Analog or Digital and why?

I’ve been listening to vinyl for 55 years. 

It’s what I have learned to listen to and what I have accustomed myself to. 

I have 6,000+ LPs, maybe 300 CDs. Digital sounds thin and sometimes gritty to me.

I am able to hear - without knowing beforehand - whether or not a vinyl LP was digitally mastered. I avoid digitally mastered LPs if I can.

According to The RIAA, analog music sales (vinyl, tape, etc.) made up about 5% of music sales last year. The rest was digital, mostly streaming, but also downloads and CDs. Many of the LPs were sourced from digital masters.

LPs will be around for a while, but new recordings to tape are the exception not the rule. Digital recording and playback continue to improve and sooner or later will be considered to offer the best sound quality available by all but the most die-hard vinyl enthusiasts. That’s how I see it anyway.

I enjoy both analog and digital in my system. And I have a lot of fun with both. But, if I knew a kid who was into music and building a system from scratch today and didn’t already have a couple thousand records, I would advise that kid to build a nice digital / streaming system first and just relax and get into the music. There will be plenty of time to add an analog setup once the kid’s musical preferences start to sort themselves out. When Purple Haze blew my mind for the first time, I did not hear it on some exquisite two channel system, I heard it from WABC’s Cousin Brucie on a transistor radio at the beach. Ditto the Beatles and the Stones and Cream and Zepplin, etc. etc. etc. Dig the music and the rest will sort itself out. 

Lost me at "the digital thing never happened". What?

@atmasphere

am i understanding what you are saying correctly - that ticks and pops playing LP’s come from the phono stage, not the needle in the groove of the record??????

i have a lot respect for your postings on this forum - but if i am understanding you correctly i have to roll my eyes and shake my head on this one...

Funny people dont realize that this is not a war between 2 technology.... Vinyl is outpaced now for many reasons.... Practicality being just one....The digitalized accessibility to all kind and style of music another one...

Where in the world can you buy vinyl of sitar, tar, tabla, tanbur, setar, tar, erhu, oud, and more? and now all new offers of classical music? Where are the vinyl of the last jazz albums in the world?

Except for fans of the pop music of the sixties and seventies, and jazz of the same era, the limitation of the offer is staggering.... Will i confine myself to pop music and rock at near 70 years old? Hell no.....

Some last poster says it is a war not lost between 2 technologies, and normally the victorious technology erase the other he says... But the vinyl makes a comeback then is not dead technology... Very funny analysis indeed...And completely wrong...

Vinyl survive by the fetishism of the material object in your hand, the vinyl disc itself, the beautiful turntable is an object of art in itself, but mostly the designed images of cardboard pocket, there is even a market for the used pocket.....

It is not the technological superiority of analog that explain the come back of vinyl, it is the popularity of pop music, the fetishism associated with it , with the object and with the technology; it is not the S.Q. at all except in few rare cases where someone can compare the 2 technology on the same super costly audio gear and decide by himself which is better ,at this time, on this gear, with only this few cd and vinyl to compared with........For the average guy a 10,000 dollars digital system rightly embedded will outclass a 1000 dollars vinyl system and the reverse is also true.... There is no S.Q. absolute superiority... One technology is superior for many practical reason and not only some relative S.Q. superiority....

Digital is immaterial, and the fetishism of the plastic box with his small booklet which we must read seems less erotic.... :)

My personal choice is digital for practical and tech reason....The music i like mostly is not on vinyl now....

i crush my last vinyl before the cd era in furor because even new there was clicks and pop.....I never look back....

Digital has made several quality leaps in recent years and I have owned some fantastic digital gear (Innuos Zenith MK3 + Lampizator). It is convenient, there are lots of music choices and it sounds great BUT 'I' still prefer my current analogue rig to any system I have owned.  Yes, it is more work but I now make listening more of an event.  When I invite guests over they are blown away, their preconceived concept of vinyl playback is changed.  As good a digital has gotten 'for me' it is still missing something.  For me vinyl sounds more real and musical.  I get moved emotionally more with vinyl than digital.  I am not putting digital down at all and I believe it will continue to evolve. Either way the hobby benefits. 

cakyol wrote:     "Digital all the way now. Analog will be dinosaurs in a few decades, maybe even less. "

Funny. That's exactly what EVERYBODY told me in the late 80's... Did Not Happen.
Try again...

Digital quality has already surpassed analog at one quarter of the cost.

One does not need to know the technology to know this is not true. The reason is simple: the period of least vinyl production was 1992-1993, which to be clear was about 27 years ago! Vinyl has been on the increase in sales ever since and the only thing limiting it that long ago was the record labels themselves.


So you have to ask- why is this format still around?? Usually when the prior art is surpassed by the new technology, the prior art is relegated to dust bins and museums (think about side-valve engines and you get my point). I know a lot of people that did get rid of their analog library and have since regretted it. The only real answer here is that people still want vinyl even though digital is ubiquitous and accessible. About all you can say about that is there is something about the LP that people like enough to keep it around and when you ask people why (and I'm talking about kids and non-audiophiles) they often point to the sound- metal heads like the superior way that the LP does the cymbals when played at ear-splitting volumes; the CD is too 'crisp' and so on.

Now I have some ideas about why vinyl might sound better- our mastering lathe has an older Westerex cutter head, and its got no problem going out to 40KHz, which is a bit of a trick for digital. In additional almost any phono section has bandwidth that high, and so do most cartridges. When we test our system, we cut a 30KHz tone and play it back on an older Technics SL1200 I got on Craigslist, equipped with a Grado Gold, and played through an older Japanese MM phono section- and there is our 30KHz tone (we do this so that we can be sure our cut can be played by an ordinary turntable). In addition, once the cutter is set up right, it can cut grooves so quiet that it does not matter what electronics you have- they will be the noise floor. The surface noise comes in during the pressing process.

I've also found that most people that prefer digital are turned off by the ticks and pops of vinyl. But in my design work of phono preamps of the last 40 years, I've found that phono preamps can generate ticks and pops that sound for all the world as if they are on the LP surface. These can be caused if the phono section has poor high frequency overload margins and stability issues related to the simple fact that cartridges are inductors. If you are able to recognize these facts as a designer, you can make a phono preamp that exhibits less ticks and pops. I'm very used to hearing entire LP sides with no ticks or pops whatsoever. Now there are a number of phono sections in high end that have proper stability in this regard, but what I've found is that if you grew up using inexpensive phono preamps made in Japan for MM cartridges, the probability is very high that you think that ticks and pops are endemic with LPs.

Another case of vinyl envy ;).

You are right....

Then vinyl is only a dead end....

:)

Vinyl was supposed to be dead in the 80s when the cd came out.
In the 90s when Dvds came out.
in the 00s when Napster and other sharing services were king.
In to 10s when streaming services and HD streaming got big.

Reports ov vinyls death are greatly exaggerated.

Vinyl is ok for someone who want to listen music 15 minutes...And being bored want some gymnastics between each tune or 2....

There is no vinyl version of the opus Clavicem ballisticum of Sorabji that is almost 5 hours in duration lenght.... :)

I listen sometimes 5 hours in my chair without to be in the obligation to lift myself to change the vinyl each 30 minutes then 10 times.... :)

And suppose i owned 10,000 vinyls ....I need a house with one room for the vinyls and one room dedicated to my audio system with his not so simple acoustical embeddings....Yes i like classical,jazz, Indian music, persian iranian music, and unclassified other one, at the end that is adding to more than a couple of hundred best.... :)

I will sell tomorrow for a smaller house i do what?

Vinyl is dead already my friends and some dont know it.... :)

For popular music of the sixties and seventies it is perfect tough, a couple of hundred vinyl will do the job.... I dont listen to them at all, then......:)

Try to buy a vinyl in Indian music or persian music, good luck.... Even in classical the vinyl choices range is restricted now....

But all the rock and roll is on vinyl for sure....My thesis is rock amateurs prefer vinyl, and they can , but those whose listening range is more encompassing dont want vinyls purchase limitations at all... I dont even speak about too much used needle, complicate adjustment, bizarre noises, and not even a true sonic advantage at the end except perhaps in prohibitive costly system....

Vinyl is dead sorry....

Of course top-line analog rigs will sound amazing... they better!  But if I'm starting out in this hobby and my choice is having easy access to 80 billion digital albums overnight vs owning zero records at home, the decision is made for me.  This is today and is not going to change.

Once the turntable/vinyl aficianados start moving to assisted living facilities, it's over.  In ten years, good luck trying to sell a turntable rig on the used market, along with Elvis memorabilia, classic cars, and pianos.  Kids today use TikTok, YouTube, and Spotify, and they don't have ANY nostalgia for vinyl.  

Suppose you, meaning everyone, have everything in your system the way you want it--amps, preamp, stands, power, cables, speakers, subs, the room. But, you need a source, a front end---don’t have one at all, have to start fresh, don’t even have albums or CDs. Let’s say you have an amount worthy of your system to spend--say $35K to allow for various levels of gear, but you have to buy everything that is needed to play music, minus the albums, CDs, streamers, etc. You have a separate allowance for music, let’s say. Would you go with vinyl or digital?

This is a great question!

Assuming I had my current knowledge of what both media are capable of, I would find another hobby to put that 35K into and just stream digital through my phone over my HT systems.

Not that you can't build a satisfying analog hardware system for 35K, the problem is the software.  A lot of the current issues/reissues are digital masters or are digital remasters, which kind of defeats the purpose of using them to cut records.

regarding analog - i cannot express how disappointed i am with the modern, high end LP reissues

such poor quality, such high prices

we analog lovers, past or present, are being punked

shameful

Analog.

I've been buying records since the 70's, and have always concentrated on early/first pressings, and will upgrade to better condition or earlier pressings whenever I have the opportunity.

I've got over 3000 records, and whenever the "Latest/Greatest" digital gear comes out, I demo them with the best digital copy I can find to  an original/early pressing of the same recording.  Invariably I prefer the analog.

Same goes with "audiophile pressings".  I guess they're just fine if I can't locate an original, but they're usually not up to the original, especially if the remastering is done in the digital domain.

I have nothing really against digital.  It would be nice if the convenience of digital would come with sound closer to analog.  I listened to digital at work (headphones and an Onkyo DP-X1A) before covid and in the car.  Now that I'm working from home, I haven't used a digital source except in the car.

Records = headaches ,pops scratches,cleaning like space 
sonics can be Verygood but today you can get verygood digital
stsrting at under even $1k rhe Ares2 from a Denafrips R2R dac 
then better resolution and depth as you pay more .
metrum , dcs, MSB, Aqua , there are a lot of very analog sounding digital outthere one big thing a record st max can hold = to 12.5 bits of musical information on digital almost 21  true bitsMy brother has over a $20 k turn table setup and his $13 k DCS dac beats in in S/N ratio, dynamic range, Low bass  and musicality 
he said he just uses records for out of print and will transfer over to totally digital soon . I did that already I have non the time or patience.

@jjss49 , interesting that you went with the analogy of food and particularly comfort food. Yes, there is no doubt that many people listen to old familiar music to avoid encountering anything new or challenging. As a former chef, I both understood and had little patience for such diners, because they were never going to understand my art, even as they enjoyed the food at their own level of perception. 
What I was getting at was the complete opposite. Returninng to known music opens up that which is strange, startling and unknown about it. The brain can focus on the details and structure that previously escaped attention. Thus, the long term relationship  versus one night stand metaphor Is an inversion. When I think back to my (too many) one night stands, the novelty was only skin deep, whereas my relationship with my wife of 20 plus years continues to reveal surprising features and things I didn’t know. 
Of course both are important and the human seeks novelty. I’d argue that our age hits that balance incorrectly, which is one reason that the early days of digital went for quantity over quality—an error that is very slowly being corrected in the main stream.

What I am driving at is less about Technical platform superiority (not a topic I find interesting in the least), and more about the art of music appreciation. In fact, I would put purchased high quality digital files in the same boat as vinyl—with replay equipment determining merits of each. 
Purchased collections are finite. For those of us who don’t possess collections of 100000 songs, the curated and limited collection has a greater potential to allow us that deeper form of musical appreciation. It isn’t automatic or even necessary—as the comfort food analogy makes clear—but from a behavioral perspective, a more limited collection stands a better chance of openIng more people to greater and more attentive listening than streaming. 
That’s my empirical assessment, and unless someone has data showing this is incorrect, a contrary opinion will be just that. I would be fascinated, however, to read if anyone has done a statistical analysis of how people listened to streamed versus purchased music. 

"I was happy with digital too, when all I listened to was digital."

Well, I was unhappy with analog when all I listened to was analog (because that's all there was). I don't mean I was unhappy with the recording quality, per se. But I don't miss dealing with dust, needles, tone arms, or belts.  Not to mention scratched records, warped records, or trying to find what I wanted to play in a big crate of LPs, only to discover that some idiot (ahem) had put the record in the wrong jacket.  I'm done with all that. The one thing I missed, for a while, was the album art.  But now, services like Roon have caught up (to some extent) in presenting lyrics, artwork, and notes.

"Quality endures"

Exactly my point. Digital quality has already surpassed analog at one quarter of the cost. Thanks for emphasizing my point. :)

Why not listen to everything you have?
I listen to CDs, Cassettes, FM, Streaming, and LPs.My vinyl collection is my main focus as is my turntable....
Everything sounds great on a well put together system, some formats just sound better than others....

Still photography has made an accepted transition to digital. Movies still shot on film are not shown on film. Seems the visual cortex can accommodate a digital representation of an analog recording, not to mention a direct digital record from an image sensor.  Is our sense of hearing that much more demanding?  

and pateks will go out style

and porsche 911’s will be passe

and french bordeauxs will be supplanted by new zealand selections

and jacques pepin techniques will go out of style

quality endures

I read something like  "analog will be gone in a couple of decades"

I had to laugh, Vinyl has already gone over a century, one score, and a few.. Feel like Abraham Lincoln.

Regards

There is a trend towards ever higher sampling rates. Does this mean the best sampling rate is infinite? Is analog the infinite sampling rate digital is striving for? Just askin'. Not implying you can't listen to digital. Blissfully listening now to an analog recording delivered on digital.

(Bach's Mass conducted by Karl Richter on Archiv Blu Ray audio. The pinnacle of Western Civilization.) 

I travel full time in my motor home and I shudder to think what the equivalent weight of my 2,900 digital (FLAC) albums would be in vinyl form; 1s and 0s don’t weigh much! Not to mention the impossible physical storage!  Plus I rarely listen to an album all the way through and more often queue up several shuffled albums.  

I’ll take issue with one thing the OP said-  “A modest system can be an easy 20 grand”

a modest vinyl front end is far less than $20,000. 
I’d argue that a pretty credible vinyl front end can be put together for $2,000

Analog for recordings made before 1981, digital for after.

sometimes i want discover new music, music that comes recommended from various avenues in the genres i enjoy (and some other genres occasionally too!)

sometimes i want the comfort and enjoyment of listening to old chestnuts i love

when i have found music i really enjoy, it make it a ’favorite’ on the streaming source and will listen repeatedly/often

if i really love the music, i may pursue finding it in different media such as in LP form, just to have it and be able to hear it from a different source

imo the dating/one night stand vs marriage analogy mentioned earlier is misplaced and misguided, although the whole post raised some interesting points

better analogy is sometimes we go to new, well reviewed, recommended restaurants, sometimes we go to old favorites to eat our go-to items for comfort and consistencyn- reality is, enjoying food and dining, we do both - though obviously in varying proportions depending on preferences

Digital all the way now. Analog will be dinosaurs in a few decades, maybe even less.

Best digital today is as good as and in many ways better than analog. Noise floor, dynamic range and ease of use alone makes it a winner.

Almost all the recent analog you think you are listening to, is recorded initially all in digital anyway.

I do love turntables & vinyl but not because they sound better but because they LOOK better & cooler :-)  At least I am being real with myself.

frankly the recent pressings suck in quality, Analogue productions should be embarrased... now that I think about it, I will send them some audio files of the QC they so clearly lack... RTI, vaunted RTI ain’t much better..

magnavox or fisher with a barnspike needle is the equivalent of ipod mp3

Of course analog will be the baseline and reference, as it came before digital. Chronological priority does not, however, mean "better." Accidents of history don’t ever determine quality.

What sounds better, more "real," more natural, lifelike, whatever: an audiophile pressing of "A Whisper of Love" by Ayako Hosokawa on vinyl from Impex, or the 24k gold cd of the same? Three Blind Mice recordings are fabulous, and this is one which I own in both formats. A friend and I listened to both formats back to back one evening. Now, I’ve been digital since the late ’80’s, and have only recently come back to vinyl. Lots of nostalgia, and a great love of what someone here rightly called the liturgy of record-playing. I now romanticize vinyl and its rituals, and am willing to pay the absurd amounts that MoFi, Analogue Productions, etc. ask for their pressings. They sound great, of course, and it’s a special occasion to cue up these records.

My friend, he’s not so easily impressed. No romanticism with him, no vested interest in the vinyl revival or any debate on A-gon. While I heard the vinyl as "better," he heard the cd as such. My cd rig (transport and good DAC) is a little pricier than my TT and stage, but there was more going on than only sonics. He’s got a pretty good ear, and calls ’em like he hears ’em. I’ve only been listening through decent equipment for the last year or so, but know that I often hear exactly what I want to hear. In this case, I wanted the vinyl to sound better.

Who knows if it did? Some of the folks here might insist it must have, that, since vinyl has a magical quality that nothing else does, only an inferior TT prevented the record from shining in its greater glory. And they patronize those who like digital as if they’re children who just don’t know better, shuffling around the house listening to their lil’ iPods. Please.

I dig vinyl. I dig cd’s. I dig streaming, sometimes. Because I dig music. Not "audio," but music. What sounds better to anyone else’s ears seems irrelevant when enjoying what’s playing.

Some of what follows I have stated on other threads, but there are also some expansions of my thinking. This post is most explicitly about media versus streaming, but still sheds light both on the op and also the thread that followed.
Let’s say that we accept the notion of a holistic system. Including the listening room.

The holistic approach can’t end with gear, room or even media used or what is recorded on different media (like 78’s versus contemporary digital). Each of us still needs to ask ourselves what is it we want to get out of listening to music?

If we want music to be ritualistic—and have the benefits which accrue from ritual, then yes, the extra labor of vinyl has more to offer it. If we have a prepper’s mindset, holding on to physical media assures one that when the web goes down and takes streaming with it, there will still be music. At least if one has access to clean power. 
If we want near-infinite choice and quick retrieval with little fuss or bother, digital offers that in spades. (Though I find digital has more fuss and bother connected to it than most digital-only mavens acknowledge. See some of my other handful of posts for that notion).
What is less often remarked upon, I think, is the relative value of a relationship versus one-night stands. Infinite music, with streaming, is a bit akin to endless dates. There is nothing wrong with that in my mind—if that is how one is constituted. 
One of the things I want from my listening time is the depth of knowledge that comes with the intimacy of repeated listening. Knowing myself, I listen to my records and gain that deeper appreciation. When I stream, however, I tend not to revisit music in the same way or the same frequency. So I know that music less well. Can one constrain one’s listening on digital to a smaller quanta of music? Of course—but it tends not to be how I operate. Moreover, such a limitation for streaming is a bit contrived, when infinite choice is one of the genuine benefits of Qobuz, Tidal or Roon. 
So the holism of a listening system would be well-served and best achieved when a given audiophile knows what sort of relationship they want to have with music. Then they would understand that the why of how they consume music is just as essential as the gear. 
People who seek the novelty of the new probably will do best investing most of their dollars in a digital streaming source. People who seek the surprising novelty of the familiar may find vinyl a better source. 
I listen 70% vinyl, 15% digital media formats and 15% streaming. 
I hope this different model or approach is helpful for someone.

yep, agree..even with COVID i will have heard four different systems this past month, not including my own ( one of 4 ).....

More if you count the dealerships I frequent...

I can tell you with great certainty the Aesthetix Mimas integrated with card based DAC is a hyper musical bit of gear :-)

reading the recent posts reminds me of when i used to regularly attend various high end hifi shows at CES, Rocky Mountain fest, etc etc

it is a shame folks on this forum can’t hear others’ systems playing their chosen music ... doing so would likely have folks state their points of view with a more humble more enlightened more respectful tone and perspective

easy to hide behind an online identity and be strident and ugly and be so fast with the put downs of others' points of view, rather than be there in person, show your face and identity, say it to their face

those rooms at the shows also highlighted to me how broad and varying tastes there are in music and equipment and ’sounds’ of systems

obviously everyone at these shows are trying to show off and impress with their wares, paying handsomely for the opportunity to do so, but SOOOO many of the rooms sounded poor as could be agreed by many who visited those rooms, be they members of the press, folks in the business, folks just there for the hobby

I have a great deal of respect for Mike and he is a helping soul

Thanks for saying what i think also...

My best to you....

I have a great deal of respect for Mike and he is a helping soul no matter the level,of his expenditures. I don’t happen to agree with all his conclusions but I respect his emotional intelligence and the process that got him there. there is a community of caring souls trying to improve all formats, that is the one I seek.

It's not working. My attempts to improve my system are usually in the 3 digits tops, lol.

.... being the one trying to sway you

" weed through a lot of opinions to figure out who is trying to really help you and the ones who are only trying to sway you into their system as if it was the bible. "
That wouldn't be the guy with the million dollar system

Sorry for not finishing above post, was sent before I finished. Trying to say I find some very helpful info in here, but you really have to weed through a lot of opinions to figure out who is trying to really help you and the ones who are only trying to sway you into their system as if it was the bible. Like a million dollar system will have any meanings to me or 99.99% of folks here. Music is not a money thing, it's from the heart, like any form of art. Great sound is good, good music is great.

I enjoy digital only with my actual NOS dac, bought more than 3 years ago and with my new system of the last 5 years but now rightfully embed...

My sound is analog, tubish, and detailed... No digital glare, no harshness, and non fatigue without end...

By the way i cannot even imagine to stock near 10,000 vinyl or even cd....At sixty nine i dont look for a house with a room for books and another room for music cd and vinyls and another room for audio system.... I must eliminate the cd and vinyl, keep the files, and i have already sold most of my books....i keep only the 400 hundred very important one near my bed ...

:)

The most important part of an audio system is not electronic, it is the room, the room is at the same time digital and analog in his working, like all music produced now.... :)

Being new in this audiophile blogging, even so I have spent 55 years digging music to the upmost, one thing has become obvious, most of the serious audiophiles go to great length to attempt to prove that they have learned is the best way

Admittedly, I am far behind in digital technology.  I am barely aware of music servers--just what are they doing for their cost?  

jafreeman - No need to "apologize for  or defend"  the comment you made earlier it was obvious what you were attempting to say. 

Just that Mike has invested to reach the full potential of both mediums, and for him, analog is the ultimate sound reproduction. Not sure why you would argue that result, but your question raises an interesting exercise.

Suppose you, meaning everyone, have everything in your system the way you want it--amps, preamp, stands, power, cables, speakers, subs, the room. But, you need a source, a front end---don’t have one at all, have to start fresh, don’t even have albums or CDs. Let’s say you have an amount worthy of your system to spend--say $35K to allow for various levels of gear, but you have to buy everything that is needed to play music, minus the albums, CDs, streamers, etc. You have a separate allowance for music, let’s say. Would you go with vinyl or digital?

What carries zero authority is somebody who thinks they know much with so little ownership exposure ... hi speed tape, the black disc and ones and zeroes, we do it all :-) imagine being trapped in a world that ended in 1980 whatever....
sad

for those with an open mind and even a decent DAC checkout the Grammy award winning digital recordings of 2L of course open ears are helpful

Right. How could anyone really have anything to say until they've spent a million or so? Just one question. If I spend a hundred million and say digital is better does that carry more authority? Or less? What exactly is the proportionality of money spent to authority achieved?