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

Physics is not a field where strength in Nyquist theory is strong on the curriculum, especially at the diploma level.  "digital/Nyquist is perfect" ... what does that even mean? Nyquist simply puts a limit on what digital can do, but also explains why digital can (within the technical implementation limits) capture the waveform very accurately.  Even with redbook, over sampling on recording and upsampling on playback pretty much removed in band filtering effects. This is likely what, as that high end label showed, well done red-book was not distinguishable from high-res with their discerning customer base.

I do have friend who had diploma in physics and who worked in university. So he can speak about Nyquist an hour as he now in retirement so he had a time to get into it up to human ear construction. But in general if somebody says that digital / Nyquist is perfect - no. Nowadays digital changed as it has less space limitations so hi-res is better and we can leave Nyquist in the dust of history.

audio2design, it is like running into a brick wall. I suspect that most of these people have very little experience with digital equipment and obviously have no idea how powerful it is. They will keep coming up with baseless explanations for digital sounding awful or why vinyl "sounds better." I suspect most of their opinions are based on the very early CD players that had bad filters and did sound pretty bad.

First: i own many dacs, they were not so good at first but at the end i stumble on a very good one.... I dont regret turntables one second for too many reasons anyone can guess, sound quality included...

Second: All these remarks in your post about turntable afficionados with a negative tone about me at the end of this rant, including indiscrimately all analog people in one bag with me is only that: what someone else call "Gibberish"...I never said that turntable are superior to dac.... I use only dac myself....

Third: Insulting people dont count for an argument.... if you would have read my posts about what is TIMBRE, a bundle of real " timing" events in room acoustic coupled to human ears, you would know that my critics of those who put analog on the side of the road, with a contempt for those "ignorant people" who stick to it, was based not on comparison analog/versus digital only, but on the difficulty to seize the complex event of timbre with ANY audio system analog or digital...And you would know that audiodesign call the colored tone dynamic, namely timbre, an only subjective phenomena that is secondary... Which is totally false because timbre is like a rainbow phenomena, at the interface of objective and subjective events..... Audiodesign affirmed digital coding being primary and supreme in audio and call ALL analog people ignorant crowds for their ears evaluation...

Fourth: you will know that myself i affirm that indeed digital is different than analog but able to emulate it, ESPECIALLY if the dac chosen is good BUT mainly rightfully embedded mechanically, electrically and acoustically with the audio system itself....And this point is my original contribution here to the discussion because no one speak about that ever except me...

Five: You must read about TIMBRE perception before saying that you know what is is.... If someone understand timbre that means that he understand the absolute necessity of ears evaluation for this complex phenomenon implying timing of bundle of concrete events in a phase space of his own...Timbre identification is a complex LEARNING process at the foundation of language not a digital artefact or only a musical event...

Six: denigrating someone dont count for an argument, if you read my post you will see that i NEVER insulted audiodesign, i even recognize his competence.... BUT no one knows it all...

Seven: Nyquist theorem is about coding and decoding signals and also the implicit limitations and not only the power to do so.... This theorem has nothing to do directly with TIMBRE, which is the cornerstone of musical perception but more than that the cornerstone for evaluation of audio system in their acoustical controlled or uncontrolled embeddings...




I have written these 7 points and no one can accuse this post to be like your last post and the post of audio design accusation of ignorance against all analog people...I clearly set my point and i remind you that i believe myself in the power of digital system to compete with analog then spare me the insult....

My main point in one word is ANY evaluation of analog versus digital cannot be based on Nyquist theorem only, except for those who ignore acoustic and the fundamental PERCEIVED timbre phenomena and the powerful transformation of an audio system with the rightful embeddings controls...(This last point is my own experience for 2 years experiments)

To my knbowledge EARS has not been replaced and would not be replaced in acoustic studies by only ONE theorem...It seems engineers are not all acousticians...And it seems that experimenting with our own ears is not a good recommendation for many here....😁

Happy new YEAR 😊 May God give you the best health ever and may the only doctor you encounter this year be yourself in a mirror.......

Timing matters, if you will calculate it in ms and will found in anatomy manual how ears are made you can go to sampling and resolution calculation and compare it with Nyquist figures - it's physics and waves + math -- no engineering at all.

And to say that you can't decide which is which in blind test are due to wrong methodology. I am listening to music for pleasure and it's long term discrimination. If you are getting tired from source you are changing it.

Timing matters, if you will calculate it in ms and will found in anatomy manual how ears are made you can go to sampling and resolution calculation and compare it with Nyquist figures - it’s physics and waves + math -- no engineering at all.

Exactly one part of my argument....Timbre is a complex bundles of "timing" events in a specific room discriminated by a learning process in the ears/brain....This applied to music, acoustic, and linguistic....

Only real listenings experiments with ears can decide and evaluate timbre experience....Somebody who said he dont need his own ears but Nyquist Theorem to judge timbre experience walk next to his shoes.... Or sell dac...😊 But i already own a good one myself at low cost.....😎


Thanks for your 2 wise posts...

Happy new Year...




«I use maths like a clever dog playing tricks but you know i never understand them at the end, reflex conditioning is not piano playing»- Harpo Marx

«You need to add real phenomena to numbers, not numbers to numbers brother»-Groucho Marx

In these two posts you illustrated you don't understand signal processing, digital audio, spectrum, etc.  Not much point in continuing.   At the end of the day,  you can record an album on digital, and play it back on digital (carefully choosing the equipment), and not be able to tell the two apart. That should tell you that vinyl is nothing but a bunch of colorations and distortions that can be replicated in digital. It should tell you that. If it tells you something else .....

Seven: Nyquist theorem is about coding and decoding signals and also the implicit limitations and not only the power to do so.... This theorem has nothing to do directly with TIMBRE, which is the cornerstone of musical perception but more than that the cornerstone for evaluation of audio system in their acoustical controlled or uncontrolled embeddings...


My main point in one word is ANY evaluation of analog versus digital cannot be based on Nyquist theorem only, except for those who ignore acoustic and the fundamental PERCEIVED timbre phenomena and the powerful transformation of an audio system with the rightful embeddings controls...(This last point is my own experience for 2 years experiments)