This old debate, they are both good but different. Any person that says one is better than the other has not heard a good example of both.
In-Fact is Infatuating!!! But outside of horribly overcompressed Digital (anyone out there remembers "juicy" compressions from the 70-ies?) and horrendous LP pressings coming from the US, LPs Do sound more natural. I can tell if its a live or recorded tune standing outside in the corridor, my Boss can tell from the kitchen that I am playing LP. My digital front-end is Naim CDS3 and Wadia 781i, Linn LP12, Keel-ed with Aro and Lyra MC cart scratch thru LPs... Hate the bull about the smell, the pains, etc of flipping LPs, once I learn about Digital beating the Sound of Analog I shall post all my LP collection on Discogs: I am old and lazy!!! Reminds me a bit of a discussion from my professional field: each and every time an anomaly is found: how could genes encode for the infinity of antibodies, how could DNA-proteins dilemma gets solved, etc etc we have a Proof of The Intervention
Sadly, not everyone share that same point of view or at least, the respect due to both type of listening experiences and their enthusiasts. I'm so tired of that analog-elitism, or the opposite where people disregard my musical preferences because I like tape technology, I just don't bother with those debates anymore, there's simply no point if no one is willing to change their opinion, which I did when I first got into tape...
Yes, this is a certified common ground nowadays of everyone being chronically tired... I listen to my fav tunes, not media, and do not care enough what other folks say to actually disagree with them.. not because I am Tired but because I do not Care... If someone prefers Snoop Dogg over Ligetti, I have nothing to say to them, but it is not the smell or touch or the dress-code, it is the music itself that separates us. Our preferences for analog or digital: respect has nothing to do with it either. 90% of my listening is thru digital, but if I want to experience live performance I go to LA Opera or buy Analog Productions LPs. Is it better than hi-rez download? Same as asking if goat cheese is better. I am quite positive that folks who prefer goat cheese like it for its taste, not the packaging or extra price, or the picture of a goat
Your post actually put into perspective a common problem people tend to have "nowadays" (I say between quotes, I can't deny elitism has always been a thing even in the analog age), which is making the distinction between listening to music, and listening to gear as we call it. Our love for music is commonly shared, I guess that's a given, no matter what our musical tastes are we still have that in common. But those who are really invested into music tend to care more about the way the music is delivered to them. Speakers, headphones, amps, and ultimately... Vinyls, cassettes, digital etc. This is where musicality stops and where often pointless debates starts. Comparing similar equipment (I.E two reel-to-reel machines or tape decks) is sane and really helpful for people like me to orient my choices for a brand or model, but comparing the technology used for people to listen to their music and judging them is childish or disrespectful. I don't agree with a lot of things people say about the tech I use, but I don't fight them, I ignore them unless they are willing to see my point of view which is quite peculiar.
So true, so very true! It is a waste of time to judge people by [choose your criteria], and it is also disrespectful. Isaak Asimov said it best: "Please, do not approach me with your opinions about my writing. If you think that I am a genius, all you are saying is that You are smart enough to comprehend that. And if you think that I am full of it... well, who wants to hear that?!" Sounds patronizing? Yes. Disrespectful? No. At least to me OP video is neither patronizing nor disrespectful, so I am not going to sidetrack OP any further. I disagree with the conclusion that analog lovers go after extra value missing from digital. This is not true simply because I am one of those ana-phyles and I play LPs because to me they sound better. I spent years collecting Japanese "promo" boxes with mini-LP CDs. These have more value, smell, touch and info than most LPs. But decent LPs still sound better To My Ears, and it is because of the sound, not feel, that I buy my favorite albums on LPs. I am very grateful to Mike Fremer (analogplanet.com) who was never afraid to say that best vinyl sounds better than best digital. Thankfully, he was not bothered by the fact that most music-lovers and audiophiles considered him crazy. Unlike @Strangelove I usually get more curious when folks have opposite opinion, but thanks to Mikey I always knew that I am not alone in my "hearing values"
There are some very good points in that short video. I have read through lots of the comments under similar but long winded videos on Youtube. IMHO the most sensible comments pointed out that the Loudness war that started in the 1990s has far more to do with the perceived difference in sound than whether the medium is Analogue or Digital. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war To use the example given in the article if you think Michael Jackson "Black or White" sounds better on Vinyl which of the three CD releases are you comparing it to ? That is basically what he says about CDs being mastered differently although he didn't point out the visibly large difference between releases. It is also a fact that distortion can sound nice. When I was learning about communications theory at college it struck me that for every problem that could occur on a communications channel an equivalent Guitar Pedal designed to add that effect was available. In the world of synthesizers the Analogue vs Digital argument is at least as strong. Again it is down to pleasant sounding distortion and anomalies. I remember reading how an engineer at Moog decided that the Power supply in their famous Minimoog sysnthesizer wasn't much good so he worked out some improvements. The test measurements might have been better but the concensus was that it didn't sound as good as the one with the old PSU.
I do tend to take these discussions with my head cocked sideways. The DAC seems to be missing whenever I see the comparison between digital and vinyl. After all, it's the device that generates the analogue signal that we end up listening to, and the Burr Brown in the ProJect USB Box S that I have (hooked up to a humble valve headphone amp) is said to have warm characteristics (which is perhaps why I like listening to majority vocal, or a-capella through that set up) ... I've been told that the DAC is reading ahead by a few thousand samples, and using that to help shape the waveform it generates... which I can't corroborate myself, but I do notice a very slight lag of a fraction of a second between starting a track, or stopping it, which I can't put down to USB transfer speed.
I wonder how many "Analogue" recordings have been Digital at some point in their lives. In the mid 1980s it was something to be proud of, as shown on these 1986 Cassettes. The booklet in the Sweet Sounds tape explains how one of these was used for the recording https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/sony/pcm-701es.shtml It was then deemed worthy of Chrome Tape and Dolby. Somehow I doubt if my Mothers Sony Radio Cassette made the most of it, although I suppose the beauty of cassettes is that they can be played on anything from a £10 Shoebox recorder to a £1000 Nakamichi.
Analogue vs digital is a case of two sides of the same coin. If you set both up well you can achieve excellent results...analogue can be a bit harder to master but both give excellent, if different results.
