Digital or Analogue which sounds better?

I read all that for them to say very little lol

Yes. It makes sense what she says, but It reads like an article that was gonna develop into a full blown essay and then it just didn't get there lol

Doesn't even explain well the little basics it does explain.

And she doesn't seem to realise that a microphone isn't a perfect transducer to begin with.

Scientific American too, they've gone downhill a bit.

But it does explain the limitations of capturing a recording digitally and how our ear may perceive the differences as a consequence compared to listening to the pure analogue waveform.

There's no limitation to capturing an audible signal digitally, just pick sample rate and word length according to the source of following processing. You can count all the albums recorded , mixed and mastered in analogue in the last two decades on the fingers of one hand. I can only think of one in my collection.

There's no mystery to solve I don't think.  Whether it's an analogue or digital signal it's still just varying voltage with time to make a cone or membrane move back and forth. By the time it leaves the DAC the signal is as 'analogue' as one from a tape deck or turntable. The loudspeaker doesn't recognise the difference.

Analogue sounds different because it has higher levels of noise, harmonic distortion and compression. You get tape compression when making the recording which softens the top end very slightly compared to digital, just enough to make it more pleasant and easier to listen to, even though it is a degradation. This is why people who tape their CDs onto RTR reckon it improves the sound. 

Although you don't get many all analogue recordings being made these days I understand it is popular to bounce a digitally recorded track to tape and then back to digital just to give the sound of that instrument some 'analogue warmth'. That analogue warmth is not lost when it is re-recorded digitally.

What's faster? A car or a motorbike?

What's taller? A bush or a boulder?

What sounds better? Digital or analogue?

All are questions imo which fail to recognise the huge range of diversity of each category - it all depends what particular examples you are considering.

Although if "better" is interpreted as "most accurate" then the 3rd of those questions is the only one which can actually be answered generically in any sensible way.

Without doubt, digital is the medium capable of greater accuracy. How closely it approaches the unattainable goal of perfection depends on the implementation.

Whether or not you prefer one or the other particular implementation is an entirely different question and is entirely subjective and is also hugely dependent on the ancillary equipment chosen - a recording, whether digital or analogue, has no inherent sound of its own, that depends on the playback equipment used and all its own imperfections and the subjective preferences of each different listener.

Personally, I gave up on vinyl because of practical reasons, not the inherent sound quality, if any.

Background noise and the impact of physical damage to LPs on the reproduced sound were major, I mean MAJOR, irritants for me and the emergence of CDs was an absolute godsend as they largely eliminated those issues.

The subsequent emergence of digital internet streaming services, allowing immediate access to a previously unimaginably vast music catalogue have simply left analogue playback in the dust as far as I am concerned. It just has no interest for me.

Others look at it differently.
Fine. Fill yer boots.

jandl100

I think there is a huge amount of almost conflicting information on this subject and i suspect it's the technical aspects of the "Vinyl Vs Digital" subject that jimbo is raising. The WHY is it different, rather than what's "better"

I know Jim has been on a bit of a digital wave recently whilst playing with his MAC, and even though i can not see digital ever cementing a place in his system (at least not until Denafrips Terminators are popping up for £200 on the used market lol), I think the curiosity is there as to why they sound so different.

And lets face it, they really do.

One of the things i find hard to reconcile is the mathmatics behind it all. It was never my strongest subject but when folks say theres no loss with digital" - i wonder how?

My understanding of digital is pretty much summed up here from the Klipsch blog:

"Digital recordings can have a greater signal-to-noise ratio depending on the bit depth of the recording. The digital wave must walk up and down stairs, as opposed to smoothly roll over hills. ... The smooth analog signal matches the recorded sound wave better than the steps of a digital recording. Bandwidth is the ability of a recorded signal to be reproduced at varying degrees of resolution. Think of it like enlarging a low-resolution image versus a high-resolution image. After a certain point, enlarging a lower-resolution image will become pixelated and difficult to see, where the hi-resolution image will resize clearly.

Like images, audio signals can have a limited bandwidth if recorded digitally. Once a digital recording is made, the bandwidth is set in place. An analog recording is considered unlimited. Therefore, it can move to a higher and higher resolution without losing its original quality"

My understanding of digital also tells me that digital music is more like a flip book than a real video.

Sample rates are effectivley snapshots of moments that are captured at intervals in time. obviously the more samples you get, the smoother the flip book will be. This is how digital audio works, yes?

SO, the mathmaticians say that due to the amount of samples they get per second, there is no loss. Then they say that the human ear isnt capable of noticing what is missing from the recording....so is it missing or not?

I mean, there has to be something missing, even if it's miniscule, as there are statements from scientists that refer to the ears inability to hear the difference in sample rate beyond a certain point. So the sample rate was picked at the earliest point human hearing can't distinguish beyond. So say Sony.

Well, ok...i accept that the human ear is flawed, but that statement suggests that they ARE losing something but expecting us to not be able to hear it. Again, at the time storage and capability may have played a part, but they deliberatly were not capturing as much as they could?

I mean, does anyone REALLY believe that studios swapped to digital recording because it was better?

No, it's because it was cheaper and easier!

Remember when MP3 came out and they told us that they only removed the frequencies we couldnt hear? Turns out that in my system i can clearly tell (blind and tested on multiple occasions) whether it's an MP3 or a WAV file. so whats the truth? My truth is that whatever they did to MP3 is clearly audible and i avoid MP3. If i can't hear those frequencies, i accept that but i can hear the effect of them not being there.

That is why digital vs Analogue is such an interesting subject and personally i will never accept digital as being as complete as R2R or Vinyl, but i do accept that in terms of noise floor etc, Digital wipes the floor with Analogue. Also the fact digital doesnt degrade over time, use etc is a huge plus. My digital copy of Eric Clapton unplugged has never needed cleaning due to excessive clicks and pops, replacing due to scratches etc...

Digital has finally taken over the bulk of my listening. For many reasons, one of which is i am sick of wearing out cartridges while i burn in phonostage s lol. I do not subscribe to the "Vinyl is King" mindset anymore, and Whilst i still prefer the organic fluidity of the sound and ritual of playing Vinyl, my digital library is about 10x as big as the vinyl.

Seriously, the steps forward i have taken over the last few weeks in terms of digital playback have been very rewarding. The R2R designs may not be for the purists of the Digital world, but for me it's doing things i thought were exclusive to vinyl.

This subject will never not be talked about.

I thought this was a discussion about why they are different? of course everyone has their own preferences, that goes without saying.

See....like I said, it's all very conflicting.

I have a simplistic approach to this. If I am in my mancave and have the vinyl disc, I will kisten to it. If I don't I will listen to a digital version of my chosen artist.

If I am not home, then digital sounds best.

I enjoy the music, and not the media.

If I had to make a choice, a good vinyl recording while sipping a good whisky is top of the list, but it is not always possible.

marketing mainly.

For example when SACD was launched Sony put out a whole load of bumph advising it was superior to CD, even included 'stairstep' graphs and so on.

The early SACDs came with a booklet explaining that the improved sound was due to painstaking re-mixing and re-mastering but that soon fell by the wayside in favour of nonsense about the superiority of DSD over PCM.

Sony pretty much invented digital audio so their engineers certainly know how it works. But the marketing department write the bumph and their specific job is to sell stuff, nothing else.

Doesn't help that the same nonsense gets repeated by audio journalists and people in the trade who make a living from selling analogue devices. Some simply don't know how digital audio works and are content to 'believe what they want to believe'  but some know quite well and are just lying in order to put food on their table. Sad but true. Never trust a salesman. 

Digital audio came long before Sony dabbled in it. Pcm dates back to 1938 and is a British invention. The first digitally recorded and mixed vinyl album was 1979s bop till you drop by ry cooder, recorded on a 32 track tape machine made by 3m Corp. The first digital audio recording was actually made by Devon, recorded live at the end of 71.

The first digital optical audio recording predates cd by quite a few years and made in the US.

SONY and Philips were late to the game after much of the work had been done by video companies.

Cd wasn't realised until 79.