When is digital going to get the soul of music?

Never I'm afraid. I'll keep my TT - SACD improves in all areas, but nothing is as "real" sounding as vinyl (studio equipment excluded).

There was a story about a recording session in Stereophile where the engineer used 3 different mediums for recordings, hi-rez digital, redbook digital and analog tape. The performers, engineer and others compared the results and they all concluded that the hi-rez digital sounded most like the live event, but they all preferred the analog tape sound. I can only conclude that a little dynamic compression and distortion sounds really good. Some people even give human attributions to this phenomena and call it "emotion" or "soul". Don't get me wrong, nothings wrong with liking distortion, personally I like it too! But let's call it what it is and stop this analog is magic mumbo jumbo.

BTW, the processing step from analog tape to vinyl adds another layer of dynamic compression/distortion. If it sounds good, it's good, but it's a purely physical, readily understood effect.

I just need the machines to recreate the event in a reasonably accurate way (no hiss, clicks, pops or chops).
Once it's in my head, MY SOUL does the rest...

Yeah, I used to think that digital couldn't or wouldn't be able to convey the soul and emotion of analog. I'm happy to report that I was completely wrong.

The acid test for me is whether the reproduced music can affect me emotionally enough to bring tears to my eyes. Mind you, this happenstance is rare enough with extremely competent all-analog systems.

But recently, my digital source has managed that feat and managed it on several occasions. This is how I can tell that digital is getting extremely close to the live performance -- provided you use the right gear and set it up properly. This really did not happen until I tried my latest system configuration. So it is possible and it can be done if you're lucky enough to hit on the right combination of components (and the synergy is with you).
I'm not going divulge all the components I'm using at this time, but I can tell you it's an all solid-state system using NuForce Reference 9 amplifiers into VMPS RM30 speakers. Listening to it, I don't miss tubes, and I don't miss vinyl, or even R to R tape.

Now I'm off to the CES. I'll see you all later.

You have not listened to the right digital.

Regards,