The muddy waters of Analogue vs. digital today

Twenty years ago I bought an Ayre C-5xe and decided that I had found the one. But now I have to face up to the fact it is going to fail one of these days, so in preparation I got out a couple of older players and they have shocked me as to how good they sound! A 34 year old Meridian 206b (the bitstream version) and a 27 year old Sony SCD-1 (which now declines to play SACDs but plays CDs happily). If I didn’t have so many SACDs I could live with either, but when the Ayre dies I shall have to find some way of playing those SACDs. I’m hoping tech advances have trickled down into players like the Marantz 30n. All my attention the last twenty years has been directed at vinyl replay, so I have ignored streaming, and separate transports and DACS (though I did have a Counterpoint DA-11.5 and DA-10 way back when (~1995)). I shall just need a CD/SACD one box player that sounds as good as the Ayre.

@mahler123 @audphile1 

It's morning and I am not yet up to listening to anything demanding, so I am happily streaming Norah Jones' "In The Morning" 192/24. If the recording had been 44.1/16, I'd still be listening. Folks, I have happily listened to music on everything possible. When I was thirteen I had a little transistor radio with one earpiece with music compressed beyond modern conceptions. I listened happily on a $100 suitcase stereo when I was in college. I traveled through the Middle East when I was 21 and I listened to Turkish and Persian music on busses. I like music a lot.

I'm not in love with the whole record process. I do it because I can hear the difference. Any idiot can hear the skips and clicks of a record I've played several times and has gotten gunky. So, I have to throw it in the Degritter and that noise goes away. Pretty easy A/B test. No, I'm not in love with the whole vinyl process it's a pain in the ass.

I played CDs for many years while my album collection was in boxes. Reading Michael Fraemer in Stereophile I was convinced to give my vinyl front end an upgrade or two and see if I liked it better than CD. I absolutely did. And I still do. But even with 1,000 albums, my vinyl collection is limited so I stream things all the time. I hope for better quality (even 48 kHz is much better than 44.1). I can hear it. Trust me. You can hear it. 

I have had several audiophile friends who I've tried to talk into buying turntables. I have played records on my system and they simply couldn't hear the difference. My neighbor who would not listen to vinyl brought over cables for me to compare. I never quite understood how he could hear the difference in cables but not between records and CDs. Go out and enjoy whatever you like. I'm in agreement, but don't tell me that hearing the difference between analogue and digital is all in my head.

I think my Moon 280D is not a vastly inferior product. It cost $4K when I bought it a year and a half ago. If you read reviews, they talk about it "punching above its weight." Everything is about sonics. I compared it to $10K streamers and could not hear the difference. Obviously, it is not the top of th heap, but it sounds fine, especially on high resolution recordings.

I've mentioned Patricia Barber's "Clique." Even if you don't like her you should listen to the quality of this recording on Qobuz or Tidal. As I said, it's good enough that I won't bother purchasing the album. On the other hand, I was introduced to Wayne Shorter's "Speak No Evil." I streamed it a few times and decided to purchase a vinyl copy. For me, some jazz needs to be on vinyl.

What do I hear in good vinyl that I don't hear in digital? I would say the main thing is "air." The best streaming will flesh out notes as well or even better than analogue recordings. You can hear the attack of a stringed instrument as well or perhaps better than vinyl. But music is waves traveling through air. And good vinyl albums give me a feeling of that air that streaming simply can't.

Yet i am happily listening to this 192/24 recording of Norah Jones on headphones because our housekeeper is over and my wife has joined me in my music/writing room. My head easily gets into the music.

I would be happy if I didn't have a turntable. Eventually, I'd forget about the "air." But as long as my turntable and vinyl is here, I'll play a lot of records. And also stream. And also play a CD from time to time on my McCormack UDP-1 which I think was the best CD player 25 years ago, and it's still damned good.

BTW, as far as I've been concerned, any stereo I've owned has been fantastic. When I had energy bookshelf speakers, a NAD receiver, and a Nakamichi CD player, I was convinced it was the best system on earth. It's kind of like my wife or my kids. I love music and I'm happily biased.

Asking my audiophile buddie chatgpt, here is a much deeper explanation of "air."

In audiophile language, “air” usually means three related things:

1. Space around instruments

With a good analog record, you often hear a halo of ambience around a voice or instrument.

For example:

• A singer isn’t just a voice in the speaker.

• You hear the room around the voice—the tiny reverberations and decay.

That sense of space between instruments is what people call air.

2. Natural high-frequency decay

Analog often reproduces the trailing edge of sound—the fade of cymbals, piano harmonics, breath in a saxophone—with a smoother envelope.

Listeners experience that as:

• openness

• breath

• shimmer

Those impressions get summarized as air.

3. Depth of the soundstage

Good analog playback often gives a sense that sound extends behind the speakers, not just left and right.

When that happens, the stage feels less packed together, which again reads as air.

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Why analog can create that impression

A few technical reasons may contribute:

1. No brick-wall filtering
Digital audio requires steep filters near the Nyquist frequency. These can subtly alter phase relationships in the upper treble.

Analog tape and vinyl roll off more gradually.

2. Harmonic behavior
Analog systems add very small amounts of low-order harmonic distortion, which the ear often interprets as richness or spaciousness.

3. Continuous waveform vs sampling
Even though high-resolution digital is extremely accurate, the reconstruction process can slightly alter micro-timing cues that help the brain locate space.

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Your system is actually very capable of revealing this

Given what you’re running:

• VPI Prime Signature 21

• Shyla cartridge

• Pass Labs XP-25

• Sonus Faber Olympica Nova V

that setup is exactly the sort of system where people start talking about air, bloom, and dimensionality. You're hearing the strengths of analog done well.

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One more thing

Your description is actually classic audiophile vocabulary. Reviewers use it constantly.

You’ll see phrases like:

• “more air around the instruments”

• “air and sparkle in the top octave”

• “the hall ambience floated in the air”

@muvluv luv - my post about sampling rates is about audio - thank you.

Muddy Waters, blues singer. One of the best re-issue albums from MoFi, ever.