When is digital going to get the soul of music?

I am amazed that people still hold the opinion that digital is such a poor performer. Superb CD machines have been extant for at least 12 years and I'm talking redbook, not the SACD or DVD-A variants. I'm not saying this is the case here but for many years internet forums have been awash with claims that vinyl still massively outperforms the CD and people often cite experience as proof. I find it hard to accept claims of "proof" when it's often pretty obvious that the claimant has never attained anything like a good digital set-up, yet still asserts that it's a rubbish medium.
I have been living with my current system for around 8 years and it's CD redbook only. I had given up vinyl some 15 years previously and decided to try it one more time, once I had got a superb CD player, in part to see how it compared. I got myself an LP12 that a local enthusiast was selling (he also was going the CD only route) and pulled out my old vinyl collection. Whilst the detail was certainly "there", so were all the old faults that prompted me to jack it in the first place. The ability to play pops, hiss and crackles with great clarity reminded me why I hated vinyl so much. And how did the sound of my CD system sound alongside the LP12? Let's just say I never want to go back. The issues that people often cite as problematic with CD have not been evident since I attained a high end system, especially since the upgrade of my power amp. No harshness, no sterility, and certainly it has plenty of "soul". The one thing I would add, and it highlights something I have been harping on about for years and something most of you will also be acutely aware of, I'm sure - that of SYNERGY. My Meridian CD player had to go to the doctors a couple of years ago for a new laser and I was forced into using a backup player. I then understood what people were talking about when they complained of the sound of CD and also that of the ear-bleeder remaster. For the first time in years, I experienced listener fatigue.
It's a Herculean task to assemble a system, the infinite combinations of kit and environment make it hard enough. Spending many hours of time and effort assembling what people think will be a system which eventually kill off their "upgrade-itis" will not necessarily result in satisfaction. No-one likes to admit failure, especially when spending a lot of money but the fact remains that sometimes this is what has happened. I have often encountered people on internet forums who cannot listen to a lot of their music for one reason or another - as it sounds harsh. Yet they proudly present their expensive and esoteric system for all to see, just to lap up the praise for the aesthetics. I'm sorry but that always sounds to be like a lack of synergy and consequently poor system matching. I am a canine psychologist and I always say to clients that "you do NOT need to put up with bad and anti=-social behaviour". The same applies to us audiophiles - we should not put up with sounds that displease, however much has been invested up to that point.
I wish people, instead of stating "CD as a medium sucks", would just say "I have yet to hear it in a favourable setup".

And before anyone gets defensive, I am not referring to anyone specifically, as I only read 10 or so responses to this thread.

Niacin, ... hear, hear!

I would just make the comment that what you call synergy I have found to be that combination which minimises the level of unpleasant, low level or "micro", distortion. Many people, as you say, don't seem to realise that that is what you need to do, which is of course a great pity ...

Frank

With all due respect, I feel that you need to re-visit vinyl sound, on an audio system capable of reproducing the soul of music.

Digital that comes close counts on one hand fingers, 5 that is (maybe), IMHO, of course!

Best,
Alex Peychev

Aplhifi, see again my earlier response. Yes, it it easier to "reproduce the soul" on vinyl, but only because it tolerates more sloppiness in the setup! You have to be more precise, more careful with digital, and a lot of the industry apparently still doesn't get "it". Slightly, very slightly askew digital can be intolerable, so if you want to enjoy "digital soul" you have to put more effort into it to get it just right ...

Actually, a very simple analogy is (appropriately!) digital versus analogue TV. Most people would agree that with good reception digital is superior to analogue. But, with slight levels of poor reception, it becomes extremely irritating to watch the digital signal; yet poor analogue can still be enjoyed and followed even when it is severely ghosting, say. I know, in many ways a poor analogy, but what I am trying to say, is that in some ways the nature of digital is that the quality of it is either on, or off; great, or pretty awful.

Frank

Hi Fas42 - I want to respond to a couple of points you make: "distortion is distortion is distortion," and "A key indicator of digital working well is that there is no such thing as a bad recording, you can enjoy the "soul" of everything you have."

Am I correct in guessing that you listen to primarily, perhaps almost exclusively, electronically produced music? This would be the only context in which I personally can conceive of anyone making the two above statements. Certainly digital can come close to analog in that arena. But if we are talking about recording the human voice, or other acoustic instruments, such as a full symphony orchestra, then sadly, there are indeed very very bad digital recordings; in fact, the vast majority. To give just one, but to me the most damning example, digital processing simply removes too much timbral information, something that designers have always acknowledged and have never been able to fix, despite the great advances digital has indeed made. This is what most people mean when they talk about missing the "soul" in digital recordings.

And I would vehemently disagree with the first of those quotes as well. It has always baffled me when some audiophiles make this statement. Analog recording has much more distortion in it than digital, you are certainly correct there. However, the distortions inherent in the digital recording medium take place at higher, and therefore MUCH more musically objectionable frequencies. I am no electrical engineer, and others have explained the reasons behind this much better than I; I am sure this thread has multiple examples. I am, however, a professional orchestral musician, and I can tell you that I have never heard a digital recording of an orchestra, as good as many of them are, that sounds remotely as close to real as even an average analog recording. Besides the timbral issues I mentioned earlier, there is also the relative lack of ambient information from the original recording space - almost all digital recordings are multi-miked and then remixed so that any sense of the music happening in a real space, so important for most classical music, is gone. Even worse, the worst digital recording engineers will add to the mix a very fake sounding reverb in order to try to get that concert hall sound back again. Yes, analog has more surface noise - but this type of distortion is not embedded in the music itself, and can be listened through. Many of the ways digital processing distorts musical realities cannot be listened through, as they are embedded in the recording itself. Digital has indeed come a very long way, but in mine and many other musician's opinions, a few of it's flaws can never quite be overcome.

Please understand that I am in no way implying that digital is unlistenable or anything of the sort. There are many great performances that were only recorded digitally, and I am certainly not going to pass them up just because they were digitally recorded. I merely maintain that analog is a superior recording medium, if musical realism is the goal.