Tried to make it through that article. Really I did. But its just too poorly written. Basically keeps repeating the same stuff over and over again wordier and wordier. Tried skipping ahead, same old.
Fact of the matter, it seems to me, no one really knows for sure why records are so much better. They just are. I've written before several times now how surprised my wife and I were when my beat up old Technics with a bent cantilever trounced my expensive new CD player. Wasn't even close.
I've done similar comparisons with lots of people many times over the years. This is with lots of different CDPs and turntables. The only people who ever even question it are audiophiles. Normal people who just enjoy listening to music, the only thing they find surprising and hard to believe is just how much better records really are.
If you want to get philosophical about it, I believe this is because records recreate a connection with the original performance that cannot be matched any other way simply because it is indeed a connection. The performer caused the air to vibrate, then the microphone, then the wire, on and on to the speaker, the air in the room and then finally all the way to you.
"To the paper through the eye to the mind to the soul again"
https://youtu.be/bCQMyG_1YWs?t=403 Playing a record is like looking through a window. You're not really there. You're on the other side of a wall, looking through glass. Layers and layers of glass. Some of them clear, some colored, some optically perfect, some wavy as hell. The scene is bent and blurred and colored and far from perfect. But its perfectly clear to your brain. To your brain this is no different than looking at a fish in the stream. Yes the water is wavy, murky, muddy, maybe even. But for all that there is no doubt in your mind, not the slightest shred of doubt, that there is a nice tasty trout in the stream.
When we push play on a CD we get a video on a screen. And the picture we see, it went through all the exact same layers of distortions as the record. Only now in addition to and on top of all that its been converted to video. No matter how sharp the contrast, how vivid the colors, there is never a doubt in the mind, not the slightest shred of a doubt, that we are looking at a video monitor. There is no trout. Maybe never was. Could be really good AI. Who knows?
If digital is so wonderful then why do you think it is that all the best movie directors and actors try so hard to film on location, to actually perform their stunts? Its because the brain is uncannily good at figuring out what is fake, what is fraud, and what is real. When we play a record, whatever it was and however good or bad it sounds, at least we know its the real deal.
