Viridian: I am loathe to insert myself into the middle of this one, but I can't make sense of your statements
"...analog, both tape and LP, has greater dynamic range than redbook CD. Sounds can be heard between ten and twenty db beneath the noise floor on analog. Digital media simply throw away all information below the least significant bit"
"in analog, not digital, replay, sounds can be heard 10db to 20db into the noise floor and this leads to analog replay having a greater dynamic range than redbook CD"
Taking for granted, for the sake of argument, the assertion about audibility below the noise floor with analog, I can't see any connection between that supposed fact, and drawing the conclusion that therefore digital must have less dynamic range. Even if the stipulation about audibility is true, it seems to me the comparison would be wholly dependent on where the analog noise floor actually falls in relation to the bit-depth of a particular digital format. If, for instance, an analog format has a noise floor 20dB higher than the LSB of a digital format, then they should have equal dynamic range by your argument. But even so, taking the noise floor of the analog into account, the digital should have superior low-level resolution.
Personally, I'm not sure that any of this stuff actually has much to do with the perception of 'dynamic' sound (or whether dynamics has anything to do with D_Edwards contention about digital and multichannel, for that matter). But regardless, your inference does seem like a non-sequitor to me.
