Which is more accurate: digital or vinyl?

"The reason for no new formats is that there has been adverse consumer reaction to updating technology."

If CDs were inherently problematic this would probably be less true. The fact is they have held up quite well for 30 years.

The market for CDs at least in most economically mature countries around the world is probably saturated at this point. The fact is there is more music out there today and still in circulation between vinyl and CD formats than ever before.

Plus the competiton now comes from otehr streaming digital music sources readily available for free or for cost also with very good quality via internet.

Plus the end user experience possible with all these digital sources out there and so many ways to access and use them is richer than ever. Most people care about other aspects of the listening to music experience in additional to whatever degree they may care about how good it sounds.

Just wondering how good is your hearing at 19-20Khz?

Certainly not as good as it was...

Bandwidth problems can be heard without 20KHz response in the ear though. A cutoff at 20KHz has artifacts that extend down to 2KHz. This is why amps and preamps endeavor to have wide bandwidth- to reduce audible phase shift components well within the audio passband.

Most high quality analog formats can extend well past 20KHz (remember CD-4 from the 1970s?); my 1/2" tape machine can do 30KHz passably well at 30ips. Even though you can't hear that high, you sure can hear how much more resolution it has!

One of the keys to superior CDs these days is higher scan frequencies during record mode. We use 88.2KHz 24 bits as a backup of our analog recordings. 88.2KHz is nice because there is no algorithm required to produce a Redbook file, and you don't need a brickwall filter during record mode either. My point here is that Redbook is intentionally limited and compromised, and as long as it is around digital will *never* (which is a very long time) be better than analog- to do so would violate the laws of physics.

I don't think anyone should blame consumers for rejecting other digital formats like SACD... they already got talked into selling a perfectly good LP collection to be replaced by bright-sounding soulless junk. Collectively I don't think they trust the audio industry anymore.

"digital will *never* (which is a very long time) be better than analog- to do so would violate the laws of physics"

I'm stumped on that one. Why is that?

Even if so, I'd have to believe the difference would become somewhere between insignificant and essentially nil to pretty much all at some point if it has not already.

I think it was Mr Spock who I recall once saying:

"A difference that makes no difference is no difference"

Hard to argue logic with those Vulcans.

I suppose one could make the argument that on the molecular level, analog tape provides no more than random samplings.

I suppose one could make the argument that on the molecular level, analog tape provides no more than random samplings.
Unsound (System | Threads | Answers | This Thread)

Then if you take that same tape with its particles and use if for a digital recording, maybe you'll get different digital defects?