How Good Can Digital Get?

Lazarus28:
Well, I’m a psychiatrist, so I suppose I should never object to someone introducing the possibility of psychology influencing audio perceptions, which it of course does. But I must say, having some basic understanding of my own inner workings, your explanation of my experience the other day doesn’t resonate at all. The fact is that what I heard initially that day sounded good, but it improved greatly once the change was made to vinyl (on an excellent turntable, tonearm, etc.). It is true I knew that this would happen, but not from some irrational attachment to vinyl, but from repeated past experience. I would be quite frankly surprised if anyone posting here could not have easily heard the improvement in the room that day – it was not subtle.

I know there are many overly zealous vinyl advocates, but I don’t feel comfortable in that camp. As I said, I really enjoy my CD player, and I have no problem with someone preferring digital. In fact, my wife strongly does, though I must say even she thinks good vinyl sounds substantially better. She just isn’t convinced that the difference is worth the effort and inconvenience. I think that is a reasonable position - just not one that I share.

newmanoc - quite a reasonable reply. thanks! i tend to be more or less in the same camp as your wife.

but, iffin yer a psychiatrist, shouldn't you go by newmanDOC?

:-)

Lazarus28:
Peace and happy listening. By the way, your username has an abstract-cool kind of thing going on. Mine is unimaginatively composed of my last name and initials. Now that maybe is something to analyze. :)

As owner of EMM Labs gear, I will say that digital has come a long, long way, and that people who blindly declare it inferior to vinyl are SADLY misguided. To me, digital and analog are two radically different formats with radically different methods of sound reproduction--and they produce radically different results. Not necessarily better or worse, just different. As I said before, digital has come a really long way since the dark days, and now I have a hard time choosing between the best digital and the best analog. They each do different things well--and not so well. For me, in the EMM gear, I finally found a digital component that I didn't have to apologize for in front of my analogue buddies. In fact, it's converted a few of them back to digital. And if you knew these guys like I knew 'em, you'd know that was no mean feat!

In some respects digital will never be as good as analog and in some respects analog will never be as good as digital.
Unless the sample rate approaches infinty analog will always hold more information. For volume resolution
cd's 16bit allows for 65536 discreet steps (24bit about 2.5million) analog allows all the steps in between as well. So in information content digital is seriously flawed. But when it comes to noise levels and channel separation digital will always be better than a mechanical or electrical (ie analog) system.
So if you can hear (not everybody can, just look at all the people who cannot hear the difference between cd and mp3) and don't mind the noise go analog, if you can't or you like the convenience go digital.
I use both but wish digital would go to 24bit 96kHz or better yet 24bit 192kHz so I don't have to keep turning the treble down. Theres nothing worse than the treble that comes out of a (well any) cdp. But having heard a 192kHz system I know it doesn't have to be like this.
But since the general public seems to be happy with mp3's I don't hold much hope for the future and I keep buying cd's if I can't get it on vinyl after all its the music that counts, not the format it appears in. Much rather listen to good music on a bad system than bad music on a good system!