When is digital going to get the soul of music?

D edwards: I've been using 5.1 surround for the last two months (for the first time) and I totally agree that surround kicks two-channel butt (at least with lower priced equipment in a small room).
It's similar to adding a good subwoofer to an already good system -really puts meat on the musical bones.

I don't know if I can articulate this properly. I was playing "Crosby-Nash(a platinum-plus lp), and I asked my brother where the click and pops were. Then I heard some. When I focused on them, it was very disturbing. After thinking about that, one idea came to mind. What if all the non-musical artifacts(maybe rumble,too-anything that didn't have anything to do with the musical message)were separated out in a sense. In other words, when listening to ticks and pops, one also was listening to all(or a lot of)the non-music stuff. That could explain why the ticks and pops drive people crazy.

My ticks and pops submission brings me to a previous point and inquiry. I would suggest that when listening to analog, one listens to the music(and not the ticks and pops). That is how one listens to analog. I, therefore, want to repeat the question,"is there a way to listen to digital?". My Linn Kan's comments were made for the same reason. When one listens to the Kan's, in terms of conveying the beat, they make sense.

Actually, I just noticed that D edwards answered my question about how to listen to digital. He said that you need surround-sound, I believe.

I have found that good digital (particularly Hi-Rez, but also some CDs) has gotten to the point where, in my system, the soul of the music gets to me from the performance and the composer rather than the medium it's played on. It took a long time for digital to get to that point--analog has been there for a while.