How much do you need to spend to get digital to rival analog?

So Mike, it appears you have an obvious bias in this regard which makes it difficult for us to interpret what you have to offer in this conversation.

obvious bias? really?

it’s tempting to get defensive with a comment like that. i will try to stay objective here in my response.

would a person who is at least as much invested in digital performance as anyone on the whole forum be somehow biased against digital? i want my digital to sound the best it can possibly sound, and have committed considerable time and assets acquiring the gear, then optimizing every aspect of it.

70% of my listening is to digital. i love it. i’ve got both files and streaming fully optimized.

i’ve spent 20 years with a focus on format optimization....all formats. so it’s a big important subject to me. i have digital, vinyl and tape optimized. i enjoy all three. i can fully appreciate digital, but i call a spade a spade when it comes to direct comparisons with analog.

so point out your evidence of bias here in my perceptions. i don’t see any.

i think it’s wrong to confuse theoretical advantages of digital on paper to real world listening realities. but unless you have the daily opportunity to compare the tip top examples of each one i can see how the theory might cloud your reality perception. that there is bias.

forget numbers and stuff. follow your ears and musical connection.

Dear @frogman : First than all I’m not biased to digital, my only compromise is with MUSIC.

Of course we have to understand digital because it’s a totally different media that makes sound as other mediums as LP or tapes: all are different and sounds/performs different.

I posted why playback LP experience can’t ( no matters what. ) preserve and mantain the integrity of the recorded signal.

Now, is you whom could tell us why digital can’t do it .

I like LP/analog and I like digital too. My main home room/system target is to stay nearer to the recording and digital puts any one nearer to the recording when LP/analog puts all of us far away from therejust: COMMON SENSE.

It’s not that what your ears tells you because what your ears tells you is absolutely and totally biased and this biased is something that your brain wall/defender impedes to change it easily.

Btw, have you good common sense or you need measurements on each one degradation levels on those " terribles " steps I explained in my last post? because if you need measurements on it then something wrong with you and forgeret what your ears tells you: this is not the real issue/subject and it does not matters if you are a musician/player or even a music composer. You only have to SEE the reality: what is happening down there.

""" and it doesn’t need to “make sense” ... """ , this is incredible but I respect your rigth to say it.

Sorry, I can’t have a true dialogue with a gentleman with low common sense because you are impliying that all those degradation steps in the playback LP process where information is totally losted, added non-recorded information and the generation of several kind of distortions/resonances and the like does not matters because even all those exist the LP hability playback process to preserve the signal integrity. It should be that way for you can post what you posted.

Anyway, I think that you make your point as I posted mine but at least I gave some " facts " and you gave no single fact on what you posted other than your " ears " but your ears are not part of that common sense I posted: what you like is not the issue, got it?

Emotions?, MUSIC is an ART and as an ART  wake up emotions of different levels in any human been it does not matters that we listen MUSIC through the M.Lavigne system or through a humble Walkman.

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,
R.

Dear @mikelavigne  : ""  and musical connection.. """

obviously ( and not from your last post because I followed yourn posts on the digital vs analog experiences from many years . ) you have a real musical connection with digital, for me it's imposible not to have it even with humble digital hardware.

My listening time goes more to LP than digital and this is more by something that could be a rutinary attitude that other thing because I enjoy a lot digital too.
ASs a fact digital ( in some ways. ) help me to fine tunning my room/system and still does and as better performs my digital experiences as better performs too my analog listenin sessions.

R.

@atdavid

You only answered a very small portion of the question I asked and effectively ignored the most significant part of it.

No offense mikelavigne...

Vs.

Serious question for everyone.

Blame yourself or bug @mikelavigne if your question wasn’t answered.

As well, are you implying it would be impossible to build an analog limiter that soft-clips like magnetic tape and put that in the circuit before the A/D? (not that that would have been needed in the last 20 ish years with 24 bit A/D with 20+ bits effective for studio equipment)

Analog consoles already soft clip. They won’t add the saturation of reel-to-reel. You are incorrect about the lack of need with 24 bit gear. There are many professional recording engineers that push the levels, and digitally clip the signal during recording. Even worshipped mastering engineer, Steve Hoffman, is guilty of digital clipping in his masters.

Anyone claiming that digital is worse than analog because of "real world dynamics" is misguided. These individuals likely enjoy the saturation of "tape" and the compression added, vs. the higher audible digital distortion from higher signal levels, during dynamic passages. With the right processing, that is no longer an issue with digital. The manufacturers just haven’t figured it out, no matter how much their gear costs ", and that is where we are now."

Anyone claiming that digital is worse than analog because of "real world dynamics" is misguided.

 
please cite examples so we can all listen and comment. or come over to my room, bring your files and dac, and we can both listen and see where it goes.

or is this just more theory?