had to put the Hater-ration away when I saw this in person at the Tulsa Car Show

Back in my audiophile days, moving-coil cartridges and carbon-less (white) vinyl were the big things. I had an incredibly heavy Yamaha direct-drive turntable, and weights to clamp the record's center and edge to the turntable. These were used to damp the record, and remove the edge warp.

Had a beautiful set of Stax electrostatic headphones.

Spent a while buying direct-to-disk recordings, too. These skipped some of the many steps from initial cutting of the master disk, to the hundreds of child masters needed to mold thousands of records.

When the first CD's came out, audio engineers recorded the high freq's too loud, and gave CD's a reputation that still exists, that CD's sound crap. I took the time to find great recordings, and was slapped hard upside the head with how incredibly good CD's are.

I can understand why some people prefer the even-harmonic distortion that tube amps deliver.

I will never understand why anyone would enjoy vinyl. It certainly, absolutely is not because they sound better. (I'm assuming the recording studio engineers are competent to record properly for CD's. That might be too much to expect. Hmm, need to talk to my nephew. He's doing this down in Nashville...)
 
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On MP3 the bass is woolly ....

Reminds me of a writer for The Audio Critic, opining on a writer for another audio mag, who wrote that the bass was 'too slow'.

His remark - "yes, that's what separates it from treble..."
 
Back in my audiophile days, moving-coil cartridges and carbon-less (white) vinyl were the big things. I had an incredibly heavy Yamaha direct-drive turntable, and weights to clamp the record's center and edge to the turntable. These were used to damp the record, and remove the edge warp.

Had a beautiful set of Stax electrostatic headphones.

Spent a while buying direct-to-disk recordings, too. These skipped some of the many steps from initial cutting of the master disk, to the hundreds of child masters needed to mold thousands of records.

When the first CD's came out, audio engineers recorded the high freq's too loud, and gave CD's a reputation that still exists, that CD's sound crap. I took the time to find great recordings, and was slapped hard upside the head with how incredibly good CD's are.

I can understand why some people prefer the even-harmonic distortion that tube amps deliver.

I will never understand why anyone would enjoy vinyl. It certainly, absolutely is not because they sound better. (I'm assuming the recording studio engineers are competent to record properly for CD's. That might be too much to expect. Hmm, need to talk to my nephew. He's doing this down in Nashville...)
Fair points, some early CDs sounded terrible, I remember that. Some vinyl also sounds terrible. Many MP3's and "made for iTunes" music also sounds terrible (brick walled, as it's called often - think of the sound (not the music, but the sound) of most Oasis recordings (where it sounds as if everything was recorded at "11"). I really like many CDs, and some will never be on vinyl and vice versa.
Vinyl enjoyment comes down to the entire package - it's big, it's a genuine artifact, feeling less disposable than most other media; you can work with it directly as a DJ; it requires work, almost forcing the listener to participate; there's a fuller sound (the warmth described by many) due to it's inherent nosiness; I could go on.
I personally prefer vinyl, but I also know it's not for everyone, and I'm not one who trumpets the one media over the others, they all have advantages and disadvantages. I just personally prefer vinyl and I prefer having a choice of formats to hear things on.
 
I have thousands of LPs and definitely prefer vinyl for the aesthetics, but in most cases would take a CD over an LP for the sound quality and ease of use (at least if one wants an actual physical format). What I've learned over the years is that one of the biggest affects on sound quality, no matter what the format, is the mastering. Just because a CD (or digital in any form) can handle more bass and treble doesn't mean that an engineer should goose the bass and treble unnaturally. And the recent trend (maybe hopefully subsiding a bit) of brickwalling everything is the worst.
 
Not looking to fight you; however my encoding is fine as is the quality of most of my MP3s (I have well over 60,000 on a dedicated computer for when I am DJing w/o vinyl no way they are all fitting on an iPod, let alone an iPhone) .

Assuming your MP3s are encoded at 320, they should be effectively indistinguishable from a lossless recording. At least, I'm not aware of any scientific testing that has demonstrated the ability of any humans to tell the difference between lossless and 320. I think for the vast majority of people either 192 or 256 is indistinguishable, it's been awhile since I've looked into this so I can't remember the cutoff. If you can hear a difference either your MP3s are encoded at a lower bitrate, your encoder had something wrong with it, or your mp3 playback equipment is faulty somehow. Or, alternately - you are some kind of superhuman and should be studied by science.
 
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