My TEAC turntable is fine thank you.....
and it does a very good job of belting out the
Stones 'Exiles on Main street', Rick Wakemans 'The six wives of Henry VIII' or Georges' double 'All things must pass' LP...
but remember cleanliness is next to godliness with vinyl!
Vinyl???the warmth of the output is superior to anything.
However, my vinyl will not last forever so my turntable is being used to convert it all to CD
..and with a CD I can hear it in the car..in cold stark aural sound

I have never heard a CD or an MP3 with anything even remotely like the richness, vibrancy and atmosphere that can come from a vinyl record.

Vinyl v MP3 a good fight? Fools errand more like!

Vinyl does take more effort, however this is rewarded with fantastic music reproduction. MP3 may be OK for very cheap and cheerful replay on the move but is not, in my experience, acceptable for storage of a cherished music collection.

I've recently abandoned my very good CD player for a music server. All my CDs have been ripped to HD, using EAC, and converted to FLAC (free lossless audio codec). The server is controlled by a Slim Devices Squeezebox, which streams the music over a wireless network to my Hi-Fi (via an external DAC). This set up provides an extraordinarily flexible and user friendly digital system with no loss of quality compared to the CD.

Still rather buy new music on LP though!

There used to be a great site called r3mix which analyzed codecs in some depth, including double-blind tests. They found that LAME VBR 4 (which should be about the same as the settings Charles recommends above) was indistinguishable from CD quality in these tests. When hi-fi buffs using the best equipment in double-blind tests can't tell the difference, then there's no way I'll hear any problems on my consumer equipment!

As for vinyl - well there's some nostalgia value in hearing the music in the same way I grew up with it, but that's about it...

I grew up listening to vinyl but I would not go back. A view that was accidentally reinforced at a an unfortunate hi-fi demonstration by playing old vinyl on a $250,000 stereo system. It was possibly a warm sound but definitely awful (no doubt the clicks, pops and surface noise were accurately reproduced).

Yes CDs can sound average in a car or a lot of cheap consumer electronics but a well-produced recording played on a good system is a treat to listen to.

MP3s, well I have only listened to them through the filter of too much red wine, and at an unknown bit rate, but they sound OK to me. For a real treat though, listen to a good SACD or DVD-audio, they do raise the standard. Heck, even Neil Young approves of DVD-audio.

If, I had $1400 speakers rather than $400 ones
If, I still had the hearing range I had at 20
Then, I might agree that vinyl was superior to 192kbps mp3.

As it is I doubt I can tell much difference between 160 kbps CBR and vinyl, though I have noted a drop off in what I would term richness and complexity at 128 kbps.

Incidentally, at the risk of perhaps starting another argument I must admit, at some pain, that wma compression does a better job, to my ears, on my inferior equipment anyway. Wma 128 kbps is hard to distinguish from mp3 160 kbps. However bought downloads in wma come packed with copy protection and god knows what else, so better open source 192 kbps mp3.

Comparing fruit with chocolate.
192kbps is not good enough and sounds awful even on my low range stereo.
flac lossless ist the way to go.

Using a Valve(Tube)based amplifier with clean vinyl and stylus on a stable turntable is close to 'being there'.

Raw digital recordings would be fine but compressed music artifacts are clearly indentifable to the descerning listener.

Love MP3's I can even mix them when playing out on PCDJ but at home I listen to vinyl on a Pink Triangle Anniversary through a Sugden Amp and AE1 speakers. The sound is miles better than CD and MP3 both of which sound compressed, flat and uninteresting. The digital converstion process can't record the detail in the music that analogue can and on a good system it really shows.

No complaints MP3 is a great format for listening at choose vinyl if you want to listen too.

MC

I've heard that because digital music (mp3s, CDs etc) are coded in binary, the music is actually composed into thousands of tiny gaps. scientists claim the brain can't hear these gaps, but the brain can recognise the black frames as a tv or monitor flickers, and parts of our brain can recognise these.
vinyls thus has a "purer" sound. Yoou only have to slow down an mp3 by 20% to hear visible distortion as these frequency spaces become close to audible.
mp3 is of course hugely convenient, and one cannot deny this convinience, let alone the increased frequency range of a digital recording over the information that can be held on tape cassette and vinyl.
However, the whole tactile sensation of using vinyl is wonderful, and the sound and spectacle of a vinyl DJ far excels one using CDs or MP3s for mixing.
Having been an advocate of mp3s for many years, i welcome the use of vinyl, it's nice to feel and touch the music, and there is something special about the sound that goes beyond descriptions of "warm" and "atmospheric."
plus which, in these modern times the majority of pop music is released on CD and mp3, music that is released on vinyl is then niche, more unique and more original, for example, aphex twins ground breaking "analord" album, can only be bought on vinyl.
I agree that to the discerning ear, compressional fragmentation and harmonic artifacts can be hugely noticeable.
Yet iam unable to say which is better, although i do say that whilst i like being able to have all my favourite 12,000 songs on my hard drive, i wish i could take them from it and put them on a turntable.
And the sound does ultimately seem to trigger some deep responses from vinyl, the same recording on mp3 can seem cold, and over-produced.
In short, it's like comparing religions.
-Callum

I prefer vinyl at home for broadcast on in my car its cassette or cd i use cd its convienent on the go i use mp3 then and only. Vinyl has more bass then any other format and only analog can produce a great bass sound i have learnt this as a bass player.