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

01-15-2021 9:37amDear audio2design,
but one more thing I believe is rather curios. If digital is defenitely superior, why than there are so many different solutions? Like using a chip form a manufacturer versus programming your own chip. NOS versus DAC with Filter. PCM versus DSD. Upsampling vs No Upsampling etc. Sometimes I feel the dissonance beween different digital opponents is bigger even than in analog where you have the dd versus rim versus belt discussions.This uncertainty about how to process digital best does not neccessarilymean that digital is inferior. What it shows to me is: solutions in digital or analog are easier to build than to be explained :-)

Although I do accept the superiority of digital by paper - I am a programmer - I wonder myself sometimes why I cannot get more involved in digital produced music.

The RECREATION of musical natural timbre perception in our listening room is critical...Especially with digital format...Analog rendition of timbre is more robust to adverse effects and more natural than digital in a non well embedded audio system....In a well embedded environment, with the right implementation of digital tech. they may subsist no perceived  difference between digital and analog...

If digital is defenitely superior, why than there are so many different solutions? Like using a chip form a manufacturer versus programming your own chip. NOS versus DAC with Filter. PCM versus DSD. Upsampling vs No Upsampling etc

Here you point to one of the reason why especially with digital format it is difficult to recreate natural timbre experience in a room, add to it the mechanical, electrical and acoustical lack of treatment and lack of controls problems and you have the reason why many people are disappointed by digital format...

With NO standard well established for a universally tested and recognized unique digital implementation, coupled with the wrong or bad embeddings of most audio system, it is not surprizing there is a war of "tastes" that has nothing to do in fact with "taste", save for the fact that all humans prefer natural timbre experience ; and then lacking adequate vocabulary to understand timbre and describe it, most use some limited frequencies dependant gross vocabulary, speaking of more "warm" or "harsh", or "cool" and "more detailed" or too much "distorted" and "colored" or "inaccurate", entering in a ridiculous war of tastes and vocabulary, all that with a complete misunderstanding of the conditions that make possible instrumental TIMBRE perception in a listening room...

Speaking of "tastes" in this case is revealing our own ignorance about TIMBRE musical and acoustical concept and evaluation...( do not confuse musical and acoustical timbre concept)


Understand me correctly tough, i prefer digital myself, i work with it in NOS implementation, with a minimal design and a low noise floor but, and it is the main factor, my audio system is relatively rightfully embedded in the 3 dimensions, and the result is totally analog-like with a natural timbre for all instruments.

At the end, an undecision can and may subsist caused mainly by the different choices of the digital possible solutions versus the different analog tools possibles to compare to, but this residual minimal differences, that may subsist between the 2 format in very high end acoustic environment, with well embedded system, is also linked to the structural way that our ears will process timbre evaluation in a SPECIFIC conditions...It is not "tastes " here either, it is the impossibility to create the PERFECT analog system to compare with the PERFECT digital one with the PERFECT ears to compared them.... 😁

Wuwolf, all roads lead to Rome.

Most audiophiles do not understand the power of digital processing. You can actually make digital files sound like analog with a little monkeying around. I can make my media room sound like a huge arena or a smaller theater. I can bypass the digital processing with the press of a button. Nobody has ever preferred the system on bypass. I digitize a tube phono stage to take advantage of digital processing. If I take an analog signal and digitize it to 24/192 then bring it back to analog nobody has ever been able to tell the difference on Grado headphones. Michael Fremer also states that analog to 24/192 "is invisible." He routinely records samples to his computer for comparison using the same program I use, Pure Vinyl.
IMHO digital processing will make any system sound better, most of them a lot better. Digital files in this context can easily sound better than vinyl given the right mastering. I am a record collector saying this. 
If like chakster you enjoy collecting records but not files that is a respectable personal choice. Arguing about the superiority of one vs the other is rather pointless. There is no accounting for personal taste.  

Arguing about the superiority of one vs the other is rather pointless. There is no accounting for personal taste.

You are right about your first affirmation. But timbre natural perception is not a "taste" it is the result of a training musician learning experience, but there is no "taste" related to the natural perception of a stradivarius timbre and a cheap violin... Prefering one to the other dont reveal taste, but the presence of experience or the lack of experience...

The evaluation of any format performance at the end has nothing to do with "taste".....

And no digital processing can solve ALL the mechanical, electrical and acoustical problems in an audio system... A tool is a tool, not the solution by itself....