The thing I object to in some of the earlier comments is the suggestion that the difference in sound quality is due to equalization. That the difference in sound quality of vinyl vs. digital is that it's just a low-pass filter. I think there are many other reasons for audible differences, such as the distortion characteristics you suggest. I also like tube amps but currently only run solid state. If my Bryston preamp ever dies (and I probably will before it does), I may go to a tube preamp then. My Linkwitz Orions are multi-amped and call for 8 channels at 60wpc, which would be far too expensive to run with tubes, let alone how much they'd heat the house. I find that mosfet amps have a pleasing distortion quality similar to that of tubes, so I'm happy with that.

Please note that I've never said here that either format was better than the other. All I've said is that I hear differences and that it's not simply a matter of equalization. In a world where most experience music through ear buds connected to their smart phones or iPods, what we audiophiles think really is of little consequence.

It's also been my experience that CD releases are typically re-mastered from the original studio recordings, so much of the difference between vinyl and CD releases has to do with the mastering engineers and the decisions they made.

As for my own preference, I don't have one. I enjoy both formats and am more interested in listening to good players than I am in worrying about the relative merits of vinyl/CD/hi-res recordings. I've got some 10" LPs from the late 1940s which really swing. To me, that's what's important.

I'm both a performing musician and an engineer. I've had a strong interest in audio since I built my first Heathkit tuner in 1971. During my college days, I built solid state Dynaco units, and later spent a number of years designing and building loudspeakers. My first loudspeaker was from a design in the August 1976 issue of Audio Magazine for a Theil aligned enclosure of 20 cubic feet. It was the size of a refrigerator. Was 3 db down at 20 hz. Loads of fun.

The definition of a "true audiophile" is as varied as their are human beings to interpret the phrase. I see the term "audiophile" as being anyone who loves listening to music and wants to reproduce it faithfully at home. Most are constrained by limitations of budget, physical listening space and situation, and having to accommodate the living situation requirements of others they live with. Many audiophiles are familiar with the acronym "WAF" (Wife Acceptance Factor) as it seems to be fact that those who consider themselves to be audiophiles, under whatever definition you care to use, are 99% male.

I like to think that audiophiles are people who care to engineer the sound reproduction systems in their homes. What takes it another great leap forward is when you begin to build your own gear - amplifiers, speakers, etc. Another path is to do your own location recordings. As my wife is a professional violinist, I get to record some very good concerts from time to time. You can check out some of them at the website for the Temescal String Quartet. In particular the recordings of the 1st movement of the Brahms Clarinet Quintet and the whole of the Ravel String Quartet are performances I very much enjoy.

So if you want to meet *MY* definition of a "true audiophile", you'll build some of your own gear and will get out and record stuff live and bring it back home. If it sounds in your living room like it did live, then you've accomplished something. And yes. You can get it all done with very inexpensive gear. My recordings were done with Behringer C2 mikes, cheap cables, an M-Audio USB audio interface feeding into a 7 year old Win XP laptop running Audacity. Take a listen at:

http://www.temescalquartet.com...

Since you know so much about live music, what instrument do you play? Is it an acoustic instrument? Do you play without amplification and thus have experience balancing your sound level with the other players in the ensemble? Or is that too Old School for you?

And while we're at it, what gear do you listen on which so accurately informs you that digital is so much better.

To my ear, (and that's MY ear), the things I listen for in an audio system are tonal balance and imaging. For me it's all about voices. There are some local jazz singers I know well and have heard live a number of times. One woman used to sing with my big band back in the 90s. I can take those tracks and have a pretty good idea of how accurate a system sounds.

A truly good system will have a real 3D quality to the imaging as well. It's not only left-right, but also front-back that you can hear on a good system. Sadly few people ever get to hear that sort of thing outside of a hi-end showroom, and most of those systems cost an insane amount of loot.

That's why I'm so big on the Linkwith Orion stuff. Siegfried Linkwitz will sell you just the plans and you can build everything from scratch, or you can buy everything already built and get the same results as hi-end systems costing 10 times as much. But you don't get it for the price of a Cambridge Audio system.

Headphones can sound quite good, but they can never give you the same kind of experience.

If you're going to be that serious about it, then you're going to need a system that reproduces accurately. I'll betcha it ain't better than mine.

The problem with digital is that you won't find my Bill Hardman or Frank Rosolino recordings in that medium. It doesn't matter how much "better" it sounds to you if you can't listen to it at all.

I like digital because it's so much easier to work with than analog. I like analog because of the library I have on it you'll never hear anywhere else. What you like is what you like and that's totally cool with me.

I've got about a dozen recordings on both CD and vinyl. My own experience is that vinyl has different timbre, which many describe as "warmer" than the CDs I have. It certainly feels more... I dunno what words best describe it... "organic" maybe? It's definitely different. But is it better? That's up to you.

CDs have no background or media noise the way that vinyl does and vinyl is typically compressed a bit. It just doesn't have the signal to noise ratio that digital does.

I record the concerts my wife's string quartet does at 96 khz/24 bit, and when I down sample to 44.1 khz/16 bit to made a CD, it seems to me that I can hear differences there as well.

Personally I buy recordings to listen to the music. I like to listen on better gear just like everyone else does, but the hi-end can get waaaaay too anal retentive for me. I keep my vinyl because there's so much of it that will never make it to CD. I've got some jazz recordings you'll never see on CD.

And if you ever think you want to get into some real hi-end sound without spending an insane amount, check out

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/

And what kind of equipment do you listen on that gives you this opinion? I'll grant you that there's a whole lotta snake oil in hi-end audio, but were you to listen on my system (Linn LP-12 turntable, Bryston preamp, Linkwitz Orion loudspeakers), you'd hear real differences in vinyl vs. CD. Is one better than the other? Not really if your goal is simply to listen to good music. But the differences are certainly there.

Articles and comments like this are made by people who are not musicians, let alone people who play violin professionally. In the world of today, we live with technology all around us. Everyone has their preferences and some technologies suit some folks better than others. The Mac guys hate Windows and I hate 'em both. But modern technology is consistent. Set 10 MacBook Pro laptops up and they all work EXACTLY the same. Not so for violins. Not even for modern makers.

These things are analog. You tune them by twisting a wooden peg. They don't even have frets! Each instrument is unique and so are we. Professional players really take their time searching for an instrument that suits them.

I play trumpet Thank God. Our instruments are MUCH cheaper. But most of the pro players I play with own several instruments because of all the little variations between them. Go to the home of any serious guitar player and ask how many guitars they own... It's quite common to find guys who own a dozen or more.

Are the Stravdivari and Guarneri violins worth the 8 figure prices? It's all a matter of supply and demand. There are only so many of the old instruments and if enough people want them, then the price goes up. The value of something is what someone is willing to pay for it, which in the case of violins, does not necessarily correlate to how well it plays.

My wife also plays baroque violin and has a French instrument, made in 1774, which cost her only $12k. She tried out nearly 20 baroque violins before she settled on this one and it's a gem. There aren't many people playing in the baroque style, so there isn't as much demand. Most of the old Italian instruments have been altered over the years from their original form. "Modern" violins (those made after about 1830 or so) have necks that are bent further back and put more tension on the strings. They are engineered to play louder than the older instruments. The bows are bigger and heavier as well. And the bows are concave instead of being convex and have more horse hair on them so they play louder.

Because there isn't as much demand, the prices for the old instruments are much lower. The old instruments are worth that much because people are willing to pay for it, not because they necessarily are "better".

We are rapidly reaching a fundamental breaking point in our economic system. Here's how our current system works.

On one hand, it is normal business practice to maximize profits, though not necessarily for the benefit of the share holders. On the other hand, it is normal for the working class to sell their skill, ingenuity and labor in exchange for money (profit). Furthermore companies expect some amount of loyalty from the employees, valuing it only for so long as it benefits the company. The company on the other hand is under no obligation to have any loyalty to the employee.

This is a workable system so long as the required skill set changes slowly enough for employees to adapt and sustain themselves. This is still the case in certain industries like construction, home remodeling, etc. But in technology, new skill requirements pop up as fast as they can be invented and job experience greater than 3 years is irrelevant.

With the development of advanced IT management systems, as well as the outsourcing to lower paid foreign workers, American workers and their jobs are being eliminated. This is to be expected because it is normal to think that companies are always going to be trying to lower their expenses. The problem here is that this is creating an imbalance between the demand and supply of skils and labor.

The reason this is a problem is that it is eroding the middle class and it is middle class demand that is the source of economic activity. The reason 3rd World countries have stagnant economies and a lack of economic opportunity is there is no middle class and no middle class demand. Without a middle class and the money it has to spend, there's nobody to sell goods and services to. Sadly this is the direction that America is inexorably headed.

Today middle class jobs are being eliminated by outsourcing and advancing knowledge systems. We're not that far away from AI systems that will much, much further erode middle class jobs. It won't just be IT workers that will get it. it will be bankers, lawyers, workers in the insurance industry, etc.

IBM's Watson is now being used to invent new cuisines and is doing a pretty good job of it.

The demand for human labor and ingenuity is quickly being phased out as technology advances along with the issues of globalization. Therefore the fundamental premise that people can provide for themselves through the exchange of skill, ingenuity and labor is quickly being made obsolete, and this will fundamentally break our economic system. Futurists of the past would speculate that our society would become so rich that humans would only work because they wanted to and that we would have almost unlimited wealth and leisure time. But that isn't the way it's going is it? When there no longer is enough work to be had, there will a permanent underclass of poor in America, just as it is normal in the 3rd World.

Check out Windowmaker. Spend a week with it and you'll never use another X windowing system.

I agree that Ubuntu will never take over the common desktop. That honor will go to Chrome via the Chomebook and Chromebox. Most home users need nothing more than a web brower to web surf, do e-mail, facebook and write the occasional letter. I have a friend who's a book dealer. Does EVERYTHING in his web browser.

The corporate desktop is becoming fragmented as users run from Microsoft as fast as they can. Currently they mostly go to the Apple Mac, only because they haven't found Chrome yet. Even at work, most everything folks do is in a web browser.

I'm a Linux sysadmin and have been converting engineering developers to Ubuntu though. I'm a long-time Windowmaker user and love the interface. I put that in front of an engineer, give him a 20 minute walk-through and they leave their Apple Mac behind forever. Windowmaker is VERY easy to customize. It's fast and has a very clean look. Totally intuitive and easy to use. If you're an engineering develper, there's no better desktop platform than Ubuntu with Windowmaker.

I dunno. Will his ego fit into a 3/4" square?

I've been using Windowmaker since 2003 and it's essentially the same today as it was then. Fast, easy to customize, uncluttered and does everything I want.

My Sparc 2 had a 40 mhz processor and 96 MB RAM. I retired it in 2006, so it dated back to 1992. Back then, PCs were 386 boxes with about 8 MB RAM.

My Sparc 2 was fine as a mail, DNS, http, DHCP and http proxy server. Rock solid. I used it as a proxy server back in the day when my internet connection was a phone line to Best Internet Services. My son had a Win 95 PC on a thin-net line to the Sparc 2 and the http proxy got him out to the web over the dial-up IP connection.

There ya go. There's no better way to kill off Solaris, not that they really needed to try...

Sun made good hardware back in the day. I had a Sun Sparc 2 I ran Solaris 2.7 on until it was about 14 years old. Imagine trying to run anything on a PC or a Mac that was 14 years old and expect it to hold up. The only reason I retired the Sun box was that I just wearied of running my mail/DNS server at the house off my DSL line.