Which is more accurate: digital or vinyl?

11-07-11: Unsound
Hifihvn, no, not unless the analog tape's sampling is very much larger than microscopic.
Unsound (System | Threads | Answers | This Thread)

After thinking about it more, we do hear the hiss from audio tape, even on the masters. I actually wonder if it does play games with the bit-stream when this same type of tape is used for digital?

Nice post, Frogman. I would agree wholeheartedly. I am also thinking that the phenomena you describe are also a good answer to a question that has been discussed on this forum quite a bit lately, namely what is PRAT? Too many audiophiles think about timing only in terms of the technical specs, the actual speed of the turntable, for instance. What you describe is a different kind of timing that is far more important, and this to me is the "timing" implied in the term PRAT.

"Quantization of a 2 volt full-scale range into 64 bits
would mean that the least significant bit corresponds to
about 0.0000000000000000001 volts."

I wonder what the comparative resolution of vinyl in volts
can practically be?

How about compared to 16 bits even?

I doubt there are many if any lps constructed perfectly
enough for
it to matter.

Also since record playback involves movement of a stylus
that has mass, I've always believed that inertia is an
inherent barrier to what
can be achieved practically with vinyl playback, similar to
quantification parameters being the potential barrier with
any particular digital format.

Mapman, That is an excellent question and rationale in last para.
We have good arguments from both Digital(Red book and beyond) and Analog (Vinyl). Lot of discussion automatically assumes Analog to be continous (theoretically) but like Mapman implies what is the practicality?

Has any one plotted signal pick up of say a same sinusoidal test tone recorded both on Vinyl(played back on most accurate set up or even a cutter) and 16/44.1 to compare continuity of these curves?

Al is right, my 64-bit idea is mostly fantasy :)

Here is the problem, in a nutshell, the problem that seems to plague **all** aspects of audio:

There are the Rules of Human Hearing/Perception, and there are the specs on paper. They are not the same- the specs on paper for the most part don't give a damn about human hearing rules.

Now I have gone off about this a lot in the Amps/Preamps forum and won't belabor those issues as examples. Instead, let's look at how the ear treats noise, specifically analog hiss: Normally, our ears employ a masking feature, IOW the presence of a louder sound will block the presence of a quieter sound to our perception. Hiss is the one exception to that rule. I suspect its an evolutionary thing myself- the idea that hiss is similar to the effects of wind in the environment is not that far-fetched to me.... Anyway, we have the ability to hear about **20 db** into the noise floor of an analog system.

(if the noise floor is not composed of hiss, but instead is harmonic or in-harmonic noise related to the signal, our ears will not penetrate that, and so that type of noise floor will define the limit of low level detail that can be retrieved.)

With modern tape, 1/2" format, this means that you have the possibility of a 110 db dynamic range, if you include the range above 0 VU, a range that digital does not have.

This simple fact explains why an analog system of rather modest noise specs can have more low level detail than the best digital systems -*even though it appears to be noisier*. Add to that the fact that digital systems use less bits to resolve lower level signals (IOW, they have loose resolution as signal level decreases, which is why the normalization process is so important in the production of a CD) and you have a great part of why digital systems **as they are** can't keep up with analog.

IOW, part of it has to do with how we hear, and for the most part digital audio has ignored that, which has been a common problem with audio in general in the last 45 years or so :( Put another way, analog just happens to work better with the way our ears work.