A very good ENGINEERING explanation of why analog can not be as good as digital..

teo_audio

If one wants to equal the inter channel timing of transients and phase coherence that an LP is capable of, the minimum is an appoximate 7 million sample per second rate, at about a minimum of 20 bits of depth and with absolutely zero jitter in dc to lightspeed bandwidth. This was known and spoken of in the early 90’s. Odd that it is somehow forgotten or not mentioned.

This is just silly. Were it true, you could fit the entire Godfather film series on a single LP side.

elizabeth

The 15ips thing caught my eye... On a tape machine.. with it running at 15ips.. Well each magnetized particle of material on the tape could be thought of as a ON/OFF digital particle. So one could calculate the number of magnetized individual particles moving past the head gap per second and get a real bit rate...This might be a way to get some analog to digital comparison?

That won’t work because a tape head can’t read a single magnetized tape particle in isolation. The head has a gap that reads a whole bunch of " magnetized individual particles " all at once.

The notion that any traditional analog media - such as tape or LP - can hold an amount of data equal to that in a CD just isn’t valid. And that’s exactly what led to the invention of the CD in the first place.

stevecham

The sampling rate of lacquer/metal/vinyl is the number of polymer molecules flying past the stylus at the outer edge, ~15 ips, to ~ 8 ips at the inner part of the groove. That number is astronomical and blows away any conceivable, let alone practical, digital sampling rates.

For that to be true, each molecule would have to be capable of registering either a 1 or a zero. Were that the case, we’d be loading computer software such as Windows and MS Office from LP - there’d be no need for a CD-ROM. We wouldn't need the DVD, either - we could put entire movies on a single LP side. But of course that isn’t even remotely true. CD can store substantially more data than any LP.

teo_audio

It is said that to equal an LP, a digital system would have to sample at minimum of 7 million samples a second, and with ~zero jitter~ in that spec to be met.

Other than you, who has made this claim? You're suggesting that an LP can hold more data than a CD. That simply isn't even remotely true.

kijank

For any signal to be perfectly band limited it would have to extend infinitely in time.

I’m not sure what this means, but nothing is perfect.

There are many other shortcomings like less than perfect brickwall filters with uneven group delays, jitter in A/D or D/A conversion

Agreed, of course. Digital audio is not perfect. However, the notion that it is not continuous, and is comprised of "stair-step" signals, is a misnomer. It is a false claim and that can be proven visually, as in the video that I linked, as well as mathematically.

kijanki

This theorem only states that you can recover continuous signal by sampling at least two times per period. It does not say you can do that when waveform constantly changes

Actually, that’s exactly what the Fourier Transform addresses and proves - the transient need only to fall within the bandwidth of the system. It’s why digital audio works.

Again, I’m very much an analog guy. But to claim the digital audio isn’t continuous like analog is misunderstanding how digital audio works. It has problems, but non-existent stairsteps aren’t part of them.

audioengr

Digital is sampled, not continuous. The reproduction accuracy with digital is a function of the sample-rate and filtering to "smooth" those steps.

The Fourier Transform proves otherwise, and the transform really has more than one proof. One is in the video, but there's mathematical proof, too, if you really want to dive deep into it.

The Nyquist theorem is true and often cited, however, it makes some assumptions such as the waveform is continuous and not transient.

It relies on the Fourier math.

Transient waveforms cause the Nyquist theorem to break-down ... the sample rate required to get an accurate transient reproduced is much higher that Nyquist would predict.

If you could disprove the Nyquist Theorem, you'd be famous. It's already been proven. That's why it's a theorem.

tom1000

There are no steps, no divisions, or resolution with analog, but there is with digital.

It’s a common misnomer that digital has "steps." To be fair, it seems intuitive that it does. But it doesn’t, as proven here. And analog has limited resolution, too - just as with digital.

There is no Nyquist theorem, which based on an approximation.

There most certainly is a Nyquist theorem. A fairly good explanation of it is here.

Please note that the Nyquist principle is a theorem, not a theory. That means it’s actually provable, using math and science.

I’m much more of an analog guy that a digital guy, but it’s important to understand how digital audio actually works if we hope to ever see it improved.

audioengr

There is always a CODEC in the playback software.

If you consider a DAC a codec, I guess that’s true.

rcronk

I too was insulted being told what I can and cannot hear.

There's no need to be insulted. There are posters who've acknowledged here that their goal is to mock and humiliate. There's no reason to take those people seriously.

richopp

Science to the rescue. Forget your ears, listen to the CODEC ...

The best quality digital doesn't go through a codec.

The video doesn’t support the OP’s claim that "analog cannot be as good as digital." In fact, the video states: "There is no functional difference in the audio quality between digital and analog ...The human ear and brain is not sufficiently equipped to distinguish the difference between sound produced from analog signals when compared to a digital counterpart."

What’s annoying about pedantic presentations such as this is the extent to which they scrutinize limitations of the LP, but don’t apply the same scrutiny to the limits of digital. Of course the presenter in this video isn’t objective - he’s trying to sell something.