RE: digital = clarity and duplicable

Again, like I mentioned before, my argument is not against subjective personal preference, only the reality of objective quality. I think twabulldogg's example of VHS versus DVD is right on the money. Even if there were something nostalgic about liking the "softened" edges from analog or even the fuzziness at the screen edges from head tracking ... it's still inferior to digital.

I found some good articles/links supporting the differences between the audio technologies. One digital plug-in will even alter a waveform to mimic the vinyl effect. I think it is telling when the list of configurable alterations sound like things you normally want to minimize. There's an article on the history of vinyl that goes against CDs though it sounds like they don't understand acoustics - the human ear can't discern what they perceive as faults and they incorrectly describe the harmonics on the vinyl. Part of what people believe is the warmth on vinyl is simply the recording of harmonic frequencies on the groove - an effect of the stylus. In theory, an exact reproduction of the music would not have that harmonic unless the instruments produced it (which would be captured by the digital inputs). So it's ironic that part of the preferred sound is an artifact of the player/recorder rather than the real music. We all hate wikipedia here, but they have a good technical section on the capabilities of various vinyl's through the years. It seemed like a much smaller frequency response - although I would think it would have to be bigger than the 10Khz indicated otherwise music wouldn't sound remotely correct.

But anyway, as mentioned, preference is personal. Perfection is math. :-)

Star This to Save in Your Profile