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

I discuss 4 days, none of my arguments were answered at all...

Timbre concept was dimiss being an euphonic "taste" or a subjective superficial color on top of the "accurate" objective "sound". 


For example : no microphone choices is perfect, it is a trade-off and the possible locations are numerous...

Then no recording process could be a PERFECT timbre musical dynamic reproduction....( i will not count for a loss the mixing works but there is a loss also there)

Then a musician or an audiophile will evaluate positively his instrumental timbre experience with his chosen format, ONLY in the optimal acoustical conditions of his listening room... His experience is not a reproduction but an always more or less successful recreation of a timbre experience and dynamics, phrase, from a chosen format in a SPECIFIC acoustical listening room and specific hi-fi system with his specific right embeddings dimensions or the lack of........

My point is the installation of the electrical, mechanical and acoustical treatment and controls are more important to the recreation of the live event for an audiophile in his listening room than the choice of the digital format recording under ONLY the pretext of his mathematical " accurate" translation from the microphones to the speakers... Accurate in bits does not equal automatically accurate for the ears in a concrete room...More than that any audio system work optimally ONLY if its mechanical and electrical embeddings and the acoustical dimension are well under control....




The reason why i argued with him was his judgement about all turntable owners to be deluded by their illusory "taste" or only ignorant, all that by virtue of a very well known theorem that assure us that the translation from the analog microphone to the digital format and his retranslation to the speakers are "accurate" mathematically( a reverse microphone) All that forgetting about the right conditions necessary to live or recreate the musical concrete timbre experience...

A dynamical timbre living event in the acoustical space in his own timing dimension resemble more to a cell than to a mass of bits, even accurate....

Music need sound but is not only sound, it is an embodied sound...A conscious historical event ( said Ernest Ansermet mathematician and one of the greatest maestro writer of the most important book about music in the last century, by the way, i read it try this 1000 pages book 😊). Is Ansermet lying? 😁

My point was that musical timbre dynamic of a playing musician CANNOT be totally perfectly recorded...Then no format can reproduce PURELY the original... But it seems to many people that perhaps analog format is more robust than digital with this lost of information at the recording moment by microphone choices and locations...I dont know that for sure...You are in a better place than me to know that frogman....

My main point is controlling the mechanical and electrical and acoustical dimensions of the audio system are more important for me than the format even if it is a digital one...This i know for sure....

No speakers can beat the room, no microphones can perfectly digest an instrument, no audio system can work great without being rightfully embedded in these 3 dimensions where it work.....

A lived event can be recreated more or less perfectly not perfectly reproduced....I use the term recreatebecause there ia always something that will be added and substracted from the live original event...Our best hope are then a relative recreation not a perfect reproduction ....

Frogman, for all your experience you still don't get this recording and playback process. I am glad you complained about microphone position. Few recording engineers are overly familiar with effective live ensemble recording. They know what they were taught but can't visually the sound field and make bad decisions.

However it's all moot. The only thing you can record is what reaches the microphone. All else is periphery and deflection. If you want to accurately capture what reaches that microphone analog does not do that and has not need as good at doing that for 2+ decades.

When you accept that digital can record and playback vinyl without being able to tell the two apart you have to accept that vinyl is no more colorations or a transfer function of you will no different from the many used day in and day out in the recording industry. You may play an instrument but you seem oblivious to what happens after the sound reaches the microphone.

The only thing you can record is what reaches the microphone. All else is periphery and deflection.

In a LIVE theather when someone listen to a violin what he hears cannot be exactly reproduced PRECISELY because each chosen different TYPES of microphones, the list is here,

https://www.gearank.com/articles/types-of-mics

All types of microphone will register a different perspective, a different sounding timbre dynamic, not only because also the sound will be different in different theater or studio acoustic, but because the locations of the one or many mic will give a different experience....

Timbre dynamic emerging from a specific room and embodied in a musician gesture CANNOT be perfectly recorded....mic choices are always trade-off.... simple....

What you call" periphery and deflection" participate of the essential dynamic of the timbre flowing toward the mic chosen in a positive and sometimes negative way.... Recording in a church is not recording in a studio or in a room ...These acoustic choices participate to the goal...

Then analog or digital format being equal, the only question is how can i recreate a musical event in my room ?

The analog format or the digital format being equivalent mathematically speaking, it is the ACOUSTIC controls in the listener room like the acoustical control in the player studio that are the essential factor...

Not the choice of a format at all....Save the fact i dont contest that some prefer analog....

Then denigrating turntable lover for their choice has no sense at all....

Man, you’re a piece of work. First you accuse me of lying and now I am oblivious.
First, could you please rewrite your last paragraph, I have no idea what it is you are trying to say; except for the last sentence and I don’t think this is for lack of understanding on my part.

Look it’s quite simple for me. I have been making a living playing music at a high level for 45 years and part of being successful at this is learning to trust one’s ears. I know what my ears tell me. I trust my ears and they tell me that ON BALANCE, well implemented analog gets closer to the sound of real than does digital. Not always by a lot, but enough for it to matter to me based on my sonic and musical priorities. You seem to want to fall back on the technical and/or theoretical aspects of it all. The sound of music and its playback is much more fluid and elusive than that for a variety of reasons; not the least of which is the human element. You obviously have different sonic priorities than I do. I’m cool with that. Can you say the same? Or, do you feel better thinking that I am clueless and that I am lying about all this?

From my first post here:

The most interesting question for me is why it is that some are so hellbent on trying to convince me that I don’t hear what I do hear.

No one is trying to convince you that you are not hearing what you are claiming to hear. They are telling you it has nothing to do with vinyl, that vinyl absolutely does not have superior signal recreation capability, that what you hear is purely the particular recording and personal preference. That digital is more capable of whatever nuance you may claim which should be self evident given you can record vinyl on digital and play it back and not be able to distinguish the two.


I am also saying your claim that recording engineers think analog/vinyl is more "real" on average is made up.