Which is more accurate: digital or vinyl?

Two things to clarify.

New strings or a new harp are not mandatory when recording.
Certain things develope a "sound" when they've been played awhile(like components-that's another days argument).

But it's an individual thing,does Clapton buy a brand new fresh from the factory guitar everytime he records?
Does a jazz bassist buy new strings everytime he records?
Not if he is looking for that "mellow" or familiar tone sound.

I play in a band with a blues harp player.He has several harps, and plays in several scales, and he has several blowing techniques.
Not once have I ever thought that his harp(even a cheap Marine band) sounded anything remotely like Dylans.

We can recognize a harmonica for what it is, and we can recognize the sound and differentiate one instrument from another,,most of our systems are quite good at this.

But there are so many subtleties involved in reproducing music that are missing when we sit down to listen.

My point is that we shouldn't be dillusional and think that we have arrived at the greatest level of resolution.
Because if we did arrive there then all the differences between your playing of a harmonica and Dylan,would be more than obvious, no matter where either of you fall on a scale of great harp players.

Playing exactly the same notes in the same fashion and even thru the same tape recorder in the same studio,you should still be different, and a great sound system should be able to reveal the difference.If you both sound the same, then something is wrong in the chain.

This is one of the problems I have with a recording system that eventhough it sounds great, it substitutes bits of the music with repeated bits of what it thinks is good enough to fill in the spaces.
Upsampling is great, I've heard some ripped cds that sound better than the original cd did.The system was reveling enough to show the difference.

Yet digital recording puts a ceiling on the high frequencies and in so doing a great deal of musical information is MIA.

Analog rolls off the lower freqencies so that bass notes won't jolt the tone arm off the record,and it too relies on RIAA standards.

Neither system is without it's flaws,all systems are flawed, and nothing today sounds like the real thing.

There is too much missing information and a lot of important musical overtones and harmonics ,present in real life, are not in any recording that was designed to limit what it is recording.

Here's about the simplest example I can give.

Have someone stand in front of you when you blow your harmonica(Or horn or any live instrument)and ask them if they feel the air striking their face.The sonic impact, the pressure, the visceral whole body experience.

Then play a similar recording of Dylan and ask them if they physically feel any of the above.

The differences between live and recorded are still vast.
However improvemnts have made the listening to reproduced music much more enjoyable that it used to be, and some exotic systems can fool some folks into thinking that the musicians were right in the room.If they only ivolve a few of their senses. As stated the impact of a symphony at full blast, exactly recreated in a listening room isn't going to happen is it?
Then why say that it did?

Especially thru small mini monitors.

Well I would partly agree that the listener felt a sense of the recorded venue and a sense of the dynamics of the event, but it is so far removed from the event as to render such statements as misleading at the least, and more as wishful thinking at best.
The musicians ,or I should say, a part of them was in the room.
The parts that todays technology is limited to reproducing.

RE***Vertigo wrote: "a harmonica is an instrument that pushes very little air and since it pushes very little air, how it interfaces with the room is probably negligable."

This is incorrect. As any musician will tell you, every room has a very significant effect on your tone, no matter what the instrument.****

OK, I stand corrected. The harmonica pushes a ton of air so much so it excites the room to such a degree that its TIMBRES will become unrecognizable/totally different from room to room!

RE***One thing that needs to be added here, assuming that you are playing the harmonica, is that the sound you hear will be quite a bit different from the sound anyone else in the same room is hearing, for the simple reason that you, as the player of the harmonica, are also hearing the sound INSIDE your head. Again, this is by no means insignificant.****

Absolutely, they are not even going to be close! Totally absolutely different! I provided a poor argument and example! To some the harmonica might sound like a trumpet!

Sorry, The marine band harmonica i play and the marine band harmonica my friend plays from 5 feet away in regards to its inherent TIMBRE are identical.

RE***But it's an individual thing,does Clapton buy a brand new fresh from the factory guitar everytime he records?***

I have no idea what this statement has to do with musicians who generally not wanting to use tired, oxidized strings when they go into a recording studio have them changed or what it has to do with my original point in this regard? You are setting up a straw man argument... unintentionally or on purpose i don't know?

RE***I play in a band with a blues harp player.He has several harps, and plays in several scales, and he has several blowing techniques.
Not once have I ever thought that his harp(even a cheap Marine band) sounded anything remotely like Dylans.***

This is totally irrelevant. Since I did NOT SAY.... My harmonica ...PLAYING... is like dylan's! If the harp player in your band uses hohner marine band harmonica's.... it unequivocally should sound identical to mine of the same brand and dylan's of the same brand in regard to its ...TIMBRE!

Line up a thousand different people and have each of them blow this brand harmonica and a thousand times it's timbre is identical,not once does it change... therefore I DO have a reference for judging the timbre of bob's harmonica emanating from my speakers. You can try and escape that all you want but its not going to happen. (smile)

In order to have meaningful dialog you guys will need to understand the distinction between playing STYLES and the timbre of a hohner marine band harmonica.

The second distinction is that whether a honer marine band harmonica is played by myself or by someone 5 feet away...playing ...TO me...does not change an instruments TIMBRE, either.

Therefore, in this regard i again put forward that a hohner marine band harmonica of which, bob dylan on many occasion's prefers to use and my and my friend's marine band harmonica, standing 5 feet away and the sound emanating from my speakers has inherently the same sonic envelope , ie , Timbre, with slight allowances (which i have already CLEARLY granted)... for direction, distance,micing, room (if any at all). None of the latter allowances can change the hohner marine band harmonica's inherent timbre.

RE***Have someone stand in front of you when you blow your harmonica(Or horn or any live instrument)and ask them if they feel the air striking their face.The sonic impact, the pressure, the visceral whole body experience.

Then play a similar recording of Dylan and ask them if they physically feel any of the above.

The differences between live and recorded are still vast.***

Not in my world. My shirt never flutters from an instrument playing in front of me unless its a big drum or something. I have heard speakers that are lean and light and therefore lack "weight" but a speaker and system that produces believable weight is one of many important , contributing factors that cast the spell of the sense of hearing a live instrument. My harmonica reproduction has that real life weight.

If they only involve a few of their senses. As stated the impact of a symphony at full blast, exactly recreated in a listening room isn't going to happen is it?
Then why say that it did?

Especially through small mini monitors!!!!

Hi Vertigo - I'm sorry, but you are again misrepresenting my argument. When you say "In order to have meaningful dialog you guys will need to understand the distinction between playing STYLES and the timbre of a hohner marine band harmonica", along with some of your other examples, I can only conclude that you are talking (and listening) in a much more general way than I and Lacee. I have been speaking of timbre throughout this whole discussion - I am certainly not confusing it with musical style! Yes, the same harmonica will be recognizable as a harmonica, no matter who is playing it, of course, in a general sense. What I have been trying to get through to you about timbre is much more specific than that.

Say 10 professional musicians who are very proficient pick up the exact same harmonica and play the same simple folk tune on it (no question of different styles coming into it) - you should be able to identify basic differences in each of their individual timbres that they produce on that same harmonica, even playing exactly the same thing. I do not of course suggest that you should be able to then identify each separate person again in separate hearing, this type of what some might call "critical" listening needs much training, but you should be able to tell the basic difference when a different person picks up that same harmonica.

To give another example - if I play the exact same thing on ten different horns, you should still be able to tell that it is me playing all ten of them, even if I chose the ten most different sounding models I could. My personal timbre (again, this is a separate thing from style) will come through, no matter which instrument I am playing on, despite the difference in the timbres of each individual horn.

Perhaps you feel that these differences are insignificant. If so, all I can say is that most serious listeners/music lovers/audiophiles would not agree. Certainly no musician would.

Vertigo, I used the harmonica only because that seems to be what you are most familiar with.

I also said that you could substitute a trumpet for example.

This makes more sense,have someone blow a trumpet in your room, full tilt.

Did you cover your ears?
I am saying you would, the sound of the trumpet all on it's lonesome will blow you out of the room.

Now play any trumpet recordings you have, Miles, Mangione, Terry,does the recording overload the room?

Not like the sound of the real thing is it?
You can get loud and distorted and use a couple thousand watts, you can get the volume levels loud enough, but,does it sound anything like the real thing?

I know it won't, just like I know that the sound of the harp player in my band can alter the sound of his Marine band harp just by using different types of microphones, and if he runs it thru the PA or thru amp and then into the PA, like everything ,the more you mess with something the less "real" it is, and the further away from what the real thing is.He can make his Marine band sound completely different.It's just a marine band,like yours and Dylans, but you would not recognize it as such.

Recordings are not real.
Dylan's harp doesn't sound like your marine band.
Neither does John Mayals( I saw him live in concert last nite).

It has been altered in the recording process ,so it sounds the way the engineer wants it to sound, and how your equipment and room want it to sound.Dylans harp was mastered and mixed probably on big old studio JBL, or Altecs or whatever the engineer had.
You would have to have the exact same playback chain as the engineer to even have any clue of the sound of Dylan's harp at the time of the recording.
Which is saying that the sound of his recorded harp was as real as the best recording gear of the day could achieve and how the engineer felt it should sound,when listened to thru his refernce monitors.
So how can you say that your harp sounds exactly the same as Dylan's?
Nothing is the same anywhere in the chain.

You are only hearing a partial reproduction of the real sound.Sorry there is no absolute sound.
At least not in the context of listening to recordings.

A four inch cone can only move so much air , yet a Roger's LS3/5a can sound pretty good even when asked to play back a large symphony.
But the scale is ,obviously, nothing like the real thing.
Yet many people are quite pleased with the reproduced sound that the Rogers is capable of even on this demanding music.

Speakers compress the information, the impact, but they do enough things right to please us even with all their limitations.
The speakers have been and continue to be the weakest link, the biggest road block to recreating the real live performance in the room.

Strings--,ok, go find a jazz bassist, who plays an upright and ask him if he changes his strings when he does any recordings.

Strings especially bass strings all loose some of their life at different stages.They don't all go flat or dead the same.New bass strings usually are a bit on the brite and jangly side, but some electric players like this type of Guitar type snap and clarity.

So when the strings break in and they are all playing together , one not any brighter or less brite than the other, then things are fine, no need to change for a recording.Changing strings for a recording is a personal thing.Some would, some wouldn't.

I've seen some groups where the electric guitar player has several different guitars ,each voiced for a specific tone he is trying to get.
The very adept guitarist, Rocky from Mayall's band used one Gibson Les Paul, and got all the tone anyone would ever desire,using it's tone controls, foot pedals and his own technique to great effect.

Put Rocky or Clapton in your listening room and have them play some riffs that have also been recorded, and it should be obvious that the difference is nite and day.

Or put Jay Davenport in your room and let him pound out a beat,there again the difference between a real set of drums and the reproduced sound of the drums would be huge.

The point of all this is that the more complex the music the harder it is to accurately reproduce.Quite simple, but the same can be said for simple things like harmonicas and even acoustic guitar.

The differences are there none the less,a microphone, electronic recording gear and playback gear can only reproduce a fraction of the live sound.

There is a lot missing,stuff that can't be measured, and it's not just volume.

With enough watts and large speakers I'll bet I could flap your trousers with a recording of Bob's harmonica.
But is that real?

One last kick at the can.

I'll bring out old Humpty Dumpty and try to use him to better convey my thoughts about this topic.

Well after he gave his best rendition of Blowin in the Wind, he toppled off the wall and fell into a bunch of pieces.

The techies of the day patched him back up as best they could,and to most folks, yes he looks as good as new.You recognize him as Humpty Dumpty.
Until you take a closer look and see that, he is no longer a whole entity, but is now a patchwork of his former self.

Now I would like to address another issue, and bring up quality control.

Are todays Marine Band harmonics the same, better or worse than the one Mr Zimmerman was using back in the day?
A lot of folks would say that most modern gear isn't.
Pre CBS has a lot of cache when it comes to guitars and amps.
Also,how close to spec does one Marine band measure to the next?
I'll bet that no two are alike,and that the way that they are played and how often will also affect the sound, including the timbre.So no two harps will sound the same even if they did sound the same when manufactured.Different blowing habits and extended use will alter the sound or timbre if you must.
I've known guys who can blow the reeds out of their harps.
And some prefer the build of spittle sound to one's that are cleaned.

Each muscian knows the sound he is going after,that some musicians don't bother with highend audio,is because they know it just doesn't sound as real as when they are playing.Which is a shame.

I remember seeing Buddy Rich abruptly halt a performance of Norwegian Wood because he didn't like the sound of a particular cymbal, and threw it to the ground and stomped on it.
This was down the road from the Zildgian plant so I think there was just a bit of showmanship antics involved.
Yet a visit to the same plant by my drummer back then(quite the treat and not open to everyone)disclosed the fact that there are different quality levels of Zildgian cymbals and that the ones that end up at your local music store are not the cream of the crop,which is not to say they are no good, they just are not the same quality as the ones that the "name" A list players have at their disposal.

The good players fortunate enough to buy direct and cherry pick their cymbals can hear the difference.
Most in a live audience would just be able to distinguish that yes indeed he hit the crash and it sounds different than the ride.
At home on their rigs ,maybe they might be able to tell the difference,but could they tell the difference between an A cymbal and one bought at a store that is not grade A?

I seriously doubt they could even at a live event.
They would recognize the timbre of the cymbal but not be able to differentaite much beyond that.

Even less chance of distinguishing a quality cymbal from a cheap one thru most hifi systems, and I would go further and have to say,all systems.

Once Humpty has been broken up, no amount of repair can ever re-create the original.