Article: "Spin Me Round: Why Vinyl is Better Than Digital"


Article: "Spin Me Round: Why Vinyl is Better Than Digital"

I am sharing this for those with an interest. I no longer have vinyl, but I find the issues involved in the debates to be interesting. This piece raises interesting issues and relates them to philosophy, which I know is not everyone's bag. So, you've been warned. I think the philosophical ideas here are pretty well explained -- this is not a journal article. I'm not advocating these ideas, and am not staked in the issues -- so I won't be debating things here. But it's fodder for anyone with an interest, I think. So, discuss away!

https://aestheticsforbirds.com/2019/11/25/spin-me-round-why-vinyl-is-better-than-digital/amp/?fbclid...
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I am glad to not be the only one to understand that in this thread.... 😁

Happy New Year to you....



«What is an engineer? Someone who reduce all phenomenon to signal controls or formats...
What is a scientist? Someone who can return back any signals to the context of his phenomenal origin without mixing them for purposeful limited results.. » -Groucho Marx epistemology


«I dont understand why Goethe said that there is no theory behind the phenomenon»-Harpo Marx
« Because the theory is always in front of the phenomenon idiot!»-Groucho Marx
«Is it not Thomas Kuhn philosophy of science one century before him?» Chico Marx
«Indeed this is it»-Groucho Marx

«History of science is science»-Goethe
An analog RECORDING is not the original signal. A polygon with a million faces is a better approximation of a circle than one drawn with a shaky hand ... or any hand for that matter.

This is as sill asy that bread analogy. This silly concept that an analog RECORDING is somehow "continuous". It is not. It has noise. It has timing flaws from the mechanical nature. It has data loss.

dover1,306 posts12-29-2020 10:47pm
« A polygon with an infinite number of faces never equal a circle» Nicholas Of Cusa
Precisely, digital is an approximation of an analogue signal.

What is truly funny is you don’t understand Nyquist theory. If you did, you would understand that within the framework of audio and the SNR of the recording, and the sample rate that digital can capture in full detail all waveforms within 1/2 the sampling rate (minus filtering of course).

sin(x)/x is purely a linear multiplication function and easily corrected, and if you understood signal processing, you would know it does not in practice result in rounding errors even on Redbook playback, but of course, since virtually all audio is also sampled well beyond audio rates these days (and bit depths), it does not come much into play .... which is why in any review of a DAC, you will see nearly perfectly flat response across the audio band and SNR, THD, etc. pretty much flat as well with good quality DACs. Maybe you should read science based audio information instead of parroting people who know as little as you do?

dover1,306 posts12-29-2020 10:32pm
The analog signal will mash up timing, frequency information, timbre, anything at all you want to use to describe said signal. Digital does not.

Thats the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on this forum.
If you understood nyquist theory and how d/a converters work, you would know that digital is a little bit out all of the time - rounding errors from the sine x/x in red book CD, endemic in every calculation, are just the tip of the problem.

The original phenomenon is not a signal, or if it is one, it is a complex one with digital and analog aspect link to acoustic of room and ears relation...

The acoustical timing of many events in the room constituting the "timbre" instrument for the brain analog and digital "computer" to speak metaphorically, cannot be reduced totally to only "digital timing" signals , the digital signals are also a timing approximation...They create a kind of noise of their own...

Digital and analog are necessary at the same time to understand the phenomenon.... It is the reason why digital or analog are on par and able to give each one something the other one cannot give...

You can call the analog way a "colored" taste, completely useless but it is not so simple....Ears are not replaceable by  computers... It will be someday in some way, but it is not the actual matter of the thread to discuss the limits of this replacement...