Analog or Digital and why?

chrismini

I'm 60 so I grew up in the bad old days of vinyl records. No one took care of them or we would use a Discwasher which destroyed more records than it cleaned. Instead of coughing up $10 for a new stylus, guys would tape quarters to their headshells so it wouldn't fly across the record. Or turn up the anti-skate all the way up.(Like that's what it's for.) We didn't know any better.

Wow - you were running with the wrong crowd!

I used a (gift from my mother when I was maybe 17) KLH Model 20 compact system (great speakers) for many years, and it had a Pickering cartridge with a little dust brush attached...adorable...my records bought new from the 60s and 70s still sound great in spite of whatever that Pickering was doing to them, and I clean 'em once and then simply brush them each time I play them with an anti-static AQ brush. This doesn't seem very difficult...most of my listening is "red book" level digital that can sound astonishingly good, but vinyl also sounds great when I'm in the mood to mess with it. Besides, you can't enjoy a vinyl collection unless you listen to it. It's not a push-up contest, and if you're not able to enjoy both formats you're obviously not actually into music so much.

I don’t want to disparage digital lovers.
For sure, there are big advantages over analog.
Those are clear and obvious.
And there are many drawbacks to analog.
However, speaking generally, even a $500 TT produces a physical, gut level reaction to the music. And any digital, no matter how good, produces an intellectual, analytical response.
I get carried away when I listen to my TT. I think when I listen to my digital rig. Two very different responses. Which is more true to the original intent of the music?For me, hands down it is analog!

Since Mike Lavigne has dedicated so much in developing tape, vinyl and digital in his system, his preference for analog over digital carries authority.
One question for Mike, though--in putting in your MSB Select, clock and streamer, did you previously have a CD transport and components to support that approach?
The CD vs streaming has oft been discussed, but have we missed the importance of the CD as reference? The cost does go up, though, to put the CD back into digital, funny as it sounds. I can imagine a lot of young folks have gone straight from MP-3 and ITunes to the sound of vinyl without ever having owned a CD.  DVDs are rather passé, too.  

Right. How could anyone really have anything to say until they've spent a million or so? Just one question. If I spend a hundred million and say digital is better does that carry more authority? Or less? What exactly is the proportionality of money spent to authority achieved?