They are evolving at the speed of sound!
Seriously though, I've thought about this, to the point where I sometinmes think about just giving up analog altogether.
My digital front end sounds every bit as good as my analog front end already.
The cost ratio of analog to digital is ridiculous if you stop and think about it, not to mention the convenience factor of digital.
I've spent at least an order of magnitude more on the analog side. I don't feel any need to upgrade my digital gear at this point, but I just bought a new (to me) turntable yesterday because I want to see if I can take things a little further.
When I talk about what I've spent, that's before media, cartridges, etc. I have thousands of dollars in cartridges and often spend more on a single vinyl record than I do on a month's subscription to four streaming services.
Unless there's some dramatic change in the source material itself, I'm not sure how much more digital can improve.
As a photographer, I saw a similar evolution... Digital isn't as good as film. Well, now it's getting pretty close. Now it's as good. Now it's better. Now it's getting incrementally better.
With a visual media, we can zoom in to the pixel level and see the tiny differences between a 16 megapixel image and a 24 megapixel image, but that's now how people normally view photos. From four or five feet away, it's virtually impossible to tell the difference. At some point things like dynamic range and sensitivity (how well you're able to capture what's there) matter more than how many pixels / bits are there.
At some point, it comes down to how much you can actually hear and how well the rest of your system is able to convey the level of detail captured by your source components and how well the recording was made.
At the end of the day for me, it's the emotion of the music, not how pretty something looks or sounds. Certainly, being able to hear the nuances of a singer's voice, or the talent of a musician wringing everything they can out of their instrument adds to that experience. There are those goosebump moments where you hear something you never did before and I can get that with both digital and analog.
I love how vinyl sounds, I love being able to touch and look at physical media and the artwork, and I love the ritual of cleaning and playing records, so for now, vinyl stays.
Maybe you were looking more for thoughts on how far digital technology can go. I think we're very close to the point of diminishing returns as far as digital goes.
Seriously though, I've thought about this, to the point where I sometinmes think about just giving up analog altogether.
My digital front end sounds every bit as good as my analog front end already.
The cost ratio of analog to digital is ridiculous if you stop and think about it, not to mention the convenience factor of digital.
I've spent at least an order of magnitude more on the analog side. I don't feel any need to upgrade my digital gear at this point, but I just bought a new (to me) turntable yesterday because I want to see if I can take things a little further.
When I talk about what I've spent, that's before media, cartridges, etc. I have thousands of dollars in cartridges and often spend more on a single vinyl record than I do on a month's subscription to four streaming services.
Unless there's some dramatic change in the source material itself, I'm not sure how much more digital can improve.
As a photographer, I saw a similar evolution... Digital isn't as good as film. Well, now it's getting pretty close. Now it's as good. Now it's better. Now it's getting incrementally better.
With a visual media, we can zoom in to the pixel level and see the tiny differences between a 16 megapixel image and a 24 megapixel image, but that's now how people normally view photos. From four or five feet away, it's virtually impossible to tell the difference. At some point things like dynamic range and sensitivity (how well you're able to capture what's there) matter more than how many pixels / bits are there.
At some point, it comes down to how much you can actually hear and how well the rest of your system is able to convey the level of detail captured by your source components and how well the recording was made.
At the end of the day for me, it's the emotion of the music, not how pretty something looks or sounds. Certainly, being able to hear the nuances of a singer's voice, or the talent of a musician wringing everything they can out of their instrument adds to that experience. There are those goosebump moments where you hear something you never did before and I can get that with both digital and analog.
I love how vinyl sounds, I love being able to touch and look at physical media and the artwork, and I love the ritual of cleaning and playing records, so for now, vinyl stays.
Maybe you were looking more for thoughts on how far digital technology can go. I think we're very close to the point of diminishing returns as far as digital goes.