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

"When the atoms of the steak were disassembled and then reassembled the porterhouse steak looked still like a real steak but when it was broiled and tasted it didn’t taste like a real steak..."

If the description of the movie is accurate, it is not exactly what these debates about digital suggest. That steak retained all the particles and all of them were used to reassemble while digital is said to be missing some parts.

"...like the fresh raw porterhouse steak in the movie..."

"...then reassembled the porterhouse steak looked still like a real steak but when it was broiled...

Maybe it would have not tasted good had it been broiled before being disassembled, either. Maybe the problem was the steak and not the process of transportation.

"No matter what the resolution and data rate a digital representation of a sound, it will always be an approximation of the original event."

Isn't that true for analog (vinyl in most of the above posts), too? It is an approximation, attempt to reproduce, the original event. No matter what quality of an analog recording it is. Any recording is, essentially, fake. Be it analog or digital. You may prefer the way one is manipulated more than the other, but true representation they are not.

When it comes to "reproducing live concert (unamplified, let's say classical music)", I am yet to hear the equipment/sound-carrier combo that can sound as bland. Any recording seems to sound richer. I suspect that many of us who babble about how the system should sound would quit these debates if we went for concerts more often. Blacker blacks, rounder mids, all that poetry is gone in a concert hall. It may something to do with a venue, but not all of it.