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Listening to digital/vinyl and then mono

Posted by magiccarpetride (A) on September 11, 2017 at 11:29:24

A friend came over for a listening session couple of days ago, and after listening to some of my recent vinyl acquisitions, he started wondering if digital might sound as nice as LPs. So we said why don't we do a quick side-by-side comparison, for a lark?

So I played Sgt. Pepper's opening track (streaming AIFF stereo file from Mac Mini via ethernet cable into modded Logitech Squeezebox Touch digital transport and then into Beresford Bushmaster DAC connected via digital coax cable). Sounded great, with awesome deep bass and everything super clean and legible. No distortions, just perfectly clean (almost clinically clean) sound.

Immediately after the song finished, I switched over to playing the same track on my turntable (Systemdek IIX with Denon DL-103 cartridge mounted on Rega RB300 tonearm, into hand-made SUT into Emotiva XPS-1 MM phono stage). I was spinning the original Sgt. Pepper's stereo pressing. The difference? Staggering!

The music simply came to life on the turntable. The guitars leapt out from the speakers, the bass felt like molten lava, Paul's voice was really shouting with excitement. Gone were the clinically clean glossy sounds, to be replaced with impolite, nasty, raunchy gutbucket rock and/or roll sounds.

But most importantly, the music coming out from the turntable was SWINGING! So much so that we couldn't help ourselves and remained glued to our seat for the remainder of the side one. It was captivating, mesmerizing, magical. Once side one was over, we both had to exclaim how, indeed, Sgt. Pepper's IS the best album ever made!

And then the weird thing happened. My friend said that, if the stereo LP sounds so amazing, imagine how incredible would the mono, the Holy Grail Pepper sound?!? Do I have a mono copy? Well, sure I do, I have the squeaky clean 2012 all analog 180 gram vinyl release of the mono Pepper. The release that everyone is hailing as being the absolute best sounding ever.

So we put the mono LP on, expecting to hear nothing short of a miracle. Alas, nothing like that happened. Compared to the stereo LP, the mono LP sounded dull, muffled, crowded, congested. The swinging was gone, the palpable life-like presence wasn't there anymore.

That made me wonder -- could it be that the magic was missing from the mono LP due to the fact that I was playing it using the stereo cartridge? Many people claim that the only way to really hear mono LPs is to use the mono cartridge.

Opinions?

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