Vinyl vs Streaming

ghdprentice (quoting "AI")

If vinyl can reach roughly the top of the audible band under good conditions, then 44.1 kHz digital already covers that, because it can represent frequencies up to a little above 22 kHz under the sampling theorem. 

That’s simply mistaken. First, LP can easily reach well beyond 22 kHz, a trait that some believe gives LP its "air." Meanwhile, 44.1 digital never, ever gets to 22 kHz because it has to filter the output to prevent aliasing. But I give credit to AI for its use of boldface, which really lends an aura of certainty and credibility to its assessment, no matter how misguided.

Using the standard rule of roughly 6 dB per bit, 60 dB of vinyl-like dynamic range works out to about 10 bits, and 72 dB works out to about 12 bits. That is why people often treat very good vinyl as somewhere around 10–12 effective bits. 

So what? You’ll be very, very hard-pressed to find any LP or CD with even 60dB dynamic range. If you doubt me, check the dynamic range database. But even that is moot, because with analog and LP, you can easily hear signal that is below the noise floor. Not so with digital, though.

It’s difficult to compare analog and digital based on numbers like this, and it’s prone to the sort of misinterpretation that AI stepped right into.

@audphile1 

Thanks. A good reason to keep both formats.

@Billpete "... I think it must be more complicated than the explanations that we have."

Exactly. Numbers tend to fail in something so nuanced as musical reproduction. Both are a long string of translations and electrical amplifications and end up being completely dependent on the devices you are using. Hence most folks just abandon a few measurable variables and 

The description that Vinyl and CD are in the ball park similar in resolution sounds to me about right. Ballpark... so heavily dependent on the components that that is probably as good an answer as there is. Implementation is just everything. 

@ghdprentice Thanks for the generous offer to hear your system. If I ever make it back out to the west coast, I'll do my best to look you up. I really only hear my own gear anymore since I retired to rural MO. For the most part, I'm OK with that. I do enjoy the discussions here even though there is often a lot of bickering over what is better, best and so on. So much of this is open to interpretation that it often seems pointless. Measurements mean something, they just don't mean everything, if that makes sense. I guess there is no real way (so far) to make a measurement of live music, analog reproduction vs digital reproduction. Fair enough for now. It's been an interesting thread, thanks to the OP. It is an age old discussion that has been beaten to death but it just won't seem to go away. 

@billpete 

So much of this is open to interpretation that it often seems pointless. Measurements mean something, they just don’t mean everything, if that makes sense. I guess there is no real way (so far) to make a measurement of live music, analog reproduction vs digital reproduction.

I can only speak for myself here, but I am not sure that it’s the actual sound of vinyl or streaming that matters. What really matters is how it affects me. Or the mental place it takes me or how it makes me feel. What I want is a sublime feeling that I can’t describe in words, an almost ecstatic state where music becomes transcendent. Something in the music triggers an emotional response.

Yet the same thing never works twice. The variable is me. It all depends my mood. The other day, it was some vinyl records. Yet when I came back a couple of hours later it was stuff I streamed. The following day nothing moves me because I am just not in the mood. Maybe sometime I am chilled on holiday and I am absolutely loving what I am hearing over some lowfi system in a restaurant. Or even the sound of thousands of people in a football stadium singing Only Fools Rush In.

There’s little rhyme nor reason to it. How can this possibly be measured?