Which is more accurate: digital or vinyl?

Consumer based, good god

I believe you have to throw the almighty dollar into this equation. For the poor man, digital has it all over vinyl in every way. However, if you have a coral Koetsu and everything to go with it, there is a good chance that vinyl is the best.

Please define "accurate." I do not think you can. We do not yet have instruments or measurements that can equal the distinctions the human ear can make. If we did, many of these questions in audiophilia would disappear, and subjective evaluation would be unnecessary.

Don't the high frequency cutoff filters of redbook dacs disqualify digital from being the correct answer?

I think high bitrate digital could be as accurate, or more so, but "loudness wars" mastering is a big problem with cd's.

3 inch master tape is a fine way to record music but it is going extinct, just like photographic film. I don't think much of it is being made and that which already exists is decomposing. I know that remasters of albums made in the late 60s and 70s have noted that the tapes were "baked" to get one last read off them.

Most music is now recorded to a hard drive or some equivalent and in the not too distant future all new recordings will be made on digital equipment.

So you can rant and rave all you want but the future for recording and playback is digital.

Digital has been improving rapidly and will continue to improve until only the diehards think that vinyl sounds better.

Compression has nothing to do with digital. It is a fashion in mixing. If your records are highly compressed, you're listening to the wrong records.

Again, if you prefer vinyl to digital, that's fine with me. I would lose the hatred of digital, if you have it, though. You're missing out on a lot of great music available only on cd or high-res digital.

i've not read every post above, so forgive me if this has already been said.

to me the issue is which format is most complete. which is different than most accurate. sampling (digital) can be accurate but it's inherently less complete. there are gaps. so at those particular moments when the sample was taken, it may be more accurate. but it turns out that our ears like complete more than accurate.

an analogy i use is "consider a perfectly clean mirror". break it into a million pieces then glue it back together. then look at it. it is accurate. in all the places you see the reflection it shows an accurate refection. but; there are all the areas of the mirror (where you see little cracks filled with glue) without any information; so in the whole it does not look real. then consider a mirror that is dirty, there are not areas which are missing, but the slight amount of dirt is there. it's dirty but it is also complete. the reflection looks real.

i like digital and am not anti-digital. i listen to it often and enjoy it. it does not need to change to be worthy. but in direct comparison to the best analog it comes up short.