It was not an analogue versus digital, which sound better? article; but rather and article concerning why added distortion, by way of phase manipulation and harmonic enhancement/restructuring, has pleasing effect that many qualify as sounding "better".
Carlos, I realized that right away- the problem is this article is coming from someone who does not know what is possible in the world of high end audio, assuming that things can never sound real. His initial assertion that digital was such a great thing for audio... well, the fact of the matter is that a lot of the analog manipulations that he mentions in his article have appeared **as a result** of how bad digital is.
There is a definate portion of the audio community that simply does not have any idea of how good audio playback has gotten, and on top of that seems to think that anyone who does try to push the art is in fact not doing anything, because they are a complete nut. This community uses simple assumptions, like 'tubes=distortion' and other arguments we have seen here already. Tubes don't have to have any more distortion than transistor amps- I've built tube amps with THD at full power under 0.01% for example. If you use techniques that the transistor guys use to get low distortion, you can do the same or better with tubes, if you know what you are doing.
Now its a different matter as to whether or not its a **good idea** to build any amplifier with distortion that low. Here's the crux of it: any amp with distortion figures like that is likely violating a fundamental rule of human perception, which is how we perceive the volume of a sound. So in high end you see a lot of designers that build their gear to **not** make the distortions that the ear cares about, and likely are not worried about the distortions that the ear **doesn't** care about. Such equipment may not look good on paper, because the paper specs have little to do with human perceptual rules.
Tape happens to be a medium that makes very low distortions, at very low level, quite the opposite of digital, which is guilty of increased distortions at low level. Unfortunately, tape, by driving it too hard, has become an effect in the studio that is not representative of what it is capable of. Its when you drive it hard that it can pick up distortions that become audible.
Here is something that that community I mentioned does not like to hear: distortion plays a greater role in coloration than frequency response does due to how we perceive sound.
Inconveniently, the most obvious and pesky colorations to the human ear are also ones that are hard to detect with modern distortion analyzers: the 5th, 7th and 9th harmonics for starters but also the inharmonic distortions generated by digital equipment. These harmonics are percieved as harshness, the need to turn the volume down (IOW if your stereo ever sounds loud to you this is the reason why- most people never listen music anywhere near the volumes that it actually occurs in real life since their gear will get too unpleasent to be in the same room with, even if it could make the volumes) and the like.
It is true that lower ordered harmonics are perceived as warmth, and it is also true that this type of distortion will mask detail. However, it it not a failing of tape or tubes **unless you want it to**, IOW if you set out to intentionally make it so.
Bottom line is that IMO/IME digital and transistors are far more guilty of coloration than tubes or tape, and the colorations are the type that are outright unpleasant (ask any audiophile and you will find that the majority of listeners really hate excess brightness). This is not to say that they can't work, its just harder, and the transistor amps and digital gear that really do make music are few and far between.
