Which is more accurate: digital or vinyl?

I felt that i really needed to respond to your comments only because you seemed absolute/dogmatic about your statements. Also, that based upon my most recent experiences, i felt that the disparity you perceive between live music and what is possible with some new esoteric/cottage industry audio products and a carefully put together system(highly tweaked)(with some luck too!) was too great. I was hoping to convey that between live music and stereo playback it was my sincere belief that that gap has narrowed, especially with the products only available in the last 10 years . We are talking about some of the best people on the planet working with genuine passion trying to make really special products. It did hurt my feelings a bit when you said that you pitied me? I thought maybe that was going a bit too far and wasn't very charming of you? As the posts progressed i tried to qualify my statements trying to bridge the gap between our perceived differences by adding some qualifiers,hoping that would help.

For example, to repeat earlier qualifications , the times I've experienc recorded music sounding like live is very rare, for example 95 percent of the systems(i speculate), never come close and of the ones that do only 5 percent of the time, on 5 (maybe less) percent of an entire catalog does it come close to mimicing reality. I never said, nor meant to say that i have ever heard large scale orchestral music playback mimick live music. (though someone might have done it???) This is a more difficult challenge (in my mind) than sparse music (like, one voice, a guitar, a harmonica (nothing else). While sparse music is still a great challenge it is a LESSER challenge, i think than many different instruments , playing at once (with different/unique timbre/playback demands)(trying to get them all correct with one kind of speaker, cartridge etc etc) is going to be a tough challenge. (sometimes for example one cart is more suited for rock while another cart for orchestral(as you know)

I can understand how some thought it an absurd/arrogant statement, especially when it has become the norm/popular even to say that nothing can sound like live music and for someone to come along and ask the question "is it heresy to say that reproduced music can sound just like live"?

Yesterday, I played, bob dylan , "good as i been to you" american pressing lp, "sitting on top of the world" track. So, you should make a mental note that this is sparse music with only two instruments and a not very produced album. That means the amount of manipulation between the laying down of the tracks and the final mastering is small or non existent. So you have a very high fidelity record.(read... (great potential for sounding live)

The track contains, bob, his guitar, his harmonica. (I hear no effects added.) So i listen to the harmonica playback and then blow my own marine band harmonica. I did this back and forth several times and feel that if i were to grade my harmonica as a 100 points, i'd have to give the stereo played harmonica, i dont know, 96-100?

I think much of the credit must go to the allaerts cart as reeling in most of the timbral magic of the vocals and isntruments. Gold is a "weird" electrical conductor that imparts something lush, organic, and holographic to metal instruments. I've heard metal reproduced wrong many ways, that don't match reality, but this cart does something unprecedented (so far as my experience goes). The best analogy i can use to give a hint/to try and convey that quality is when you see a mirage created by heat off the road. You see something there, that really isn't but somehow it exists.

With it, in my minds eye i perceive the woodfibre and metals vibrating like the real instrument... the harmonica plays with a halo of no other artifacts surrounding it as it is reproduced by the stereo, just like when i blow it with my mouth. In other words, the noise floor around it is non existent, nothing else is added or subracted and its timbres are reproduced impeccably. The wood part is right, the metal part is right, its speed is right, the resolution is right...all these things together plus more are part of its "timbre"

If some people are spooked (on occasion) by stereo playback that means they are experiencing the emotion of 'fear'.

Why fear? Its just a stereo???That's odd.

But not really, i surmise the reason they are experiencing fear is because they feel something unnatural or ....supernatural is happening. Why? Because they are having an experience that their mind and previous experience has told them should not be possible! It's like seeing a ghost!

This would be my argument that stereo's today, have the potential to mimic reality and it seems reasonable to think, things will only get better in the next ten years!

It is quite rare when all the contingencies are perfect (i won't list how many there can be...(alot!)(nor do i think we know what they all are) that i hear reproduced music sound like live but i have to say that i have had/have that rare experience on the terms stated in all my above posts.

"Recorded music sounds like live music for me in my system"

Does it for 95 percent of my playback? No...less than that and on a few recordings/formats. Sometimes within one track, the voice is perfect but not the piano, etc.

Mapman says... The solution: keep tweaking until you get it right......

Amen.

On some days...i really get into it! I will spend an afternoon just tinkering with repeated tiny 20 degree turns of both my allaerts cart mounting bolts, recuing and relistening to the same song , listening , over and over and over, to see if this is the best this cart can sound. Then i will go to vtf and then back again to the mounting bolts! It is incredible how narrow the ideal and optimal setting for this cartridge is and though i don't know if i have nailed its optimal range yet i have seen how "resonant" signatures can effect how my cart sounds.

I like your part about tweaking the cartridge and about how subtle changes in tightening the mounting bolts affects the sound.

That implies to me how much you can veer one way or the other from accuracy with just a few twists of the wrist.
How will you know you when have it perfect?

You won't.

You weren't there to hear the sound of Bob's harmonica to know what it sounded like before the recording started.

Then again let's talk about the harmonica's you both own.
Even if they are the identical brand, and age of manufacture, they won't have been played the same so the rate of reed and metal fatigue will differ.You will both blow it differently.
Also is your living room where you listen to music identical to the recording studio?

Not likely, so your room will introduce colourations different from the recording studio.

How can you make statements like you make and say that your system makes Bob Dylan's harmonica sound just as real as when you play your harmonica?

I'll bet even if you used the same recording gear as Dylan used the two would sound different.

And this is the gist of the debate.

On a superior system YOU should be able to hear the differences.
To not hear the differences means the system isn't capable of the levle of resolution and realism need to distinguish between so many disparities.

This isn't meant to say your system sucks,it's just that this is the misguided thinking of most audiophiles.Because they like their systems and it sounds to them like the real thing,never having heard the real thing in real time in a real space identical to their own.

It's the concept some of us are trying to convey in this thread that some folks find hard to grasp or just don't want to believe.

Yes we would all like to think that we have assembled the most realistic system, and pat ourselves on the back and say "we're here, it's finished", alas, some of us know we are still very far away, and I don't think I'll live to see or hear the day when music or video is really duplicated in the confines of my personal space.

To put things into perspective,years ago I was quite pleased with my tv, and my stereo.All class A rated, top shelf.
I thought you couldn't get any better than this.
If everyone felt the same way as I did, then we would still be using all the same technology and systems today,
(some folks do).

Time passes and things did get much better.

As a play around guitar player with a variety of them I would say that on my $7,000 system optimized for guitars and stringed instruments it never has fooled me into sounding like it is the real thing(acoustics in real time and space). However the real thing is very elusive, never sounds the 100% the same twice maybe 95-98??, maybe 99 sometimes if your a pro. But I do find that I can almost recreate the real thing in my head with my system if all the stars are lined up. I can do it with digital and with analog. I think vertigo has conveyed himself very well, it is nice to discuss a topic like this because we hope that things will continue to improve and to know where to look when they do. It will be a better day in music reproduction when we can sit in our listening rooms and hear almost the real thing. Well played non amplified music is glorious. But I have a hard time seeing in the near future either format being real close to the real thing. I am still hoping though.

"I am still hoping though.”

Me too Marqmike. After all, do we really have to recreate the entire output of a symphony orchestra in all its grandeur and subtlety? Or just, what I suspect, is the more achievable objective of reproducing what the human ear can detect.

Hi Vertigo - I have been away from the computer for a few days. I do apologize for the pity comment. That was indeed going much too far.

I have been thinking about this subject while away from the forum the last couple of days, and I did come up with one example where there would not be a significant difference between live and recorded music, and this would be purely electronic, or synthesized music. However, some would say that this example does not even count, because in this case, there technically is no real live "performance," you are hearing a recording - even in a recital hall the piece is played over the sound system, not "performed". There was in fact a thread here in which this was discussed a couple of years ago, I think, though there the question was whether or not such an event constituted a performance.

However, in every other case I could possibly think of, there is a very significant difference between the sound of a live and recorded performance. Electric guitars, for example, have an acoustic element to them. There are a great many very subtle aspects of timbre in particular that are not picked up by a recording, no matter how well it is done and how good the system is that is playing it back. Or as Frogman has mentioned in another thread, there is an energy associated with time and rhythm that is not only physically felt but also perceived by the ear (or perhaps more accurately, the brain) that does not quite translate fully to a recording.

Quite honestly, I have never known a single individual who could not tell the difference between a live performance and a recording, even just a single human speaking voice, again even assuming your suggested experiment where you are in the same room and the exact same distance from the speakers as you are from the performer. I'm not talking about hearing a distant television set, say in another far off room, and not being able to tell if that is real or not. I have absolutely no doubt that you and anyone else could do your experiment with a person's voice which you had never heard before, and you would very easily, in fact instantly, be able to tell the difference blindfolded or however else you wanted to make the test.