Which is more accurate: digital or vinyl?

My first listening experiences were as a two year old listening to the 78 rpm vinyl that my parents played on a console tv set in the early 1950's.

Years later when I stsrted to learn how to play, i used the same system ,but the records were 45's and 33 lps.

Maybe it was because the amplification was tubes and the sound of vinyl that left a lasting impression on me to this day.Maybe just nostalgia,but I was very happy with that system, but it was the only one I had experience with.

Yes I can appreciate the music for the music's sake on any cheap system.A goodsong is a good song, you enjoy it.

But the big difference, the time when you have an epiphany, is when you hear that good music played back on a system that just does it better.

This was my experience, and after hearing new stuff on a favourite lp that I never heard before, I set out in this hobby.

The main purpose was to get all the music I was paying for.
In other words I wanted 100% of the musical content from the lp,not the 35% I was mostly getting with inferior gear.

Skip ahead several decades and finding some other fellows in this hobby and discovering different tastes in music, different system configurations and upping my knowledge of music reproducing systems.And changing my preferces in music and the gear that reproduced it.
It was great that I had knowledgeable friends in audio who were will to spend the time demonstrating what to hear and what to listen for so that I too could make buying decisions that would move me forwards and not back or sideways.Some dealers actually cared that you spent your money on something that was better just not different.
Some were quite opinionated and aliented a few customers,but like one audio dealer friend said, he wasn't into the hobby just to move boxes.If he was he would have sold more than just 2 channel audio.
And this was back in the mid 90's, well before the fashion of today.
I learned a lot about this hobby from my weekly visits to his salon.He was also an expert at getting great sound at audio shows and was a system set up expert.

One particular audio friend has a cost no object system,I could drop names, but let's leave it that just the cost of the Scarlatti digital set up is an idication of what lies thereafter.In all fairness I should mention the turntable is SME 30/12, SME5, Clearaudio goldfinger cart.We both prefer the vinyl rig, but which is more accurate?Who cares, both are amazing.

Now this is a system that only a few of the top audio salons can assemble.

This was the system that led me to what sonic improvements to already great components can be made when you start to address the power going to your electronics.

Great sounding gear was made to sound even better when power issues were addressed.
Power issues that some folks with mid level gear feel aren't necessary because their gear is perfect and doesn't need anything but a stock power cord into the wall.

But as much as the electronics disappear and leave just the music behind in this system,it still doesn't fool me into making statements like the "musicians were in the room with me".But it is fantastic at retrieving in both formats what is recorded in the black or silver discs.

And I've heard a lot of other very good music reproducing system of all stripes that also are great at reproducing the music but that can't duplicate the actual live experience.

Again I stress that most decent system can reproduce but not duplicate a live musical event,and you don't need golden ears, you don't have to be a mucician, or concert goer to tell the differences.

And you don't need to be any of the above to appreciate a decent hifi set up either.Even newbies can distinguish good sound from bad.
It is then left to you to decide whether it is worth the investment to move from where you are to the next level.

You may be quite content with earbuds and MP3, some of us are not, but no one can say any of us have the ultimate system giving us the ultimate pleasure of recreating the live event.

We can assemble hifi systems that are the eqivalent of the best High Def televisions of the day, or we can still be enjoying last centuries cathode tube tvs.

We will both laugh at the same jokes,still get the gist of what's going on, but the latest tv's will allow us to view the entertainment with more detail retrieval than ever before.

People seem to embrace the extra detail when presented in a visual manner, and yet some reject the extra detail when it comes to sonics.

I read a lot about folks who are put off when the details get in the way of music, making it sterile, fatiguing etc,and prefer more rolled off forgiving romantic types of sounds.

Yet I'll bet they wouldn't trade in their HD tv's and go back to what their parents owned in the 60s.

The newer tvs, and electronic of today have progressed,I would say everything is more accurate, more detailed,than what came before.

So why the backlash? If you are looking for accuracy it's out there in today's gear.If you want nostalgia and romance it can be found new and used.

But I will bet the farm that just as impossible as it is for the best of todays tv technology to duplicate what you see on the screen and bring it to life in your living room, neither can or will a hifi system duplicate and bring the musicians in full scale into your living room.

And yet we can be entertained with things just as they are.

Acuracy in anything can only be gauged against two things, one that is superior to what we have experienced and one that is inferior to what we have knowledge of.

In other words, based on our personal experience,we only know what's worse or better than what we have knowledge of.

Until you hear a system that does everything better than your own system you will think that what you have assembled is pretty accurate and leave it as it is.

When you do hear a superior system, if you can't buy the goods, then find ways to make what you have sound better than it did and narrow the gap, and as the fellow said"keep tweaking till you get it right"

I have awoken after falling asleep in the middle of the night with teh music still playing and in that ttransition from sleep to awake been fooled momentarily. Then once all your senses come around, you know where you are and what you are listening to. Hard to get around that. I can close my eyes and convince myself that what I hear is close to live, but does it really or does it even matter? IF I am clearly not convinced otherwise, or otherwise put off by what I hear, then I think that is practically the most one can hope for and realistically achieve. The rest either doesn't really matter and/or may be a pipedream not worth pursuing.

I felt that i really needed to respond to your comments only because you seemed absolute/dogmatic about your statements. Also, that based upon my most recent experiences, i felt that the disparity you perceive between live music and what is possible with some new esoteric/cottage industry audio products and a carefully put together system(highly tweaked)(with some luck too!) was too great. I was hoping to convey that between live music and stereo playback it was my sincere belief that that gap has narrowed, especially with the products only available in the last 10 years . We are talking about some of the best people on the planet working with genuine passion trying to make really special products. It did hurt my feelings a bit when you said that you pitied me? I thought maybe that was going a bit too far and wasn't very charming of you? As the posts progressed i tried to qualify my statements trying to bridge the gap between our perceived differences by adding some qualifiers,hoping that would help.

For example, to repeat earlier qualifications , the times I've experienc recorded music sounding like live is very rare, for example 95 percent of the systems(i speculate), never come close and of the ones that do only 5 percent of the time, on 5 (maybe less) percent of an entire catalog does it come close to mimicing reality. I never said, nor meant to say that i have ever heard large scale orchestral music playback mimick live music. (though someone might have done it???) This is a more difficult challenge (in my mind) than sparse music (like, one voice, a guitar, a harmonica (nothing else). While sparse music is still a great challenge it is a LESSER challenge, i think than many different instruments , playing at once (with different/unique timbre/playback demands)(trying to get them all correct with one kind of speaker, cartridge etc etc) is going to be a tough challenge. (sometimes for example one cart is more suited for rock while another cart for orchestral(as you know)

I can understand how some thought it an absurd/arrogant statement, especially when it has become the norm/popular even to say that nothing can sound like live music and for someone to come along and ask the question "is it heresy to say that reproduced music can sound just like live"?

Yesterday, I played, bob dylan , "good as i been to you" american pressing lp, "sitting on top of the world" track. So, you should make a mental note that this is sparse music with only two instruments and a not very produced album. That means the amount of manipulation between the laying down of the tracks and the final mastering is small or non existent. So you have a very high fidelity record.(read... (great potential for sounding live)

The track contains, bob, his guitar, his harmonica. (I hear no effects added.) So i listen to the harmonica playback and then blow my own marine band harmonica. I did this back and forth several times and feel that if i were to grade my harmonica as a 100 points, i'd have to give the stereo played harmonica, i dont know, 96-100?

I think much of the credit must go to the allaerts cart as reeling in most of the timbral magic of the vocals and isntruments. Gold is a "weird" electrical conductor that imparts something lush, organic, and holographic to metal instruments. I've heard metal reproduced wrong many ways, that don't match reality, but this cart does something unprecedented (so far as my experience goes). The best analogy i can use to give a hint/to try and convey that quality is when you see a mirage created by heat off the road. You see something there, that really isn't but somehow it exists.

With it, in my minds eye i perceive the woodfibre and metals vibrating like the real instrument... the harmonica plays with a halo of no other artifacts surrounding it as it is reproduced by the stereo, just like when i blow it with my mouth. In other words, the noise floor around it is non existent, nothing else is added or subracted and its timbres are reproduced impeccably. The wood part is right, the metal part is right, its speed is right, the resolution is right...all these things together plus more are part of its "timbre"

If some people are spooked (on occasion) by stereo playback that means they are experiencing the emotion of 'fear'.

Why fear? Its just a stereo???That's odd.

But not really, i surmise the reason they are experiencing fear is because they feel something unnatural or ....supernatural is happening. Why? Because they are having an experience that their mind and previous experience has told them should not be possible! It's like seeing a ghost!

This would be my argument that stereo's today, have the potential to mimic reality and it seems reasonable to think, things will only get better in the next ten years!

It is quite rare when all the contingencies are perfect (i won't list how many there can be...(alot!)(nor do i think we know what they all are) that i hear reproduced music sound like live but i have to say that i have had/have that rare experience on the terms stated in all my above posts.

"Recorded music sounds like live music for me in my system"

Does it for 95 percent of my playback? No...less than that and on a few recordings/formats. Sometimes within one track, the voice is perfect but not the piano, etc.

Mapman says... The solution: keep tweaking until you get it right......

Amen.

On some days...i really get into it! I will spend an afternoon just tinkering with repeated tiny 20 degree turns of both my allaerts cart mounting bolts, recuing and relistening to the same song , listening , over and over and over, to see if this is the best this cart can sound. Then i will go to vtf and then back again to the mounting bolts! It is incredible how narrow the ideal and optimal setting for this cartridge is and though i don't know if i have nailed its optimal range yet i have seen how "resonant" signatures can effect how my cart sounds.

I like your part about tweaking the cartridge and about how subtle changes in tightening the mounting bolts affects the sound.

That implies to me how much you can veer one way or the other from accuracy with just a few twists of the wrist.
How will you know you when have it perfect?

You won't.

You weren't there to hear the sound of Bob's harmonica to know what it sounded like before the recording started.

Then again let's talk about the harmonica's you both own.
Even if they are the identical brand, and age of manufacture, they won't have been played the same so the rate of reed and metal fatigue will differ.You will both blow it differently.
Also is your living room where you listen to music identical to the recording studio?

Not likely, so your room will introduce colourations different from the recording studio.

How can you make statements like you make and say that your system makes Bob Dylan's harmonica sound just as real as when you play your harmonica?

I'll bet even if you used the same recording gear as Dylan used the two would sound different.

And this is the gist of the debate.

On a superior system YOU should be able to hear the differences.
To not hear the differences means the system isn't capable of the levle of resolution and realism need to distinguish between so many disparities.

This isn't meant to say your system sucks,it's just that this is the misguided thinking of most audiophiles.Because they like their systems and it sounds to them like the real thing,never having heard the real thing in real time in a real space identical to their own.

It's the concept some of us are trying to convey in this thread that some folks find hard to grasp or just don't want to believe.

Yes we would all like to think that we have assembled the most realistic system, and pat ourselves on the back and say "we're here, it's finished", alas, some of us know we are still very far away, and I don't think I'll live to see or hear the day when music or video is really duplicated in the confines of my personal space.

To put things into perspective,years ago I was quite pleased with my tv, and my stereo.All class A rated, top shelf.
I thought you couldn't get any better than this.
If everyone felt the same way as I did, then we would still be using all the same technology and systems today,
(some folks do).

Time passes and things did get much better.

As a play around guitar player with a variety of them I would say that on my $7,000 system optimized for guitars and stringed instruments it never has fooled me into sounding like it is the real thing(acoustics in real time and space). However the real thing is very elusive, never sounds the 100% the same twice maybe 95-98??, maybe 99 sometimes if your a pro. But I do find that I can almost recreate the real thing in my head with my system if all the stars are lined up. I can do it with digital and with analog. I think vertigo has conveyed himself very well, it is nice to discuss a topic like this because we hope that things will continue to improve and to know where to look when they do. It will be a better day in music reproduction when we can sit in our listening rooms and hear almost the real thing. Well played non amplified music is glorious. But I have a hard time seeing in the near future either format being real close to the real thing. I am still hoping though.