When is digital going to get the soul of music?

Today's digital recordings are much better than they were 10 years ago. In addition, with FLAC becoming available online (see http://tidalhifi.com/sc), one only needs a good DAC that can take USB transfer from a computer and the rest is essentially history. To me, the price and complexity of a turntable, its artificial "warm" sound, lack of details when there is more than 3 instruments, cracking and popping sounds and lack of good quality vinyls are all sufficient reasons for me to stay away from Vinyl.

In my opinion, the very subjective "soul of the music" argument made by vinyl owners seems to be there so that they can justify to themselves that their exorbitant investment was worth it. If you listen to live instruments, good quality digital is much closer to reality than Vinyl, but then again, maybe reality is not as “Soulful” as vinyls…

I think this is a dead end thread. I think digital has the potential now to be the equal of master tapes. Sony is supposedly in the process of preserving its master tapes into quad DSD, but using a device with many opamps which are ruining the recording. So soon vinyl will be digital.

Already I listen to double DSD from sacds and upsampled from SACDs. I am most struck that what I hear from old vinyl differs greatly from that on reissues. Most often the high end is gone reissues.

I have a good vinyl system also but because of the above seldom can I say much about the comparison as they are different mastering.

"I think digital has the potential now to be the equal of master tapes"

I have not heard it yet, but I agree the potential is there.

Digital is good now, buy still not master tape quality. Some day maybe.

Jwm, if all of the old analog master tapes have deteriorated and saved only in quad DSD, we have to hope the digital is equal to what used to be master tapes.