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Does Digital Try Too Hard?

Digital glare. A plague of digital sound playback systems. It seems the best comment a CD player or digital source can get is to sound “analog-like.” I’ve gone to great lengths to battle this in my CD-based 2-channel system but it’s never ending. My father, upon hearing my system for the first time (and at loud volumes), said this: “The treble isn’t offensive to my ears.” What a great compliment.

So what does digital do wrong? The tech specs tell us it’s far superior to vinyl or reel to reel. Does it try too hard? Where digital is trying to capture the micro details of complex passages, analog just “rounds it off” and says “good enough,” and it sounds good enough. Or does digital have some other issue in the chain - noise in the DAC chip, high frequency harmonics, or issues with the anti-aliasing filter? Does it have to do with the power supply?

There are studies that show people prefer the sound of vinyl, even if only by a small margin. That doesn’t quite add up when we consider digital’s dominant technical specifications. On paper, digital should win.

So what’s really going on here? Why doesn’t digital knock the socks off vinyl and why does there appear to be some issue with “digital glare” in digital systems.
128x128mkgus
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tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,532 posts
 
No, digital doesn’t try too hard. It has distortions which are new to audio playback. In the early days the designers didn’t even know about jitter. I remember the cover announcement on Stereophile when jitter was finally determined to be a problem. These distortions and their sources will be discovered and eliminated.

We’ve come a long way since early digital and I only see digital getting better. Some people think describing digital as analog like is the highest compliment they can give it. Those people are usually vinyl fans. I don’t have a problem with that. If anyone prefers vinyl to digital, that’s fine with me, and I want them to enjoy vinyl as much as they can.

Vinyl has its own distortions, though, and in the not too distant future I think that digital will reach a point where it is generally considered the best sounding format, IMHO.  
geoffkait's avatar
geoffkait
23,365 posts
 
Digital can’t get out of its own way. It might be difficult to set up an experiment but if it can be done a direct comparison of a very good vinyl system to a very good CD system should reveal a few things about digital. To whit, digital exhibits:

1. loss of bass information and dynamics
2. unnatural midrange and high frequencies
3. unnaturalness of soundstage 
4. two-dimensional sound
5. congealing of the sound across the board
6. Lack of sweetness and air 
edcyn
1,876 posts
 
Maybe it's just because my ears are getting old, but to me digital glare is essentially gone.  I currently get just as much glare (and other nasties) on vinyl. In other words, as far as I can see/hear, all the glare is already there at the source.
erik_squires
15,640 posts
 
Digital glare. A plague of digital sound playback systems.

Great thread starter. Or it would have been in 1980.  :-D 
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