Article: "Spin Me Round: Why Vinyl is Better Than Digital"

Vinyl is a 100 year plus old flawed technology. People spend a fortune trying to address the flaws and still can never win because all records have flaws it’s just a matter of how many and how much.

The packaging is better than ever though for those who must own but you will pay for that.

Digital is much easier to get right these days.

ive been collecting records for years and still do when the price is right so there are few titles out there that i would ever need to buy new. When CDs came out in the 80s I invested in a good turntable to preserve the investment I had already made in vinyl.

These days when I have time to play records I work on getting them digitized and into my digital music library for easier access (and still top notch sound). That is a time consuming process though.

The article is written by a philosophy professor. No credentials AFAIC.

I gave up thinking one is "better" than the other, after hearing plenty of great digital setups. The only thing about them is, I still find myself comparing the sound of a track with the LP copy. f

That said, playing an LP still has an unexplainable magic, a "perfect" file  has yet to replicate.

A good turntable is always better than a bad digital....

But a not so good turntable will be beaten by a good digital system...

And if money is not a problem you could argue for the superiority of one or the other endlessly... And many people here do that endlessly... 😁

But for most of us digital rightfully embedded is at least on par with almost all turntable especially if the turntable system is not so well embedded mechanically, electrically, and acoustically...

In this case any good audio system rightfully embedded can beat one that is not, be it a digital one or an analog one....

For sure for a meaningful comparison the 2 system compared must be on comparable engineered design level...

A bravo amplifier at 50 dollars dont compare with a 1000 amplifier.....

In audio never-mind digital or analog, tube or S.S., nevermind the speakers categories, magneplanar, 2way boxes, multiway, electroacousatic, horns, no speakers can beat the room, be it acoustically embedded or not....

My own experience is that audio S.Q. is proportional to the rightfully embeddings controls and treatment in the mechanical, electrical, amd acoustical dimensions way more than solely the choice of an electronic component....

Few people say that clearly in audio forum, the reason is simple, people are way more devoted to the upgrading endless process and way less to the rightfull embeddings conditions, the fact is most people dont have the knowledge and the experience about that and most of the times even not a clue; and the sellers want to sell, whatever their own knowledge is, why stopping the upgrading process for the benefit of an audiophile experience at very low cost ? 😊 That goes without saying...

That is my experience, and i say here what i should have heard 7 years ago when i entered audio forums but never heard it.... Then i figure it out myself, with 2 intense years of continuous listening experiments with homemade created devices mostly....

Dont upgrade before embedding everything right.... Simple....

Analog or digital is only a red herring in the sea of audio forums....Dont go for the bait, think.....

Merry Christmas.... 😌

Tried to make it through that article. Really I did. But its just too poorly written. Basically keeps repeating the same stuff over and over again wordier and wordier. Tried skipping ahead, same old.

Fact of the matter, it seems to me, no one really knows for sure why records are so much better. They just are. I've written before several times now how surprised my wife and I were when my beat up old Technics with a bent cantilever trounced my expensive new CD player. Wasn't even close.

I've done similar comparisons with lots of people many times over the years. This is with lots of different CDPs and turntables. The only people who ever even question it are audiophiles. Normal people who just enjoy listening to music, the only thing they find surprising and hard to believe is just how much better records really are.

If you want to get philosophical about it, I believe this is because records recreate a connection with the original performance that cannot be matched any other way simply because it is indeed a connection. The performer caused the air to vibrate, then the microphone, then the wire, on and on to the speaker, the air in the room and then finally all the way to you.

"To the paper through the eye to the mind to the soul again" https://youtu.be/bCQMyG_1YWs?t=403   

Playing a record is like looking through a window. You're not really there. You're on the other side of a wall, looking through glass. Layers and layers of glass. Some of them clear, some colored, some optically perfect, some wavy as hell. The scene is bent and blurred and colored and far from perfect. But its perfectly clear to your brain. To your brain this is no different than looking at a fish in the stream. Yes the water is wavy, murky, muddy, maybe even. But for all that there is no doubt in your mind, not the slightest shred of doubt, that there is a nice tasty trout in the stream.

When we push play on a CD we get a video on a screen. And the picture we see, it went through all the exact same layers of distortions as the record. Only now in addition to and on top of all that its been converted to video. No matter how sharp the contrast, how vivid the colors, there is never a doubt in the mind, not the slightest shred of a doubt, that we are looking at a video monitor. There is no trout. Maybe never was. Could be really good AI. Who knows?

If digital is so wonderful then why do you think it is that all the best movie directors and actors try so hard to film on location, to actually perform their stunts? Its because the brain is uncannily good at figuring out what is fake, what is fraud, and what is real. When we play a record, whatever it was and however good or bad it sounds, at least we know its the real deal.

@millercarbon

If you want to get philosophical about it, I believe this is because records recreate a connection with the original performance that cannot be matched any other way simply because it is indeed a connection. The performer caused the air to vibrate, then the microphone, then the wire, on and on to the speaker, the air in the room and then finally all the way to you.

This makes sense on an immediate, intuitive level. I do wonder two things. First, why the "connection" involved here -- which is a complicated, electrified, highly technological process of amplification and translation -- more "natural." Don’t those added transmutations to the initial sound deprive us of the right to call it a "natural" or even special connection?

Second question I have is why we cannot call digital "natural" also. It works in a different way, but it is still artifactual. Why might we think that "digital" is as natural? Because while it does convert a sound vibration to symbols, that’s the same process we use to communicate. We turn arbitrary sounds into words. (In both cases there is a representation involved.) And when we do it with words, we call it "natural language." On this line of reasoning, language and digital music both involve a move from the physical to the symbolic -- and so there’s something "natural" and "organic" about digital sound, too.

In neither case are we guaranteed good sound or pleasing sound. But the article’s author wants to separate them on this "natural" vs. "non-natural" basis, and I suspect that cannot fly.