Which is more accurate: digital or vinyl?

Ralph, what do you feel is the more significant limiting factor for redbook, sample rate or bits per sample? Just curious.

Well, the Nyquist theorem is looking for an exact sample (IOW with no limitation of resolution) in order to work, by definition it is the number of bits that is the real problem. When you think about it, this can only really be done in the analog domain...

My guess though is that when we can do 64-bit DACs on a regular basis that digital will start demonstrating the promise that its been showing.

I was wrong about the IBM PC being king when Redbook was devised. It was more like the Commodore 64 :)

Hifihvn, no, not unless the analog tape's sampling is very much larger than microscopic.

EBM, even limited to the analog domain, vinyl isn't even a pretender to the throne.

Jump on CD if you think its great its your taste!!

11-07-11: Atmasphere
My guess though is that when we can do 64-bit DACs on a regular basis that digital will start demonstrating the promise that its been showing.

Thanks, Ralph. It seems to me, though, that it would be a pretty safe bet that that will never happen. In fact I suspect it is theoretically impossible, due to Johnson noise, shot noise, etc. Quantization of a 2 volt full-scale range into 64 bits would mean that the least significant bit corresponds to about 0.0000000000000000001 volts. (That's 18 zeros between the decimal point and the "1").

Intuitively it seems to me that although as you say the Nyquist theorem assumes unlimited resolution of the samples, 24 bits or so should be precise enough to be just as good for all practical purposes.

Best regards,
-- Al