It’s funny how these seem like personal stories
Yet we are all happy and well balanced individuals who are a credit to our community 
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I’ have a VPI Aries 3 With a Benz LP S Cartridge.
It is a fantastic Turntable. Great Sound
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Question (that I do not believe has been asked):
Has anyone compared the
- turntable playback,
- SACD playback
- hi-res file playback
of the same album?
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@AceRimmer and @Michael_Harris I suspect.
I have but it was years ago on a different system.
I guess a lot depends on the front ends.
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Very hard to make that comparison. Much will depend on the sound quality of each format. The hardware you use to listen to each format will also influence the outcome. I have a nice good quality turntable but I listen to SACD using a rather cheap Marantz blu ray player.
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I have a number of albums on all these format’s but they are rarely the same master, and they all sound great.
I never listen to them critically to compare them.
Even though it is heresy to say it, I often think that the SACD sounds by a small margin the best on my setup, but others have much better TTs than me with More expensive pre amplifiers and that would make a big difference.
But then I listen to the 45RPM version of Tigerlily or the recent 10th anniversary version of Random Access Memories and the vinyl sounds sublime and better than my digital copies so I imagine how much better they might sound on an excellent TT setup 
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Thank you sir, you just cost me some money 
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The question arose for me when comparing two albums, one SACD played with an outboard DAC vs. a turntable with a good cartridge, likely equal quality to the digital components. The vinyl sounded markedly better, and I wondered if that was a consensus. I gather it is not.
Sorry for interrupting the thread and thank you for the responses.
Everyone else does that to me so it feels good to pay it forward 
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Playing SACD via an ‘outboard DAC’ means that you were accessing/listening to the RB/CD layer of a Hybrid SACD, and not the DSD SACD layer.
Due to copyright protection, Sony forbid the extraction/passing of the DSD layer of an SACD to externals DAC’s.
That’s unless you have a PS Audio Perfectwave SACD Transport, and their matching I2S DAC, which will pass DSD from an SACD.
Sony are very strict/protective over the extraction of DSD from SACD’s.
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My SACD player to my amp has the option to go internal DAC or external in the amplifier, and that also sounds quite different to me. So that is not that surprising.
My current vinyl setup is not that good so I can imagine that for many vinyl might consistently be better.
But I have been pricing an improved cartridge and stylus and that might well be my next upgrade
I generally much prefer the vinyl copy of anything and especially if it’s an early mofi effort ( let’s not get into the digital masters argument…lol).
There are some exceptions though as always.
Personally speaking I believe the DVD-A versions of Tommy and Tubular Bells are unmatched by anything else I have of them including sacd and vinyl.
But as I said it’s the exception in my opinion in my house on my system with my ears so take from that what you will.
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Yes, my SACD deck (McIntosh MCT500) goes straight into the McIntosh MA9000 integrated amp. (I typed that incorrectly above) I can also play a red book CD on that transport into a Denafrips Terminator Plus before going to the amplifier.
I could have simplified my question by asking the age old “does vinyl sound better”. It does to me.
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As long as your two McIntosh components are connected via the proprietary ‘MCD’ connector, then you should be passing DSD to your MA9000 when playing SACD.
Your Denafrips DAC does have an I2S-A input, but there’s no way to extract the DSD layer from an SACD via your MCT500 to the Denafrips, and the transport will only pass DSD from an SACD via the ‘MCT’ connector. Your external DAC will therefore be relying-on/processing the RB/CD layer of a Hybrid SACD.
As has been said before, which format sounds better (vinyl, SACD, streaming etc) will depend on your sources/system.
Personally, I love vinyl. But I’m not the only one on the forum who does
I am currently listening to Scarecrow by John Mellencamp on Vinyl and yes it sounds better than the same album on CD (and cassette) but it is not universal for me
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Since 99% of all new vinyl is digital (that is digitally recorded and/or digitally mastered), just listen to the SACD or hi-res version.
Older all analog vinyl is more of a challenge since sometimes the vinyl sounds better than the high resolution digital, sometimes the digital sounds better and sometimes it’s too close to call.
My vinyl is all 40+ years old. The digital version of those albums is to me is not as good as I recall those albums to have been. Thus…the initial question
Well to answer your original question - I have done many comparisons of all analog vinyl versus various forms of digital (CD, SACD and digital files of varying resolutions). Most of the time there is no clear winner. While there are often differences in the sound, neither one sounds “better” than the other, just a bit different.
For me that means that the digital format wins since digital is way more convenient and doesn’t have all the drawbacks of analog vinyl playback, such as skips, surface noise and short playing time. There’s nothing like having Roon play the Complete Blue Note Recordings of Herbie Hancock and getting 5 plus hours of uninterrupted music. I know that for many music lovers the rituals of vinyl playback are a “thing” but not for me. If I never have to clean another record that’s fine by me. To each his own.
By the way, I’ve also done comparisons of different forms of digital playback - disc versus streaming and again I found the differences, if any, to be very slight, so therefore the convenience of streaming wins out.
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I’ve said this before, elsewhere, and at the risk of starting another flame war, I can say that, in my system, MQA has been the best digital I’ve heard. I no longer have an SACD capable player, and Roon converts DSD to PCM, so hard to do that comparison. Still, there’s something about how voices are handled, and a sense of “air” in the bass that is beguiling. your milage may vary.
in almost all other instances, I find vinyl has a wider dynamic range, whether recorded digitally or all analog.
Thank you for your input. Much appreciated.
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