When is digital going to get the soul of music?

"I guess I object to dismissing digital as something that will never ever sound good on "trumped up technical" grounds as without merit - that is all."

Agreed.

Also agree regarding the digital aspect of how the ear works, though I had not thought of that in the context of this particular debate before. Good point.

There is a wonderful IMAX film out in IMAX theatures on how the human body works that does a wonderful job of demonstrating this exact point regarding how we hear.

I cannot quote any statistics or measurements offhand to to support this, but it is also usually the case though that mans practical attempts still at this point in time to match the capabilities of organisms in nature in regards to how they register and process things in a binary manner cannot compare in regards to level of sophistication. Maybe some day.... or maybe never.

Shadorne,
Interesting point you make about the masking effects in our hearing. I will only worry me, I suppose, when the masking effects our rigs have vis a vis the real thing will be no more. Doubt though, that this will ever happen.

Great discussion by the way. Am learning a lot.

My ribbon speaker cable is .003" thick. What travels through them has to be very very small. The powerful deep bass licks make that hard to visualize. I have read the music signal travels near the speed of light and is comprised of properties pertaining to both wave and particle.

Now, the 1,s and 0,s can be moved about, or preserved accurately enough by engineers. It is when they start fooling with the signal that ruins things. At least that has been my experience listening to my system.

We can agree the signal is not a neat sine wave, or square wave. We have seen our best, poor as that being, measure of what a music wave may look like. I think that look is a far cry from the true three dimensional complexity music waves are really comprised of.

I just wonder how on earth engineers think they can cull distortion from the body of the speed of light music without affecting the subtleties of the music itself? How is distortion plied away from that complex bundle of pulses without disrupting it's flow? Quantum Physics says no way. My system proves it.

Producing music by interpolation of 1's and 0's is not a perfect thing. Winding a diamond stylus mechanically along a soft groove is not a perfect system either. I don't care how limber the cartridge is, a high magnification should prove the marriage is microscopically a clumsy and dirty affair. Despite deficiencies, both really can be immensely pleasing to the ear.

It has been said time and time again, industry does not care about our angels on a pinhead discussion. We audiophiles are too tiny a minority for them to do the things that try to satisfy our cravings. No matter. The deeper I peer into 16 bit, the more amazed I am just what subtleties those bits encompass.

"Producing music by interpolation of 1's and 0's is not a perfect thing. Winding a diamond stylus mechanically along a soft groove is not a perfect system either."

That is for sure and a big part of why the two sound inherently different.

By the way, I'm fine with CD format but am not a fan of CGI generated effects in movies for the most part. I prefer Dynavision.

It's very strange that audio is so difficult to reproduce in digital. We are able to make beautiful real like HDTV but not the perfect audio. I suspect that in the future audio DACs will become so complicated (sound processors) only designers will be able to understand principles of operation. Maybe it is time to stop asking. Computer users stopped asking questions long time ago.