio file is the issue and results in a massive drop in quality, noticable at low volume/close field however completely unusable on large installations which have been designed for an analogue signal. My brother was resident in a Shanghai club for 3 months a couple of years ago and anything (including WAV files) digital sounded awful due to the rig being designed at great expense for an analogue signal.
For me, vinyl is best an reproduces the sound exactly as it was intended by the producers but that is only because my music is old, nothing younger than 15 years old. New tracks are produced, released, sold and played digitally which to me is a pitty.
In regards to the comment on Trax pressings, rule of thumb anything on a red label is likely to be shite as this is when Larry Sherman had run out of money and was recycling vinyl ie 87 to circa 91. Black label pressings are original and therefore have limited numbers and therefore were from virgin vinyl. Some of the green, orange and other colours are also originals and generally sound good.
The only advantage with digital other than being portable is that it does not degrade and requires no mainatance. CD's well fairly useless (although I am going to start using mine again after burning a load of WAVs to cd) and vinyl needs cleaning (I have my Loricraft RCM for that) and equipment needs setting up correctly and maintaining with fresh stylis etc.
Conclusion...
Vinyl is how it should be for pre circa 2000 releases. Needs mainataining but sounds best
Digital, could argue thats how it should be played today as produced, released etc all digitally. Retrospective transfers will never sound as good as vinyl but convenient and easy.
CD's sort of fall in the middle and only reason CDJ's are still wanted is they are a good interface for Serato etc.
S