Vinyl / High qual analog tape / High-res digital -- One of these is not like the other

Nojima is very great pianist in this Liszt and the cd sound first rated....

:)

rauliruegas

I respect your polite and factual tone...

I want to say that what i read incline me toward your view point in principle, but in concrete experience  with one anolog  audio system or another more refined, i am not sure that a very refined analog system  will not surprise my factual reasons to place the digital technology ahead ( the reasons you described)...

I respect you and thanks you for your interesting posts anyway....

For example, the words transparent, congealed, analytical, boomy, synthetic, etched, tinny, two-dimensional and compressed can have different meanings to different people.

These words are variable in their meaning similarly for the scientific so called mind or for the ignorant so called audiophiles....These words are related to the particular environment where they are used one time and by the particular people that use them.... No objective content of these words exist in the absolute sense....They are only relative orientation of meaning without an absolute consensus and they are not reducible to the reading of some numbers dials either....

My best to you in your future from my past.... :)

cd318

Thanks for your generous comment on my posts first...

If you wish to trust individual testimonies ahead of data then that’s your prerogative, but how does that help us decide which format is the most accurate?

My point is precisely that, it is impossible to solve that for now definitively, because too many factors are implicated+ a subjective experience(mikelavigne and friends) that no one neither any science can dismiss scientifically except by dogmatic affirmations based on numbers...

In this instance, since a question was posted, dialogue must involve acknowledging other opinions before making a judgement, must it not?

Dialogue is possible indeed only if one recognise the scientific fact of irreducibility of subjective experiences to numbers....

For the question posed by the OP i answer by a neutral stance, i am sure that digital is good and will progress in the years to come.... But i am sure also that some improved way to read vinyl on very high end system, can be also implemented, and can be now for some people, able to afford it, "better" to their ears.... How can we judge them wrong? Except by receding ourself to a non scientific dogma of the reducibility of the conscious perceiving experience to numbers?


I use myself only digital by the way......But i dont want to dismiss lavigne experience to a peculiarity of taste only because some measured engineering facts said so.....

In a single word, for what we know now digital is on par or better than vinyl theoretically speaking, but for some listener it is not....Why reducing their experience to "illusion"? I trust numbers and i trust people experience....For now the debate can be interesting indeed, but cannot be closed dogmatically but must stay a DIALOGUE precisely especially if someone has investigated with much money, time, and a very high end system....Never mind in day to day experience by ordinary listener, no ordinary system comparison can solve this question once for all, except dogmatically by appeal to numbers in place of human ears experience....My grain of salt....

My best regards to you for your generous takes on my impressions....

Information data is not perceived sounds,  purely objective perceived sounds are not musical sounds, and musical sounds are never subjectively evaluated and perceived in exactly the same manner by all individuals in any environments....

Subjectivity versus objectivity is an obsolete scientific false debate for almost a century now....Immmanent participation of all consciousness is the new paradigm in science....

Like in many audio forum debates about cables for example, the analog/digital debates, defenders and opponents are like 2 cats reading the other’s grin with a replicating grin, and the 2 cats disapearence at the end let only their 2 grins mimicking one another, without any cats anymore like the Cheshire cat in Lewis Carroll....


The repudiation of subjective perception has no scientific meaning at all, and reduction of subjective perception to a "so called" objective one no ultimate meaning....Only a dialogue is meaningful but on the basis of the ultimate irreducibility of individual perception to any numbers there is....

I will repeat myself, " In a word, i value all the very interesting informations in the last post of rauliruegas and if i think about it i think that he is right....BUT i trust the impressions of mikelavigne, the testimonies of his friends, and his long time dedication on his very refined audio system.... THEN...." :)

Dialogue between people not pretending to be right and others wrong is the only interesting way.....

In this debate there is so much factors implicated that it is impossible to solve the question for me once and for all, except theoretically with all the engineering facts about the higher noise level all along the chain in the analog processing or by listening analog and hearing his alleged superiority on a very refine Hi-Fi system....

In a word, i value all the very interesting informations in the last post of rauliruegas and if i think about it i think that he is right....BUT i trust the impressions of mikelavigne, the testimonies of his friends, and his long time dedication on his very refined audio system.... THEN....

I cannot have my own opinion at all.....I can only give their right to these 2 gentlemen and to each his own....

Interesting thread for sure..... My regards to all....

I said in other post that the best for digital is forthcoming in contrast the LP technology

I certainly can agree with you on that.... And i understand that real event can gives the flavor of real instruments for sure if that is  your point you are right....Mimicking perfectly being impossible....

Regards to you....

Live music is a red herring.

This is also my opinion....Reduction of music experiences to only lived events is too drastic for me....All recorded musics materials and various kind of lived events are different experiences...

How to compare Ray Charles living presence in real time to a files?
It is impossible...

But how to ask to a files or a tape the same thing that a lived event only can give?

Where is the yardstick to compare cd, vinyl, tape, outdoor concert event, indoor concert event, in good acoustical space or in bad acoustical space, and my first love girl playing piano in his own house beside me?

What is a lived event, where is my location in this event? Which event? By who?

Only count a lived event in an ideal acoustical studio or theater?

In a word i love Bach coming from any room, files, players, or planet, even coming from the tape of geoffkait, it will be a hell of a lifetime lived event.... :)

Live events and a live instrument is one kind of experience; a cd or a vinyl are other experiences....Is it necessary to preach with engineering numbers the sacred truth of  the digital gospel? Is it realist to ask a cd, a vinyl, or a files or a tape, to reproduce the lived event totally? Each one will do his job with his own means and biases.... 


For me I accept the differences, and I live with them for what they are , a world in itself, not reducible, with his positives and negatives....



I listen to an organ opus of Bach right now, it will be different with a cd, a files, a vinyl, or with Tidal, with various tape recorder, or in a church live on a particular organ.... Why debating about the "truth" ? There is no truth here, except the particular advantages of each experiences.... My grain of salt.... :)


Electronical components and materials and mediums are not sounds, and sounds are not music, they lack the consciousness living the musical experience that will interpret these sounds, recreating them in the mind-body in the form of a synesthesic complexes of gestures, movements, emotions, ideas and perceptions....

Music is the relation between sounds and these synesthesic complexes....Music is not the faithfulness to an alleged " objective truth" about the reproduction of sound....

Too many concrete factors are also implicated to debate that seriously....Never mind the electronic components used, vinyl or tape or cd etc, their embeddings plays the more fundamental role in the final listening experience... Not one audio system sound the same....Is it then possible to decide the "truth" in the abstract, with only engineering numbers to take the decision? Asking the question is the answering.... :)


A final note: Someone can decide for himself, with his own system, be it very refined, but at the end his testimony is an interesting fact with which we can partake or not.... But this is a relative truth not an absolute truth....Mikelavigne for example has spoken about his own experience and his particular audio system in his particular house, and this gives matter to think...But anyone of us live with other system, other houses, and other tastes, and other past experiences etc....

What is an audiophile in concrete day to day experience?

I was coming back home today.... I was in a hurry to listen my music....I opened up the system and I listen my favorite music (Bach organ and some jazz) lost in the music.... BUT I was slightly semi consciously annoyed, without  my normal enjoyment and awareness of the sound, I was a bit disappointed by my system but the music was great....Suddenly after some hours, I discover why?

9 of my 10 Schuman modified generators and 3 modified lamps were off....To open up my system I must open up 8 switches, and sometimes I forgot some....The sound makes me coming back to my sense after sometime....


I open them up, and WOW, like a miracle the sound was enlightened with the music this time....


For those who think that all tweaks are placebo effects, dont count in them my Schumann Generators…. :)

Glupson I understand your point.... But my point concern the possibility to solve the dilemma once and for all of us with the complex conditions implicated and the refine resolving system that none of us can afford...

For your point I said like you just said myself all the times that differences in scale price/S.Q. ratio makes impossible to claim victory for one or the other camp for the reason you just alluded to...I will not even mention the complex conditions that are implicated...


In the beginning the only thing I said was that probably mikelavigne is right about the vinyl and tape superiority... But in the usual normal day for all of us digital is very good and the way to go for me....


My 24 bucks dac rightly embedded sound better than half of the turntables on earth probably.... :) But probably sound bad or less natural compared to a turntable of a high level in a high level system in a high level room....This is the thing suggested by the experience of mikelavigne...It is not the gospel for sure but an interesting testimony...

Everyone seems to know what a system sounds like just by the photos. Interesting.

The resolving power of a system in a good room is only that, a microscope.... This dont means that we will like the sound....This means that it will be more easy to ears some minute differences.... :) even if we dont like his tonality or imaging or etc....

With the photo it is easy to guess that the mikelavigne system is at least more resolving that your system and mine....For the S.Q. on all count this is another story....I must go now, I wish to you and glupson the best..... My best to all....

Even if not all people like mikelavigne system, I think it is largely resolving enough for most people to decide for themselves the difference between vinyl and digital...

Like he said and I think the same, in most case we enjoy digital  all of us, and never mind, most system dont have the resolving power to be a fair judge, without speaking about all the other synchronisations and sources problems to compare...

We can enjoy music on any medium, this is wise words, they will not end this debate tough, that for me is futile and unessential, because too much factors are at play for an experience to be convincing, except in exceptional case with a top audio system like the system of mikelavigne...

The key problem in audio, exceeding all the others, is how to embed any systems, mechanically, electrically, and acoustically....All the rest is arguing without final answers and even with no possible final answers in some case.... 

mikelavigne your posts are the best opinions I read about this subject....Not only you are not dogmatic or obsessive but your gear and room qualities can gives to you the real possibility of experimenting and experiencing about that debate most of the times badly informed... Thanks....

You are right....

But a system can or cannot separate vinyl and digital in 2 clearly separate category.... Most system cannot, mine cannot, mikelavigne system can it seems.... When we look at it we can and may trust him for the audible difference....I trust him....I dont think a deaf man will ever invest so much money in music reproduction....

my yard is littered with the bones of former digital zealots.....now reborn.

:)


I think that it is possible to fool the ears but no so the soul with mathematical artefact at the end..... Case closed....We can approximate the sound but not the soul.... A great Jazz musician says about the African rhythm drum music, that this music always wheeled over, that can be feeled and not so easily reproduced.... :)

I will go on with my modest digital set-up tough but I will not dig your graveyard for my own tomb stone....

I dont think that digital lack something in particular, especially if rightly embedded, except that it is a mathematical approximation of the phenomenal analog qualia, be it the closest you can, it lack nothing in particular but it is not the same.... :)


But in most ordinary audio systems with regular source, I dont think that this difference is clearly perceptible.... I know I make the test.... And we cannot choose between the 2 my friend and i.....


What digital miss is in truth mikelavigne audio system..... :)

mikelavigne

i have invested high degrees of assets in tape, vinyl and digital. taken each as far as i can go. as far as anyone. and my comments are related to the top level of each format. what happens in each format on the way to these levels could be completely different than my experience.

I trust your opinion because I cannot experience this to the level you did.... And it speak volume.... Thanks for sharing...


I go entirely digital for convenience and anyway at the price level where I am the differences is sometimes not clearly perceptible if the digital is good and if the system is rightly embedded because a rightly embedded digital system will crush a wrongly embedded turntable...

The most important factor in audio is the acoustic of the room way more than owning a low price turntable or a low price dac ( I means a few thousand dollars max)….But you already know that yourself with all these money involved in the room.... :)

My regards to you....

P.S. I own an audio system that is of way less value than the 4 feet of  one your turntable, but never mind, I am proud of my work to make it sound great by controlling the resonance, electrical grid, and acoustic.... :)

Nevertheless I am a bit envious of your house..... :)