The digital sound and the analog sound are different, period. I believe that more of the music gets into a digital recording, but many people prefer the analog sound despite its limitations. It costs more in terms of equipment to get the peak analog sound than to get the peak digital sound, but on this forum price is no object. A point to be made here is that not all vinyl records give you the peak analog sound, which is a matter of art and craft. Analog partisans will keep on acting as though their preference is an absolute, and nothing is going to stop them. I believe there is something to prefer there, and that their preference is genuine. The best digital sound is still digital sound, with digital characteristics. A caveat here is that while I personally have a system that’s good enough to hear the qualities of a good analog record, I don’t think I have the type of equipment that gets peak analog performance out of LPs.
Its not vinyl
I have read 100’s of discussions on the subject of building a streaming digital option for audiophile systems. Everything from the internet connection to the streaming source and then the dac. In my reading through the posts the argument will quickly turn to its not analog, vinyl is better, on the anti streaming side and then on the pro streaming side posters will fed the argument with its almost as good as my phono stage, sounds better than analog. This will even hold true within the dac manufactures and dac owners who will refer to their dac sound as analog sounding or just like phono. I think this is most referenced in the R2R dac category. I started a discussion on the new Gustard R26 which is a discrete R2R ladder dac. Right away I was confronted with “why do you want to spend the money to replace your phono analog end that you already have and sounds great”? I Replied with the usual “phono does sound better, even a $30,000 dac will never beat analog and all the other analog vs digital talking points”. Then it hit me that we have been arguing this wrong all this time. The argument should be that the quest in putting together a top notch streaming digital setup is not a quest to beat analog or beat phono. The quest and objective is to achieve a “ less digital sound”. We all know that sharp, bright razor blades in my bleeding ears sterile digital sound, that will bring in-listener fatigue and quickly want you turning off the music. What I am reiterating here is that the quest the cost and the journey in digital is not to beat analog it is to beat “digital”.
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I don’t agree at all with the phono over digital at all , isa longasyiu have Qualitydigital cables , and for example a Denafrips Terminator + $6500 8would put easily against any $15 phono setup , with digital you need a quality hub like theSynergistic which retails for $2k Good digital setup around $12k with dac mentioned above . My brother has both analog and digital ,ge even admits digital far better S/ N, much quieter backgrounds , better Bass for sure ,better Dynamic range ,for me the massive limitations in music choices, no hassles with cleaning ,and on demand music library, isoldall my albums don’t mess them at all !! |
Very few have experienced both best of best digital and analog in a single system, @mikelavigne being one of few. His experience and preferences speak for themselves. And then take most of the rest, varying preferences speak loudly, that should tell you both can be entirely satisfying.
I for one don't dwell on the differences, I only care about how the music engages me, both do that, although my digital presently superior transparency/resolution. |
@sgreg1 Interesting twist on a common theme
@jond Well said. By definition, they will be different. I don't understand the conflict. I've got $1K invested in my digital front end vs. $14K in analogue. I'm really happy with both and listen to both equally for different reasons. Sometimes they sound scarily close (as in justifying a $13K delta). Regardless of the variances in recording/pressing qualities (which are significant), I truly believe that a pure analogue (sine wave) signal resonates more deeply in our human psyche. The bottom line is that digital can very accurately and cleanly replicate the sound of a human voice or a guitar or a drum, but the natural sine wave is converted to a square wave and back to a sine wave to send to your speakers and something is lost (or added) in translation. I guess that's why folks spend $20K on a DAC? There are some really interesting reason why this is important to us. (Check out a book called "This is Your Brain On Music") The first time I noticed this was way before I started my "audiophile" journey. In the early days of digital, ZZ Top digitized Tres Hombres for CD. If anyone has this on original vinyl, listen to the drums on La Grange, then stream it or play the CD. The drums sound weird. Conversely, I believe Dire Straits recorded the first DDD CD, Brothers In Arms, and it sounded amazing back in the day.
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