digital vs vinyl thoughts

"Digital always sounds less "real" for this reason"

An absolute statement that is simply not true in my experience.

Digital often sounds more real to me.

Just my opinion....

Learsfool, thank you for your thoughtful response. I respectfully disagree with your assessment re: analog and digital.
On the other hand , I couldn't agree more with you regarding the over amplification of music at live venues. In fact, I would go so far as to say, at many live venues any amplification is irritatingly superfluous. Unfortunately too many modern musicians use it as a crutch to hide the fact that they haven't properly developed their chops or listening skills.

IMO the fact that digital is sampled is not in itself a persuasive argument in favor of vinyl. I think that most people, especially those with an understanding of sampling theory and digital signal processing, would agree that there must be SOME sample rate, and SOME finite number of bits per sample, which when implemented in well designed hardware in both the recording and playback parts of the chain, would result in digital inarguably being the better format.

Whether or not that point has been reached, or is foreseeable, or is even technologically possible, is of course debatable. But the obvious bottom line would seem to be that for each listener the proof is in the pudding (or more specifically, in the listening). Personally I enjoy both formats, and I find that the differences between formats are generally greatly overshadowed by the differences in the quality of the engineering and mic'ing of the particular recordings.

Regards,
-- Al

Agree with Almarg.

The intent of the "sampling" with digital audio is to sample in a manner that does capture all the relevant information. How well any particular digital format like redbook CD actually accomplishes this in practice is debatable but the intent is to quantify the analog signal sufficently to capture all the relevant information present.

Sampling, or digital quantification of an analog signal in digital signal processing is apples and pranges different than sampling in statistical theory where a relatively small representative sample is used to statistically represent a population as a whole.

I think the overloading of the term "sampling" and how it is different in the context of digital signal processing theory compared to statistical theory is a cause of misunderstanding and confusion in many cases.

Al, I couldn't agree more. As I've said before, I have yet to hear the consistent superiority of one format over the other.