digital vs vinyl thoughts

There are several issues represented here and that is confusing the issues and arguments. Digital vs vinyl. good hearing vs bad or faulty hearing. Etc. lets clear up some things first before really getting into the "is digital or vinyl actuall better than the other" argument.

1. As an Electrical Engineer specializing in analog/digital design, I can tell you absolutely there is no way a digital signal is as accurate as an analog signal. The digital medium acutally takes samples from the signal and then converts that digitized signal back into an analog wave form. in and of itself, the "sampling" will specifically mean that some of the signal is lost, because it was no sampled. Now if the signal sampled is a simple sine wave, then you can extrapolate ahead and "guess" what the next piece will be with about 100% accuracy. However, with an analog musical signal, there is no way you will be 100% accurate in your extrapolations and some data will be lost. This is not to say that you can't sample the signal at such a high rate of speed that you will not be close. As a matter of fact, the higher the sample rate, the better. The problem with this is that the recording equipment may sample at such a high rate of speed, say for example 44kHz or 92kHz, but the digital to analog converter or your specific CD players itself may not be at a matched sample rate and again, you lose signal. In any case, you are still losing some data. For analog, all of the signal is there. To me, it really comes down to convienience of operation and also how much one wants to spend on digital or analog equipment to meet their goal of sound reproduction and accuracy in their homes.

I do recommend that people go and have a detailed hearing test performed to determine what their hearing is now. You will be suprised what you will find out. Second, it really comes to preferences, but if you really want to see (hear) if there are differences. Go to a really good high end store or a person's home with stupidly expensive great high end analog and digital playback equipment and get the albums and digital recording and A/B them. One more thing, and this is really important. It also depends on how the recording was done in the first place. Music that was digitally recorded and then converted to analog from the digital master to an album has the inherent flaws of digital recordings. i.e. it was sampled and reconstituted. A recording session that was recorded with analog recording equipment and then placed onto an album vs the same recording session recorded with analog equipment but then made into a cd, well that would be an interesting listening session. either way, enjoy the music please. When it sounds and feels to me as if something is wrong or missing, and I'm getting listening fatigue or shifting, then well, something is not right. Also, I do have vinyl that was poorly recorded also and sounds terrible. So, it can go either way. My CD/DAC system is wonderful and sounds pretty darn good and I can listen without fatigue, unless the recording is bad. However, my analog playback system sounds much more open, airy, detailed, etc. but, vinyl listening means that I have to clean the disc, and get up every few minutes to turn over the album. So, there are drawbacks for both playback mediums.

Go to a store that has both in high end equipment and listen for yourself.

just enjoy

Minor1, I won't disagree with the specifics of your argument, but I believe you might have unfairly left out the fact that analog information is regularly obscured and/or distorted when it is superimposed with the typical mechanical noise artifacts that exists with analog.

" Go to a store that has both in high end equipment and listen for yourself " who hasn't. In fact you can go to your own system if your sources are equal and listen, I have, and my digital and analog systems are very close, but different, except the analog rig cost nearly three times as much. You can quote all kinds of mumbo jumbo but what you haven't taken into account is that people all determine what they like best and what they prefer, it may not be what you prefer, but the old adage, "to each his own " still applies.

Add to that some analog info can in fact be missing - a scratch on the LP for example.

I'm not bashning analog at all; please see my previous posts.

Unsound, another way to say what Minor1 is saying is that surface noise is just that - on the surface, and can be listened through to the music. Digital distortions are more seriously disruptive to the sound of the music itself than analog distortions (even though there usually are more distortions in analog). Part of this is that typical analog distortions occur at much lower frequencies than in digital, where they are at higher and therefore more annoyingly disruptive frequencies. Digital always sounds less "real" for this reason, especially if we are talking about unamplified, acoustically produced music (mainly classical and jazz). Electronically produced music does not suffer nearly so much from digital reproduction, so if you are only into rock, it's not that big a difference between the two. And far too often, excessive amplification ruins acoustic timbres anyway. One of the most frustrating aspects of my job is playing a pops show where the "sound guys" mike the hell out of everything and then set up a bunch of monitors blasting all around the stage, trying to solve the problem that no one can hear each other by making it even louder. And this occurs all the time in the very finest halls in the world. Sigh. But I digress. The other much more controversial point is that many audiophiles don't actually listen beyond the surface of the music, even if they do have good hearing. Just because one has good hearing does not necessarily mean that one actually trains and uses their ears to hear and understand music well.