Here is an album that was digitally recorded by Philips in Japan in 1982 and released on both vinyl and CD in 1983. In my opinion, both formats were most likely pressed from the same masters, as they are Japanese Philips pressings.
A digital recording doesn’t necessarily give the CD edition an advantage. While it
can be beneficial, CD production and playback involve extensive coding (EFM, CIRC) and decoding processes, which can be a potential disadvantage for sound quality—possibly even more so than digital-to-analog conversion itself. What is stored on CDs is not pure PCM; it is an encrypted version of PCM called CD Audio. From this perspective, a CD doesn’t have a significant advantage over vinyl when the source is digital.
This isn’t a classical recording but rather a pop album, yet it seemed like a good choice for comparing vinyl and CD from the same masters. I will upload comparisons from the Analogue Productions SACD and the double 45rpm LP.
Here are the samples:
Sample A
Sample B
The LP was captured directly from the phono output, and I cleaned ticks and pops to prevent revealing its identity. The CD was ripped using EAC with a correctly adjusted read offset on a Panasonic drive.
Over the years, I have used many CD/DVD writers, including Japanese-made Plextors, the Yamaha F1, Pioneer, BenQ, HP, and others, but I ultimately settled on an internal Panasonic drive. It allowed me to create near-identical copies of XRCDs using EAC and MOFI (Mitsui Gold) CD-Rs. So, you can rest assured that the CD’s quality has been preserved.
I believe this type of comparison is much fairer before blaming audiophiles. Let me know which version you prefer and which one you think is the CD.