AudioFred Messages: 377 Registered: May 2009 Location: Houston
Illuminati (1st Degree)
I did an A/B vinyl/digital comparions recently, using a musican friend as the judge. I like to use musicians instead of audiophiles because they know what it's supposed to sound like and they don't have all the audiosnob biases.
We started Van Morrison's Moondance CD on the player and paused it at two seconds. Then I cued the Moondance record on the turntable, and I unpaused the CD a moment after the music started on the turntable. This enabled me to A/B switch between the two using the amplifier's remote, with both playing at almost the exact spot in the music.
For those who are unfamiliar with this CD and record, the CD is well recorded, with little compression and no freaky equalization applied (as is the case with most recently released CD's). The record is an 180g reissue cut from the original analog master tapes. So both represent the state of the art as it existed before mastering engineers began to f*^k it all up in the 1990's with compresion and equalization.
The differences between the two were immediately apparent and were not subtle. While the CD is very well recorded, there's a siblant edge to Morrison's voice that you don't recognize until you compare it with the vinly. And while both have very good bass, the midbbass on the vinyl is more pronounced, creating a very nice sounding effect on my system.
In both cases a Krell integrated amp was used with Selah Audio line arrays. The CD player is a Cambridge Audio Azur 840C. The turntable is a VPI Classic with a Dynavector X20 cartridge and a Sutherland battery powered phono preamp. The gain on the Sutherland was adjusted to match the gain from the CD player.
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