Which is more accurate: digital or vinyl?

Vinyl is king.HELLO!!

"Vinyl is king."

Small kingdom?

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

re-read my previous posts. The Nyquist theorem is poorly applied.

I will add that until human perceptual rules are understood and kept in mind during the design of the 'next' digital codex, digital will continue to display the same colorations that it does now.

One last point is also obvious- digital audio showed up in the early 1980s, about 3 decades ago. Yet analog is still very much alive, with 1993 being the year of the least vinyl production. If digital was really 'more accurate', 'better' or anything like that, it would have been able to supplant the prior art in that time. I can name plenty of examples wherein that has happened on other fields. Its not happened in audio because digital has failed to bring home the promise. I don't think anyone takes 'perfect sound forever' seriously anymore :)

Ralph, what do you feel is the more significant limiting factor for redbook, sample rate or bits per sample? Just curious.

FWIW, my instinct has always been that sample rate is the more significant issue, at least for most music. In fact I've been amazed at times at how good SOME cd's can sound, given the seemingly absurd 10% margin with respect to the Nyquist rate.

Best regards,
-- Al

"what do you feel is the more significant limiting factor for redbook, sample rate or bits per sample?"

I'm clearly not answering for Ralph, but for me I think it is the sample size that is the performance bottleneck for me, if there is one. I say if there is one becaue I still am not 100% convinced that the CD redbook format itself is deficient in any practical sense.

I say the sample size in that one of the things that I am not totally convinced CD redbook can match relative to vinyl is the ability to sustain a truly consistent level with the higher frequencies due to random variations associated with the sample magnitude value. The audible effect can often (but not always?) be subtle variations in pitch and/or high frequency transients such as those produced by massed strings, where extremely subtle transients are in play. Relatively few digital rigs do this well enough to challenge vinyl from what I have heard, but I have heard it done well so I believe it to be possible, which would mean that the implementation in play with most systems and not the format itself is the culprit.

I have heard a/b comparisons between CD and vinyl and even R2R where the analog formats clearly beat the digital, but again, I cannot say for certain that the CD format was the culprit as opposed to aspects of comparing different actual recordings in each format.