When is digital going to get the soul of music?

Kijanki, if you are speaking of new recordings, just about all are digitally recorded in the first place. Almost no one does analog recording anymore - digital is so much cheaper, is far easier to edit, and can be done with much less equipment. However, if you are speaking of re-releases, as I think you were, many "audiophile" re-releases of older recordings made in analog are remastered from the original analog tapes, though there are of course digital ones as well.

Many of those who say that digital surpasses analog in sound quality are those who are listening only superficially, and are too caught up in surface noise (and yes, I include many people that call themselves audiophiles in that group). Those of us who truly listen to music with well-trained ears know better. Digital simply does not have the sheer dynamic range of analog, nor does it recreate the sense of the original recording space nearly as much, in terms of soundstaging, imaging, air, bloom, etc. Also, again because of the different type of distortion and the frequency at which this distortion occurs, it does not resolve instrumental or vocal timbres nearly as well - they don't have the body and breadth and complexity they do in analog. All of these things add up - digital simply does not sound as alive and real as analog does, and so it cannot catch the soul of music in the same way, as the original poster put it.

Is digital reproduction improving as resolution gets better? Yes. Is it more convenient? Yes. I am not arguing that it is "done wrong," as someone suggested. And I am not arguing that it is obviously the way of the future. But that doesn't mean that it is therefore better. It means that it is cheaper, more convenient, and sounds "good enough" for most. Audiophiles are an extremely small percentage of the market, lest anyone forget. Because of the inherent types of distortion, no matter how good it gets in the future, digitally reproduced sound will never rival a good, properly set-up analog rig (I do not argue that it certainly rivals bad or improperly set up rigs). This is easily heard by direct comparison of the same recording on the same system, and you would find very few professional musicians who disagree. Not one person I have ever done this type of demonstration for, professional or otherwise, has ever preferred the digital recording to the analog. It is not a question of having an open mind, Mapman, it is a question of having open ears. Those of us who have open ears are the ones keeping analog alive.

Learsfool - I was just responding to your statement that digital will never rival analog. Music is recorded in digital (recently in DDS) not for convenience but for the sound. Analog is delivered from digital tapes and since extra element in the chain cannot improve sound in fact destroys purity of the original digital information. Studio quality equipment will be available at home in 5 or 10 years but analog will never improve - nobody will design newer standard of the LP - not enough customers. I don't know how you define dynamic range but LP does not even come close to 24 bit digital recording with it's poor S/N.

Again you have to realize that analog reproduction (LP) in not an improvement of the digital master tape it was derived from. As I said analog already lost to digital and it will loose even more when Wide 4 channel DDS will be in every home. In my opinion CDs will eventually disappear replaced by 24bit/192kHz (or better) downloads. You might be even able one day to dial-in sound simulation of the LP player (adding rumble, crosstalk, hiss, bloom, wooly bass, pops, and coloration).

Kijanki, I've heard many times audiophiles/phonophiles proclaiming that LP has superior dynamics compared to CD. What is the absolute dynamic range of CD? 90dB? LP's have dynamic range of about 50dB (or less). But I think what those audiophiles who claim that LP has better dynamics than CD really mean is that LP has subjectively better dynamic contrasts than CD, especially in the critical midrange. Probably it has to do with the rise time of cartridges, which is "faster" than that of CD. Of course this is just speculation from a non-techie. What do you think?

Chris

Chris - you are probably right. It is impression and not absolute numbers. My Benchmark DAC plays bit games increasing resolution to 24-bit and noise floor to -140dB. Impressions can often be misleading. Sound with small amount of harmonic distortion is "lively" and "dynamic" while absolutely pure sound is clinical and sterile. Having very little exposure to high quality audio I look at it from the practical perspective. Digital Master tape feeding DAC driving my amp has to sound better than the same digital tape feeding DAC that drives micro lathe machine to create LP master then pressing LP then pickup/tonearm, RIAA preamp then my amp. Original master tape has to sound purest because is original and LP is derived from it with a loss of quality. Therefore argument that digital will never rival analog is hard to understand. Not liking CD media with its 44kHz carrier limitation is another story.

Herbert von Karajan said once that digital recording surpasses everything we know so far.

Kijanki, your last couple of posts are simply inaccurate. Analog was not made from some digital master tape, except in the last 20 years or so, and as I said before, some of it is still not. Digital recording technology did not even exist before the very late 70's, and I don't think it was commercially available until 79, though I don't know the exact date. And again, the amount of distortion, in either medium, is not small. And in the digital medium, it occurs at much more musically objectionable frequencies, which cannot be helped, no matter how much better the medium gets. I am not talking numbers here, I am talking in terms of the audible difference to the human auditory system, which is much more sophisticated than any machine yet invented. In respect to it's resolution of harmonic overtones produced by the voice and other acoustic instruments in particular, analog is much closer to the sound of these instruments. Which is why von Karajan later retracted that statement, which was made in the early days of digital when it was hoped that this harmonic distortion problem could be solved. When so-called sound engineers try to "prove" otherwise, you can be sure they are crunching numbers instead of using their ears. Those are the same engineers that maintain that there is no audible difference between two pieces of equipment with the exact same specs. Most audiophiles actually use their ears, and know otherwise. This is getting us into the classic subjectivist vs. objectivist debate. I repeat - no one I know who has ever heard the same recording on the same system has ever preferred the digital to the analog. There are many fine recordings one can use to test this - my brother's favorite is the Reiner/Chicago Symphony recording of the Bartok Concerto for Orchestra.