Analog or Digital and why?

mikelavigne

both. if your focus is on listening to music ...

Exactly. I don’t understand why some seem to insist this is an either/or question.
I am into analog bigtime - both LP and tape. But that’s because I grew up in the analog era. If I were starting out today, I’d stick with purely digital. Others might think differently. Good for them! It's still not a black/white, either/or, A vs. D issue.

Its good some are happy listening only to digital. This is why they are happy. I was happy with digital too, when all I listened to was digital. Then one day made the mistake of listening to a record. Took a while. Playing a record takes skill. You don't just push a button. Records aren't perfect. They're fragile, noisy, and temperamental. No two ever sound quite the same. 

They also have a magical quality digital cannot touch. That's why people defending digital always take an engineering approach, or the modern music approach, or any of a dozen other irrelevant arguments, all of which have in common the defensive fear of the 800 pound gorilla in the room, it just doesn't sound as good. There's no there there. 

We all know it. And really, its fine. Times myself I just want some sound without having to worry about cue up at the end, have it go on for 40 or more minutes instead of 15, and so on. 

When listening to my iPod I don't complain that its not a record. That would be silly. There's plenty of times something halfway decent will do, and digital is tailor made for just those times. 

Just please don't go all crazy trying to say its up there with analog. I mean seriously. Even Joe Biden would say, "Come on, man!"

I love high end digital. If the recording was poorly engineered it’s not going to matter which format is used. Anyone that disses current digital sound quality simply hasn’t heard a good recording on a good digital playback setup. Again, bad recordings will sound bad no matter what. IMO analog gear is fun and currently cool but it’s not better. I get it though.

Totally disagree digital can be better then analog R2R dacs sound very analog dcs their own code is great,
msb, Metrum, the best value and is 
best value per dollar is Denafrips.
i just bought the latest Pontus 
great natural sound li sold my Schiit Yggsdrasil which was no slouch as well as Lampizator dac3

I am only digital but we build our own components.  The phono stage ($15,000) beats the crap out of any digital we have built or heard period.  Not even close but our digital ($10,000) beats the crap out of most analog systems.  So IMO in comes down to mostly the components.  While different recordings have an impact, some of the poorest analog recording sound better than the best digital recordings with our components.

Happy Listening.