Please Educate Me

Another county heard from. 

Paul McGowan of PS Audio in conversation with John Atkinson of Stereophile, February 28, 2018. The conversation, which has been edited for readability, is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0NUvziOgWQ

Atkinson: . . . Putting a disc on, it's like going back to the last century. [Leaning forward, sly grin.] But there's still something right about the sound of a mechanical disc playing in a mechanical player.

McGowan: It sounds better. It sounds better, so far, than any server we've tried. We're working on a server. And we're going to fix that problem. We think that we may know why the physical disc sounds better. Because on the surface, it makes no sense whatsoever. The bits are the same.

Atkinson: Right, they're the same bits being presented to the DAC.

McGowan: Yup, yup. But that's true only insofar as it's ones or zeros. What's different is the timing of the bits, the noise levels [more engineering stuff].

Paul6001,

I was new here not so long ago too. I liken the experience to being a bride’s guest at a wedding where most of the other guests are the groom’s family - and they drink too much and bicker over dinner and end up having a fist fight in the car park. Like that bride’s guest, it is better to watch, not join in.

On your points - I think there are many engineering choices to be made when processing digital information, especially when making the first capture of analogue sound and also when converting it back. There are loads of engineering choices too when the storage medium is a spinning vinyl disc. We hear replicas of the original sound. It is an illusion. The recording engineers, mastering, encoding, and decoding are choice-maker at every stage. You are hearing their choices when things sound different. 
Your listening - if I was you, I’d put together a headphone system for personal listening. Use Roon to benefit from crossfeed filters. Seems like in your NY apartment you will struggle to have a listening room and a living room in the same space. So don’t try. Headphones for personal listening, and some easy listening omni-directional room-filling, guest-pleasing speakers for social listening.  I’m a fan of back-loaded horns because wherever you and guests  sit in your room everyone gets a lovely listen. 
Now, see you soon in the car park where we can watch some of the old boys take their jackets off and start swinging - and missing. 

What a cleverly apt analogy.
Don't forget wedding crashers.
No one is sure who's side they are on, they hurriedly eat and drink too much, and before anyone can confront them, they disappear.

Ditto @Paul6001!!!. Millercarbon, I don’t see where the op used the word ‘record’ in the first place; but I do see where they asked a question and the phrase ‘educate me’ should be taken literally unless you know the user quite well and can be absolutely positive that it is they who are being cynical; rather than only you.

I can’t help but notice that when Paul McGowan raises the exact same point that I did in my original post—100 replies ago—no one makes fun of him, no one mocks him, no one feels the need to attack. Maybe Audiogon members should be paying a little more attention to the merits of a question rather than the cred they attribute to the poster.

As before, I’d like to thank the many people who jumped to my defense. I can assure you that I’m not so fragile as to take these anonymous remarks seriously.

Many of those people encouraged me to continue posting, usually saying something like, “It’s a tough crowd at first but you’ll eventually fit in.”

You know something? I don’t want to fit in. I returned to this site because I had a question and I was looking for an answer. Yesterday, I left my CD player on pause all night. That didn’t seem like a good thing to do but I thought I should climb the mountain one more time and seek wisdom from the old men at the top.

This question had been asked many times before and, as I suspected, the consensus was that it wasn’t a good idea. But, almost invariably, the OP was torn limb from limb for having the temerity to waste the valuable time of random Audiogon users.

I assume that there’s a function somewhere on this site that allows a person to see the newest posts and to offer an immediate response. I further assume that a not insignificant number of users have nothing better to do than watch that list of new posts, then race to demean the usually well-meaning poster. (I say “usually” because rumor has it that troublemakers post questions using the subject line“Ecucate me.”)

These people merit concern, perhaps treatment, certainly pity. And, believe it or not, I don’t feel any particular urge to feel comfortable among them. 

And if anyone bothers to watch that clip, he’ll find that McGowan has been working on this problem “that makes no sense whatsoever” for years and sounds like he’s got years to go. He seems like a pretty smart guy. That is company that I don’t mind keeping.