Why no interest in reel to reel if you're looking for the ultimate sound?

Dear @cd318 : """  For whatever reason it has not been able to establish itself as a perfected version of analogue.    Certainly not with audiophiles """

That's not the purpose/target of digital media. Why should be that way when both mediums are way different?

Are those audiophiles true expert audiophiles or only LP lovers accustomed to?

@rrcpa : """  Music (sound) is analog and by changing that signal to digital something is lost. Something is lost once again when you change it back to analog so your ears can understand it.  """

First about that lost in digital. The lost of information during LP playback exist at the cartridge stylus tip when ridding the groove modulations because that tiny stylus tip can't pick-up all the information recorded in those LP grooves and not only that but at that micro level the stylus tip jumps between grooves modulations, very tiny and microscopic level jumps: this is that the stylus tip momentaneous lost direct contact with the vinyl surface. Additional to that exist all what  @roberttdid posted:

"""  let's talk vinyl. RIAA equalization and de-equalization coupled with potential for imperfect cartridge loading, tracking error, etc. throws away level information, and the limited channel seperation throws away a ton of data w.r.t. what should have been coming out of each channel ..."""

and that losted information never can be recovered, is lost for ever.

In the other side of your statement the human been ears listen not in " analog " but digital. Yes in the inner ear part we have an ADC mechanism for we can listen the sound as we know it. No we can't hear anlog information, we have to convert it in digital. Here we can read about:

................................................................................................................


"" 

By now, the audio signal has reached the inner ear, and that means the cochlea. This snail‑shaped organ is filled with liquid. Logically enough, it must be waterproof, in order to prevent any fluid leaking. This explains the purpose of the round window, a small, elastic membrane on the surface of the cochlea. Its purpose is to allow movement of the fluid inside the cochlea. Liquids are incompressible, and without this membrane, the fluid enclosed inside the cochlea would completely block the ossicle movements. Indeed, stiffening of the oval window can lead to hearing losses of about 60dB.

Inside the cochlean we find the tectorial membrane, which moves along with the pressure variations of the cochlear fluid. As shown in Figure 3, above, this membrane is in contact with the cilia on the top of the hair cells. There are two kinds of hair cells. The outer hair cells are the actual receptors. When the tectorial membrane moves, so does the hair on the the outer cells. This movement is then encoded into electrical digital signals and goes to the brain through the cochlear nerve. The inner cells have a different role: when the audio signal gets louder, they stick themselves to the tectorial membrane in order to limit its movements, playing the role of another dynamic compressor.Figure 3: Inside the cochlea.

This tectorial membrane exhibits a clever design. Its stiffness is variable, and decreases gradually towards the center of the 'snail'. This is a way of tuning the membrane to different frequencies. In order to understand the phenomenon, consider guitar tuning. When you want pitch of a string to be higher, you stretch it so it gets more tense, and stiffer. Generally speaking, stiffer materials are able to vibrate at higher frequencies. This makes the tectorial membrane a bank of filters, with an important result: outer cells are frequency‑specific, each group of cells being dedicated to particular frequencies. Also consider the inner cells, and their ability to attenuate the tectorial membrane's movement. They function as a frequency‑specific compressor — in other words, a multi‑band compressor!

The tectorial membrane's decreasing stiffness towards its end serves another important purpose, which is frequency tracking. A particular audio frequency will set the membrane in motion at a particular position, and that vibration will be sensed by a specific set of outer cells. A comparatively lower frequency will set the membrane in motion closer to the centre of the 'snail', and that vibration will be sensed by another set of outer cells. The brain, by analysing which set of outer cells was put in motion, will then be able to tell that the second frequency was the lower one. Notice how, during this process, the tectorial membrane really acts in the manner of a filter bank, performing an actual spectral analysis of the input signal. Figure 4, below, illustrates the rough position of a few key frequencies on the cochlea.Figure 4: Filter bank frequencies on the cochlea.

Harmonic sounds come as a set of regularly spaced pure tones: if the fundamental frequency is 100Hz, the harmonic frequencies will be 200Hz, 300Hz, 400Hz and so on. As shown in Figure 5, each one of those frequencies will correspond to a particular area of the tectorial membrane. Suppose a given harmonic sound comes with its fundamental frequency plus nine harmonics. In this case, no fewer than 10 distinct areas of the tectorial membrane will be set in vibration: this provides an abundance of coherent information to the brain, which will have no difficulty in quickly and easily finding the right pitch. This is what makes the human ear so powerful for pitch identification.Figure 5: Pitch tracking inside the cochlea.

With the hair cells, we come to the end of the audio path inside the ear. Hair cells are neurons, and the purpose of the outer hair cells is to convert the mechanical vibrations that come from their cilia into nerve signals. Such signals are binary (all or nothing), and seem to be completely decorrelated from the analogue signals to which they correspond. In other words, they're digital signals, and the inner hair cells are analogue‑to‑digital converters.  """"

Btw, @cleeds  very good link you posted.

A true audiophile, at least, try to understand the whole digiatl medium and how it works and at the same time try to undersant the analog/LP/R2R medium and how it works and only then we audiophiles can understand the why's of its differences, advantages and disadvantages but at the end what it matters is the MUSIC and we true audiophiles must be aimed to listen digital medium along the analog one: not this or the other.

Exist a superiority of one of those mediums over the other? certainly yes but who cares about when we can enjoy MUSIC in both mediums: we have two alternatives about ! !

Regards and enjoy the MUSIC NOT DISTORTIONS,

R.

Nice post @rauliruegas

You can forget about all the technical arguments and philosophical mumbo jumbo. All you really need to do is listen. It’s like buying a TV. You get the one with the best picture in your price range. It’s not exactly brain surgery. 🧠 God gave you one mouth and two ears for a reason. 

In regard to technical mumbo jumbo, I earned a living as an electronics technician, consequently I believed in specifications and I wondered why those dumb "audiophiles" paid so much money for tube electronics when my SS audio was so much better according to specifications.

After going to a high end audio emporium and listening, I discovered that specs don't tell much when it comes to audio, and every since then, I realized that my two ears can tell me more than all the specifications they can throw out.

orpheus10, your ears tell you what you like, and I honestly believe no one really questions that. Where the tensions rise, is when audiophiles assume that because they "like" something, that it must be more accurate, or more like "live music" or what they think live music should sound like. They will go so far as to make up technical claims, about things they have almost no knowledge about, then defend those claims with passion and vitriol.

Tube vs. solid state amplifiers in an interesting paradigm. Very few audiophiles understand the complex relationship between amplifier transfer function with real speakers, how that impacts the performance of real speakers, what the overall result will be, the impacts of typically somewhat poor and rarely well tuned room acoustics on the overall system response, and then how equal loudness contours play into that overall system response at the typical levels most people will listen at.

When people tell me they have speaker X and they much prefer tube amplifiers, then say "SS amps are crappy, the measurements don’t mean anything", I just smile and nod. The difference between me and them is they don’t have any clue of the "why" of why they prefer tube amplifiers in their setup, hence they slag SS amps and measurements, while I have a pretty good idea of the "why", and hence don’t slag measurements, because I know the right measurement, i.e. a room response graph at their typical listening volume, coupled with system level, speakers included distortion measurements, perhaps with some system level, speakers included transient measurements (including decay) would show exactly why they prefer the tube amplifier. This is why Bob Carver was able to modify a somewhat low cost amplifier to be sonically indistinguishable from an expensive amplifier. He matched the transfer functions of the two amplifiers with the real speaker loads.