A very good ENGINEERING explanation of why analog can not be as good as digital..

audioengr

There is always a CODEC in the playback software.

If you consider a DAC a codec, I guess that’s true.

@ audioeng ...uh huh, old recorded stuff, huh? I'm glad the recording industry evolved.

"No matter what the resolution and data rate a digital representation of a sound, it will always be an approximation of the original event."

Isn't that true for analog (vinyl in most of the above posts), too? It is an approximation, attempt to reproduce, the original event. No matter what quality of an analog recording it is. Any recording is, essentially, fake. Be it analog or digital. You may prefer the way one is manipulated more than the other, but true representation they are not.

When it comes to "reproducing live concert (unamplified, let's say classical music)", I am yet to hear the equipment/sound-carrier combo that can sound as bland. Any recording seems to sound richer. I suspect that many of us who babble about how the system should sound would quit these debates if we went for concerts more often. Blacker blacks, rounder mids, all that poetry is gone in a concert hall. It may something to do with a venue, but not all of it.

"Isn't that true for analog (vinyl in most of the above posts), too? It is an approximation, attempt to reproduce, the original event. "

The microphone to the recording system, what ever it maybe is an analog device. There are no steps, no divisions, or resolution with analog, but there is with digital. This is what I was pointing at. There is no Nyquist theorem, which based on an approximation. 

A recording will not be able to truly duplicate the original performance. But you can tell the difference between an analog original and a digital original. On the other hand, these days I am not sure you can really call the recording engineers produced in a trade school an engineer. Engineering schools are ABET accredited, are there any trade recording school that can meet the criteria? I don't know of any.