There was always music playing at our house. If it wasn’t a record by Berdien Stemberg or Dire Straits, then it was Eric Clapton or ELO (which my mom hated, but I remember being fascinated by the cover—that beautiful, flying lamp).
My dad worked at Philips, so when the CD player was introduced, we had to get one. My grandmother bought a CD101 right away, and we got a CD104 a little later. It was a rock-solid player and is now an icon in the vintage market.
With the arrival of the CD104, the records were pushed aside, and CDs started filling the shelf rapidly. A leap in quality, you’d think! But no… I noticed—and my father confirmed it—that he enjoyed CDs less than he did records.
A Child of the ’80s
For me, though, CDs remained the medium of choice for a long time. I’m a child of the ’80s… so that’s not surprising. When I was 12, I bought my first cd-player and amplifier with some speakers. My first CD: Pink Floyd’s ‘The Division Bell’. During my college years, my collection grew rapidly. And when I started working at Hifi Studio Wilbert, I quickly built up a nice system.
Still, I have to admit that I was truly impressed by the Basis Audio turntable and the Pass Labs phono preamp. The switches, the damping, the gain factors… remarkable technology. And the vinyl itself: such a big, spinning disc… it really had a certain charm.
But when I started working seriously with Alpha Audio around the age of 25, and began doing it full-time at 32, digital was what I was really into. Partly because of my computer background and interest in networking… those worlds and hi-fi came together in streaming audio. It was familiar, interesting, and booming around 2010.
Soon enough, my nickname became Jaap Jitter. And both online and within the industry, it quickly became clear that Alpha Audio was a platform that actually had nothing to do with vinyl… Alpha Audio conducted in-depth research into networks, cables, clocks, bitstreams, software… everything related to digital. And why it’s actually more complicated than we think.
Persistent
But Yung kept asking why I didn’t just do something with vinyl. Just… for fun!
And thanks in part to that persistence, we ended up doing a livestream where we set up a top-notch digital system—the Grimm MU1 with Mola Mola—side by side with a top-notch vinyl setup (Reed 3C). We made the recording here at Artone Studio. A fully analog direct-to-disc recording with a single conversion via a DAD A/D converter.
The difference is staggering… the analog recording is simply more beautiful. More natural, more open, with more air. Not that the digital recording isn’t good—it’s excellent. But the analog recording wins. There’s no debate about that.
Now, I do have to make a sidenote. No one can buy a lacquer in a store. And recordings are rarely as good as the ones we made back then. Much of the vinyl available today comes from digital recordings. But that doesn’t take away from the fact that there are some real gems out there. Genuine direct-to-disc recordings where attention was paid to the entire recording chain—from the artist to the microphone, cables, and so on.
Another factor is that the vinyl experience is just a lot of fun. Music is more than just pure recording quality or the “best” medium. It’s an experience. And to be perfectly honest: the vinyl experience is simply more enjoyable than streaming. We’re all familiar and pretty bored with those phones and tablets by now…
We now have a nice—vintage!—Thorens turntable in our second system at home. My record collection has also expanded rapidly in a relatively short time to well over 100 records. Partly because my girlfriend has really fueled this hobby, and we’ve now combined our collections. Luckily, our tastes match pretty well 😉.
Not “digitally done”
Of course, I’m not completely “off digital.” That would be silly. However, they’re two different ways of listening and experiencing music. And they can coexist just fine. I also don’t quite understand why people ask which is “better.” It’s not better. Or worse. It’s different. Vinyl has a certain sound. And streaming has a certain sound. I find that I can really enjoy both. I put on vinyl when I want to listen very intently. Streaming works great in the background, too. Or I use it when I don’t own an album, of course.