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

"So if they prefer lps made from corrupt digital discontnous sampled waveforms, that preference must be based upon something completely unrelated to that waveform."

The cutting head stylus cannot magically appear at the extreme displacement in one direction, disappear, and then reappear at the other extreme; it had to physically travel from point A to point B and at every physical point in between. This is why, even fed an analog signal from a digital filter, vinyl has to sound "like analog." The same goes for the playback stylus and the magnets/coils in the cartridge. The same holds true for the motion of speaker cones and your ear drums.

I do not want to convert any vinyl people to cd or ask any digiphobes to listen to digital. I have no problem with anyone listening to vinyl exclusively or part-time. Same goes for digital.

What I would like to assert is that both analog and digital can sound very good and very bad. So can systems assembled to play one or both of the formats. People hear differently and have different tastes. So there are no absolutes. In the real world of our listening rooms, not theory, vinyl doesn’t always sound better than digital and vice versa. It’s a matter of a combination of specific recordings, systems and people.

You know that Stereophile has a feature each year called, "Records to Die For" or R2D4. Each writer contributes two recordings that excel both musically and in sound quality. Now, IMHO, Stereophile leans vinyl in overall tone, but I think many people would be surprised at how many of the recommendations are cds year after year. These are people who make their living listening to music.

So I think that it’s true that both formats can sound very good or very bad and we don’t have to argue about which is better. We should listen to the format(s) we enjoy and let the other guy listen to what he enjoys, without condescension. I have a funny feeling that that won’t happen though.

"In the real world of our listening rooms, not theory, vinyl doesn’t always sound better than digital and vice versa. It’s a matter of a combination of specific recordings, systems and people."


Amen.

Actually you can find an explanation somewhere for whatever you want. Analog is more accurate than digital, digital is more accurate than analog. What have you. But this all overlooks the many serious problems in digital playback systems, not to mention the horrendous dynamic range compression that has been going on for the last twenty years. Maybe things will be different some day. Sigh!