Has anyone been able to define well or measure differences between vinyl and digital?

to those who say that phonograph recordings [whatever format] have better treble response [overall] than digital, you would not like what engineer tom dowd said about that assertion. he said there were very few LPs played on very few turntables that were actually flat out to 20k on the last track of each side, that on the majority of LPs played on the majority of equipment, the majority of the inner-groove trebles above 10k were in fact distorted. 

I am experiencing the exact opposite of asctim in that as my digital, analog and total system becomes ever more resolving, transparent I become more relaxed as my mind DOESN'T have to work as hard to fill in the blanks. Certainly, one can feel there is excessive resolution if the added resolution exposes some anomaly that was previously hidden.

I'll go back again to what I surmise what may be the main bother with digital, and that is jitter. Perhaps precision is the better word to describe what many hear with their digital setups. I've experienced this sense of excess precision at various times in the evolution of my digital setup. I always have the ability to directly compare my digital to nice analog setup, and I have my aural memory of the best of the best vinyl setups. Easy to hear this extra helping of precision vs analog if it occurs. With the recent addition of my custom build streamer in which latency/jitter was minimized to perhaps SOTA, I am finally hearing digital that flows very similarly to vinyl. None of the over precision, analytical, nervous, digititus that is commonly assumed to be inherent to digital. As another poster above stated, I too am hearing greater convergence of analog and digital over time.

I don't hear any of the other liabilities mentioned above either, like micro or macro dynamic loss, all recording dependent on my setups. At this point I'd have to say the greatest variability between analog and digital is recording quality. I hear overly compressed crap with both formats.

It is interesting that so many didn't hear the digital step used on Mofi recordings. Perhaps it proves point digital and analog sound converging. ADC and DAC is continually improving, my digital setups have reflected this improvement over many  years.

Another consideration. Vinyl is a more mature format, top tier vinyl setups have existed my entire lifetime. Digital only became mass market in 1980's, we had to suffer pretty bad digital sound quality for many years. Both ADC and DAC equipment has gradually improved over the years, and our gear has reflected that. I'm assuming analog sound quality is the reference for best SQ for most, including audio equipment designers/engineers, therefore, it follows digital would reflect a convergence to analog over time.

I think the most amazing point is that LPs and CDs can sound amazingly close given the wildly different paths the signal must take!

Regards,

barts

Reading the answers, @asctim ’s most resonates with me. Some of my favorite recordings are on vinyl. Some of my favorite recordings are digital. I don’t feel a need to declare vinyl better than digital to like it. Neither is my first born :-) I have never seen any argument that holds up that supports vinyl having any property better than digital. IMHO there is probably something to the magic that @asctim describes, flaws or not. Vinyl also ties one had behind the back of the person working on it. Does that force them to pay more attention to what they are doing? Groove space is a limited quantity. Make the most of every one and do it right or it will sound terrible. Digital? Throw whatever you want down, it will fit and come out the other end.

@sns , I cannot speak for audio equipment in general, but for professional speakers (that some consumers buy), except for lunch room conversations, analog as a storage medium is not something that ever comes up. We never say, "we better feed this with a record player or tape player in case we missed something" though some people bring in needle drops.

IMHO as well, I think the MOFI debacle should put to rest much of these discussions. It won't, but it probably should. We could be spending effort figuring out where the magic comes from, not making up properties that always fall apart under the magnifying glass.

@thespeakerdude

I have found that vinyl records sounded better than the same album on CD. My girlfriend whole heartedly agreed. I wondered why the CDs sounded relatively crispy and lacking in richness and fullness. I suspected frequency response, but this is hard to test on an LP playback chain. How do you test it? Is there a record with a sweep tone on it that can be used as a reference point? I couldn’t find one so I resorted to comparing the spectral content of the same song played through my CD player or through the LP chain. What I found was a nice gradual roll off of the highs on the LP compared to the CD. This was consistent across multiple albums. So using a digital equalizer I replicated that roll off for the CD player and the CDs sounded much better! I tricked my girlfriend with the equalizer. So that’s another interesting point about LP playback. What really is the frequency response? A gradual treble roll off does not necessarily create an impression of a lack of highs. It can sound bigger, fuller, deeper, more spacious. It might even sound more detailed if the overall balance in the listening room comes across better. If someone has experience with calibrating frequency response on cartridges and phono stages I’d like to learn more about that. If it turns out they really are producing flat playback response on most high end systems that would be interesting to know. My system was not high end, just a Sumiko Blue Point on a Project One turntable playing into a Creek integrated amp. Stereophile, I think, had put me on to that setup as a decent budget rig that could beat most digital.