Article: "Spin Me Round: Why Vinyl is Better Than Digital"

Really. You are judging digital recordings by K-Tel?    Who knows how many records they pressed per press master. K-Tel was the AM radio of records.

Saved me the time of writing it ...

mapman18,215 posts12-23-2020 12:36pmVinyl is a 100 year plus old flawed technology. People spend a fortune trying to address the flaws and still can never win because all records have flaws it’s just a matter of how many and how much.

I think you know as I do mahgister how silly youtube videos are like this.  The echo in the original track is intentional, it is part of the recording, though I believe there is a bit of evidence of additional room reflections where the microphone is.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gueDCNUAapI

I do find these tests funny though.  I am pretty certain there was a minor volume difference between the two amps. You don't use a sound meter to level match for amplifiers. A $10 multimeter would be orders of magnitude more accurate with a sine wave.   The simple act of people being in a different place in the room can have more impact in the recording than changing the amp or speakers will.

Let go of this notion that "analogue" has a complete signal. It does not. As soon as you add noise, you no longer have the signal. You have a signal and noise, and since you have no way to remove that noise and leaving only the signal, then no, there is nothing complete about what is on a record, analog tape, or similar.

b_limo1,929 posts12-29-2020 2:29pmIts pretty simple isn’t it?  A record or analogue signal has a complete soundwave whereas digital is bits of that soundwave, no?

If you are going to make stuff up to suit your view of the world, I don't see how we can have an intelligent discussion on this topic.


And no they are not on par.  A digitizing and playback system can capture the output of a vinyl playback system and recreate it such that you cannot tell which is directly coming from vinyl, and which is the digital system.  There is no current analog system in audio which can accomplish the same with digital.

Enjoy your moldy bread ..... I mean vinyl.

He isn't wise, he was uneducated. Not recognizing his own lack of knowledge is not wise.

Vinyl can provide a very rewording playback, and there is a good chance that a combination of that particular mastering process and the colorations introduced by vinyl will provide a superior (for you) listening experience on a given track.

However, it is purely wrong to continue the belief that it provides a more accurate playback than modern digital. It does not.

No, actually it does not. It either sounds like what was picked by the microphone or it does not. High res digital (most digital now), plays back a more accurate representation of what was captured. That is just the way it is. You may not like it, but assigning terms like "naturalness of timbre" that are factually untrue does not change that.

mahgister3,873 posts12-29-2020 1:29pmI think that digital can be on par with vinyl, but you are too harsh... Accurate is one thing, naturalness of timbre another, and the naturalness of timbre implies more factors than only accuracy of dac....

What is truly funny is you don’t understand Nyquist theory. If you did, you would understand that within the framework of audio and the SNR of the recording, and the sample rate that digital can capture in full detail all waveforms within 1/2 the sampling rate (minus filtering of course).

sin(x)/x is purely a linear multiplication function and easily corrected, and if you understood signal processing, you would know it does not in practice result in rounding errors even on Redbook playback, but of course, since virtually all audio is also sampled well beyond audio rates these days (and bit depths), it does not come much into play .... which is why in any review of a DAC, you will see nearly perfectly flat response across the audio band and SNR, THD, etc. pretty much flat as well with good quality DACs. Maybe you should read science based audio information instead of parroting people who know as little as you do?

dover1,306 posts12-29-2020 10:32pm

The analog signal will mash up timing, frequency information, timbre, anything at all you want to use to describe said signal. Digital does not.

Thats the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on this forum.
If you understood nyquist theory and how d/a converters work, you would know that digital is a little bit out all of the time - rounding errors from the sine x/x in red book CD, endemic in every calculation, are just the tip of the problem.

No, I most certain don’t conflate the two. Digital perfectly preserves timing in the analog time domain with well sub nanosecond accuracy, down even into 10's of picoseconds. Analog recording formats by virtue of their significant mechanical flaws, introduce huge variations in timing.

In your dogmatic rant you conflate 2 different concepts of timing, the timing of bits flows, and the acoustical timing events linked to the definition of "musical timbre"...

No, it will create distortions and coloring that many find pleasing. No more. No less.  It also gives them a niche that lets them charge more.

Then when a Company like TACET use analog tubes only recording method it is because the analog recording method will be able to seize or grasp in a DIFFERENT way some aspect of the complex phenomena of timbre... They dont say that analog is absolutely better, they say it is absolutely different to record timbre with or without analog method...

"Real-time-timing-events" (point three and five mainly in the wiki definition of timbre) are not recreated in the same way with analog or digital recordings methods, because each one will analyze the timing events by focusing on different characteristics in the complex timbre phenomena.... NONE are superior......I repeat NONE are superior...

This is just a flight of fancy and no attachment to reality. No wow and flutter, no tape stretch, no print through, absolutely perfect timing accuracy .... there is in no way anything superior about current analog audio recording technology that can compete with digital on any aspect.  Analog recording methods and playback will mush the timing information. Digital will capture and recreate it perfectly.

An analog RECORDING is not the original signal. A polygon with a million faces is a better approximation of a circle than one drawn with a shaky hand ... or any hand for that matter.

This is as sill asy that bread analogy. This silly concept that an analog RECORDING is somehow "continuous". It is not. It has noise. It has timing flaws from the mechanical nature. It has data loss.

dover1,306 posts12-29-2020 10:47pm

« A polygon with an infinite number of faces never equal a circle» Nicholas Of Cusa

Precisely, digital is an approximation of an analogue signal.

This is just trying to paint a fantasy brush onto reality. You don’t store sound, you store a signal, either analog of digital. The analog signal will mash up timing, frequency information, timbre, anything at all you want to use to describe said signal. Digital does not. I do declare one format superior because I was involved in recording for decades, all through the format transition, initially squeezing what we could out of analog, and have sat listening to the live feed from the microphone, tape loops, and digital loops, and can state, as would almost all my colleagues over the years, that modern digital is effectively exactly what is coming off the microphone, while analog tape, and any subsequently any analog playback after much processing, is a colored version of what was picked up.


I don’t think you understand digital well enough to understand that "timing" as it applies to analog audio signals can be perfectly captured by digital, whereas analog formats are seriously flawed.

You my prefer the colorations introduced by an analog format, and perhaps you will equate those colorations to be more natural or real because you like them, but liking something is not the same as accurate reproduction.

The timing we speak about in the formation of timbre is an acoustical phenomenon in a room first with ears in the room, not first a sound phenomenon in analog format or digital format....

@acmaier3, I’ve spent almost 30 years either developing, optimizing, working with, or doing basic and applied research on studio equipment, audio, recording, and processing and have spent countless hours listening to music as its played and what gets recorded and played back.


How about you?


Timbre exists, or accurately the relationship between the various harmonics and their attack and decay. However, the properties that mahgister attempts to assign don’t exist. His failure to understand the underlying mathematical composition of signals and hence why digital is able to capture anything that can be called "timbre" in far greater accuracy than any current analog equipment, causes him to assign "ethereal" properties, that do not exist.

acmaier39 posts12-30-2020 3:37pmTimbre definitely exists... it’s why one guitar sounds different than another. Why nylon strings sound different than steel.
Audio2design is a fool arguing with facts like a homeless person yelling at a street sign.

You are right. There is no electronic tool to measure something that does not exist. 

There is no electronic tool for measuring this.

My inner voice is telling me to say what I really think about this statement, but in the interest of being nice, I will just say this is really silly and shows a considerable lack of understanding of what a "signal" is.  I can take your favorite record Miller, recording it, and play it back to you on a digital playback system.  As long as I have a turntable running in that room, you will assume that you are listening to the record. You will not know it is digital. Digital can capture everything that can come off a record. The opposite is not true.


p.s. When they film on location, odds are very heavy they will be using digital cameras. The number of movies shot on film drops every single year, and today, technically, there is little reason to use film. Want a film effect (grain/noise), add it digitally. 

When we play a record we don't know it is the real deal, we know for sure it is fake (i.e. a recording).

If digital is so wonderful then why do you think it is that all the best movie directors and actors try so hard to film on location, to actually perform their stunts? Its because the brain is uncannily good at figuring out what is fake, what is fraud, and what is real. When we play a record, whatever it was and however good or bad it sounds, at least we know its the real deal

And this is technically inaccurate gibberish. Which is worse? There is nothing "infinite" wrt a microphone or our ears for that matter.  Microphones have bandwidth and noise limitations and ultimately sensitivity limitations. So do our ears. Maybe some understanding about Nyquist and SNR before posting?

acmaier314 posts12-31-2020 12:31amHere’s another point worth considering
microphones and instruments are analog (infinite in that sense). Sampling no matter how good is not infinite (if you don’t get the 3/4D aspect).  
There’s no instrument but the human ear for this (yet).

Physics is not a field where strength in Nyquist theory is strong on the curriculum, especially at the diploma level.  "digital/Nyquist is perfect" ... what does that even mean? Nyquist simply puts a limit on what digital can do, but also explains why digital can (within the technical implementation limits) capture the waveform very accurately.  Even with redbook, over sampling on recording and upsampling on playback pretty much removed in band filtering effects. This is likely what, as that high end label showed, well done red-book was not distinguishable from high-res with their discerning customer base.

I do have friend who had diploma in physics and who worked in university. So he can speak about Nyquist an hour as he now in retirement so he had a time to get into it up to human ear construction. But in general if somebody says that digital / Nyquist is perfect - no. Nowadays digital changed as it has less space limitations so hi-res is better and we can leave Nyquist in the dust of history.

If you didn't write the quote, why do you assume it is about you? 

And you are still assigning special properties to timbre within the framework of music playback and this "analog only" or "digital only" statement makes no sense. Digital recording and playback systems create a more accurate analog waveform at playback than analog recording and playback systems.

No, not theoretically, absolutely and by every practical measure including our ears. You are taking preference and substituting it for accuracy, and no you can't make that judgment in absence of knowing that the original sounds like which would be the rarest of cases that people do.

On paper yes theoretically...By Fourier transform...But the real event for the ears take place in a concrete recording room and after that in a concrete specific listening room...

Without noise reduction best you will ever get out of tape is about 90db, with 80db more realistic. I will give you 90 for interests sake. Bandwidth at full SNR is likely about 20KHz, but I will give you 30KHz.  Can't use noise reduction or any other emphasis-de-emphasis for this calc.

Bits in stereo max about 1.25 megabits/second equivalent data.


I do agree, there appear to be two races going on. One of us though is moving forward, and one just appears to be going in circles.  This little diddy pretty much illustrates that:

Seven: Nyquist theorem is about coding and decoding signals and also the implicit limitations and not only the power to do so.... This theorem has nothing to do directly with TIMBRE, which is the cornerstone of musical perception but more than that the cornerstone for evaluation of audio system in their acoustical controlled or uncontrolled embeddings...

At some point perhaps the links will be made that all audio is stored as simple 2 dimensional signals, time and value, whether done in the analog domain or digital domain, and that that eventually gets out to the speakers, and then your ear perceives a complex set of frequencies and intermixed timings as something described as timbre (but is still just a set of frequencies and timing), and hence how accurately it is possible to recreate the original "timbre" of the instrument comes down to how accurately one can recreate those frequencies and timings. One can reproduce them very accurately. One cannot. One can do everything the other one can do. The other cannot. This has nothing to do with what you like better, it is just a simple factual discussion.  Want to hear exactly what the microphone picked up, use digital. Want to hear a euphonic presentation that you (and others) may or may not prefer? Use analog.  Want the option? Use digital and explore the plug-ins available to add colorations and distortions and noise.

Some people want the world to be full of magic. Others simple roll up their sleeves and get things done.

In these two posts you illustrated you don't understand signal processing, digital audio, spectrum, etc.  Not much point in continuing.   At the end of the day,  you can record an album on digital, and play it back on digital (carefully choosing the equipment), and not be able to tell the two apart. That should tell you that vinyl is nothing but a bunch of colorations and distortions that can be replicated in digital. It should tell you that. If it tells you something else .....

Seven: Nyquist theorem is about coding and decoding signals and also the implicit limitations and not only the power to do so.... This theorem has nothing to do directly with TIMBRE, which is the cornerstone of musical perception but more than that the cornerstone for evaluation of audio system in their acoustical controlled or uncontrolled embeddings...


My main point in one word is ANY evaluation of analog versus digital cannot be based on Nyquist theorem only, except for those who ignore acoustic and the fundamental PERCEIVED timbre phenomena and the powerful transformation of an audio system with the rightful embeddings controls...(This last point is my own experience for 2 years experiments)

It appears simple if you have a simplistic understanding of how things work. There is nothing "infinite" about analog recordings. Not even remotely. That you assign an infinite to them shows lack of understanding. That you think digital discards things, while analog recordings do not just shows more lack of understanding. Attacking me for holes in your knowledge is not a good look.  I seem to know exactly what timbre is, I just don't feel a need to attach special qualities to it beyond what it is.

Analog instruments don't sample...analog/infinite - very simple concept; granted within the bounds of manufacturing and human hearing but nothing is "discarded" or "sampled' like in digital.

bukanona, not sure if it a second language thing, but honestly not sure the point you are trying to make.   It is more than sampling and resolution, timing is also about jitter and channel to channel matching.  Digital maintains far better timing accuracy than any analog system.

W.R.T. methodology, can you explicitly say WHY not being able to tell a direct vinyl playback from a digitally captured and recreated one is a wrong methodology?

bukanona133 posts12-31-2020 12:51pmTiming matters, if you will calculate it in ms and will found in anatomy manual how ears are made you can go to sampling and resolution calculation and compare it with Nyquist figures - it's physics and waves + math -- no engineering at all.

And to say that you can't decide which is which in blind test are due to wrong methodology. I am listening to music for pleasure and it's long term discrimination. If you are getting tired from source you are changing it.

@mijostyn, I think this sums up well what you said:

https://i.redd.it/vbc5fvgr04901.png

mijostyn3,305 posts12-31-2020 7:20amaudio2design, it is like running into a brick wall. I suspect that most of these people have very little experience with digital equipment and obviously have no idea how powerful it is. They will keep coming up with baseless explanations for digital sounding awful or why vinyl "sounds better." I suspect most of their opinions are based on the very early CD players that had bad filters and did sound pretty bad. I do not even read mahgister’s posts any more. They make me dizzy.

It was a rather weak "paper" not based in any verified reality. There is nothing at all scientific about the paper nor really mathematical for that matter. She is not at all a subject matter expert.

note: no there is is no explanation of the Nyquist theorem there, only allusion, but she know what it is, then his conclusion cannot be attributed to his ignorance of simple maths... 😁


https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/which-sounds-better-analog-or-digital-music/

Magister,

Come on bud. There is literally no information in that article. Nothing. Some hand waving with 0 attachment to the real world at all. None. And given just a PhD candidate, not in signal processing, there is more than a small chance that her practical understanding of Nyquist and real world systems is very weak. Right now you just come across as clutching at straws and taking 6-8 paragraphs to do it. Please learn some brevity. Any point you may have is lost in the noise.

Humans are not reducible to numbers....Or apparatus...

Perception of timbre is a subjerctive/objective complex problem...

Reducing it to Nyquist theorem is ridiculous...

She also think so...

No, this is what she says.

But the limitations of math in replicating reality may factor in to the difference in listening experiences reported by so many vinyl lovers.

And guess what. She is NOT qualified to say that. The limitations of math have nothing to do with the problem. It is purely implementation which she appears quite ingnorant about.  She shows virtually no practical knowledge on the subject (not even a good theoretical understanding).

When it comes to storing sound as a digital file, however, the limited capacity of computers is a problem. Sound waves contain an infinite number of points. Computers cannot store infinite amounts of information.

And in this statement she just shows herself to be yet another academic trying to look smart outside her area of expertise.

Infinite points implies infinite bandwidth and infinite signal to noise. You assume she understands Nyquist but I posit she has as best cursory knowledge. It's not standard curriculum for mathematics. Ditto likely ignorant w.r.t Shannon's theorem.

You are interpretating what you want to and assigning expertise where no actual evidence of it exists.

When arguments lose touch with reality they always end up far into the deep end. Me 2021.

« Atheist and hard religious believers are like identical sausage burned on the fire of blind faith»-Anonymus Smith

... and need I remind you hvymec that you made the effort to contact me wrt mahgister .. and not to share kind words about him. Seems you are talking out both sides of your mouth. Sorry but he lectures just like you do, while scolding others. At least I am honest with myself.

Almarg didn't work in the music industry hvymec so perhaps he didn't have the emotional attachment and aversion to all the thick stuff that is spread in audio land that does little to help audiophiles and in many cases sets them back. He obviously had a significant background in electronics, but I have been at this for 3 decades directly in audio both practically and academics.  You may find me arrogant but I expect you were no different in your field.

P.S. may want to look at other threads too. Funny that me and Mijoystyn are the most "critical" on the vinyl/digital argument, but on a recent turntable thread also the ones with some of the more solid advice on what the issue could be.   Heck I even agreed with Miller on another thread :-) ... but in that same thread pointed out that a suggested action won't do what was claimed (physically impossible).   Maybe you should have more issue with those that post opinion as fact?

On that score @Mahgister links to a much better article than the original one that started the thread. I suppose @Audio2Design didn’t actually read it before he dismissed it. I’m talking about the one in Scientific American. It’s clear, concise, uncontroversial, and contains a key point right at the end: digital uses math to reproduce the signal, while analog doesn’t.

I read it completely. Difference between me and you is understood it. Likely understand the math as well as the author, probably way more experience with it, and far far more understanding of the practical aspects of it. It was a crap article like so many other crap articles by supposed intellectuals not realizing what they don’t know.

If you understood the math and practical implications you would realize that your beloved "analog" is not remotely the "real" thing and is a far poorer representation of reality than digital. You simply love the high crosstalk (centers image especially in acoustically poor setups), you like the surface noise (gives a sense of space), you like the softened transients (easy old the ears) and perhaps you like all the inaccuracies in your setup that warm the sound or brighten it for older ears. You probably like the higher distortion too which again can create an artificial but false sense of space. Given the typically poor acoustics most "audiophiles" live with I can see the attraction.

But ... Some of us choose not to delude ourselves that vinyl or tape is superior for accurate recreation. You may like it. I often do. But I am quite aware of why and it is not remotely because it is realistic or true to the source. It is not.

I do a mix of vinyl and digital @lohanimal , tending towards vinyl for rock/pop, and digital for most other things. That is far from a hard/fast rule.  A lot of it is just conditioning. The vast majority of audiophiles on this site I am going to guess are older, probably most north of 50, or way north, and they have decades and decades of conditioning for a particular sound.  There are articles out there that show the younger generations when comparing, will prefer digital. I do get a laugh at the mental twists and turns that people will apply to vinyl, tape, and "analog", without making that simple leap that they prefer it, not because it is more accurate, but because it is less. How often do people take their photos and manipulate them to create less accurate, but more pleasing versions without giving a thought to it?

jollytinker175 posts01-10-2021 9:40am

@audio2design:

It was a crap article like so many other crap articles by supposed intellectuals not realizing what they don’t know.

Look, this is utter nonsense as anyone can see if they feel like reading through the article. It’s also nonsense (but funny) that you can hear my system through my own ears and describe its problems.

Anyone who reads the article with any actual experience will quickly realize the author does not have any other than a cursory understanding of the math and little understanding of the technology. It's a puff piece.   That the article "impresses" you only substantiates my statement.  Throw around credentials (weak at best), avoid any practical discussion (since you have no actual experience), suggest conclusions (without backing it up). It's formulaic.

@cerrot, What exactly is that "analog sound"?


- compression?
- noise?
- high crosstalk?
- non flat frequency response?
- subdued bass?
- softened transients?

Can you explain this analog sound in more detail please in case I missed anything?

He used an tape recorder and a digital recording maschine. There were 2,3 women talking very quitly before the concert startet.
After the concert he checked both recordings. The whispering of the women could be heard on the Tape, slightly, as the tape noise was almost as high

.

Several things at play here and also how it would play out differently today.

The tape recorder was probably set up (often are) so that there was some compression on the loudest peaks. That effectively extends the dynamic range beyond the raw SNR with technically loss of fidelity.

The digital recorder was likely set up so that no peak was at the max, effectively reducing its dynamic range.

You can detect sounds with an SNR < 1, which was or was close to what was happening with the tape player.

The digital recorder was likely a lower quality or older unit (if in the 90's) and was limited to raw 16 bits for recording.

If you did this test today, you would record it at 24 bit, and the voices would be more audible than the tape.  If you down mixed to 16 bit, you would add noise shaped dither to get the perceptive dynamic range up 115+db, and again, the voices would be audible with a lower noise floor than the tape.

As humans we are organic/analogue - digital is not that. I just accept the advantages of each format although I was in the larger group that preferred vinyl.

Are you aware of any DACs that output "digital". Last time I checked they all outputted analog. They just happen to output analog far better than the vinyl. Funny that huh?

@wuwulf ,


You are making the classic mistake, no offence, of assuming that because something is preferred (by some), that it must be inherently more accurate. That could not be farther from the truth, and would be true for most forms of human perception whether that the sound reproduction, image reproduction, lighting, etc.

Most people will prefer a slightly over-saturated unnatural photograph to one that reveals the most accurate colors. People, on average, when they are looking at faces, prefer lighting that is unnaturally "warm".  Why should we expect any different for audio?  Many people crank their bass up a bit if they can. Many soften the treble (if they can). Vinyl introduces a whole host of colorations, the end result obviously being favorable to a large group of people.  There is no need to try to make up arguments about some unknown property that makes it more accurate. It is simply pleasant colorations that appeal to a group of people, sometimes coupled with a mix/master that is superior to the digital one.

@wuwulf ,

I prefer vinyl sometimes depends on the music, and by genre I often find rock/pop better in vinyl.

Some people who prefer vinyl seems to prefer NOS DACs, probably more at Redbook rates. You many want to try one and see if you like it. I am not a fan, but this is all personal preference.

w.r.t. what comes off the microphone, in the recording industry it is pretty much universally recognized that digital will recreate a more accurate representation of what comes off the microphone. That is not to say you will prefer it.

Then again with Vinyl, depending on how well your turntable is set up, how well your cartridge and pre are matched, how well the compliance is matched between cartridge and arm, etc. you may have a quite flat frequency response, or one that is elevated in the highs, or one that is suppressed and ditto for bass, so it is hard to make definitive statements around frequency response.

Also of note, the frequency response of what you hear close microphoned is much difference than what would be heard if you were farther away. Bass frequencies don't attenuate quick in air, but high frequencies do.


Most younger people who grew up on digital prefer it to analog. What is natural to one, is unnatural to another.

wuwulf10 posts01-15-2021 3:48am01-15-2021 9:37amDear audio2design,
but one more thing I believe is rather curios. If digital is defenitely superior, why than there are so many different solutions? Like using a chip form a manufacturer versus programming your own chip. NOS versus DAC with Filter. PCM versus DSD. Upsampling vs No Upsampling etc. Sometimes I feel the dissonance beween different digital opponents is bigger even than in analog where you have the dd versus rim versus belt discussions.This uncertainty about how to process digital best does not neccessarilymean that digital is inferior. What it shows to me is: solutions in digital or analog are easier to build than to be explained :-)

Sonic differences between what I will call technically equivalent DSD and PCM virtually all come down to implementation details.

Other than that, most of what you are mentioning is either implementation detail and/or an intentional euphonic manipulations and moving away from accuracy. I am not at all against that if you like the outcome.

NOS DACs at redbook rates are not technically accurate. The are fraught with both audible band artifacts and near audible band that can subharmonically isolate.  You can put a brick wall analog filter, but then you have other issues.


Upsampling a NOS DAC with a standalone upsampler will fix most of the ills of a NOS DAC. However, if you prefer one sound for one genre and a different sound for another genre, it makes total sense.

Every chip DAC designed in the last 20 years, and most high end standalone DACs where the DAC is discreet upsample. Sometimes they upsample a lot.  In most cases that is very good thing.  It makes analog filters simple and easy, and improves SNR in the audible band.  It's not going to overcome bad design.  There are some DAC chips that measure better at lower sample rates, but not so much modern ones.

Modern DACs also have different filter setting. Most of these "new" filter settings are technically less accurate. Some prefer the sound.

Other implementation details come into play like how well they reject noise on data / electrical connections, and how well they reject jitter on optical/co-ax connection.  A virtually jitter free isolated USB interface is not rocket science.

Don't leave us in suspense, which has more "micronuance"?

They don't argue about what is real, they argue because many (most?) artists have a much different impression of how they sound versus how they actually do.  Digital captures every wart in their playing or singing. It does not add anything nor take anything away.  It is totally unforgiving.  Lots of artists don't like to know they are not as good as they think they are :-)


Amateur musician, not awful :-). I know it is very hard to hear accurately yourself while playing. Singing impossible. Your position in relationship to your instrument makes for a quite different sound compared to what is recorded in front of you. There are quite different masking effects due to body placement, direction of the instrument, etc.


You are not discussing with me. You are trying to tell me things that are not true are.

 My opinion and that of many colleagues (not all) has been that ON BALANCE analog tape gets closer to the sound of real. 

You see now I know you are lying. Why because I am quite open about my experience having developed, modified, optimized, world class studio equipment much of my life and spent too much time listening to live feeds and recording feeds from just before digital when analog was at its peak (I optimized many a tape machine) all the way through the digital revolution.  I started my career with tape optimization. I spent 100s of hours listening to what was being played and recorded live. 


I would have a very hard time finding a recording engineer with the relevant experience, and I have dealt with 100s, who would claim that the analog recording was more "real" or true to the source. Ones that work with high end professional gear and have experience with both just don't say that because it is not true. You won't be able to tell the difference between a live feed and the digital studio recording. They are indistinguishable.  With tape you always knew ... Always. The artifacts are readily noticable.


Recording engineers don't use terms like dynamic micro nuance or whatever made up term you created.

Now many engineers and artists preferred the euphonic colorations of tape. Took some of the edge off perhaps, fattened the bass, etc.  That is why we have digital plug ins to simulate those effects.

I don't expect people to believe me. Do a search for highly experienced engineers who worked from the 80s -2000s. Some have written articles. All will say digital is what accurately recreates the source (warts and all).  Many will also say that tape presented a more pleasing recreation, but not more accurate.  Now they just recreate that in software and get the best of both worlds.

Low Level.Listening to digital I hear every insrument beautiful rendered, often betters analog. There is enough of everything, but still somehow it is presented as it is recorded in space. Where on analog the music is more like craftet.

Remember helping out on a recording of a three piece trio with one singer.  Very simple music, absolute dark background done in a studio environment.  The result was not good. The quiet was unnatural and the brain just does not like that. It was fixed by adding in some environmental noise.   Ever noticed how hearing chairs move in an orchestral recording isn't distracting and adds a more real quality?

There are lots of tools now for adding pleasant (to most) euphonic colorations. It's an interesting area.   For me personally i prefer the dark background on orchestral music, likely because their is so much going on and digital allows me to pick out all the nuance including that chair moving.  Rock and Pop I often prefer vinyl but modern releases are changing that.

The term specifically used by the poster was "micro dynamic nuance". That is a made up term.  Micro and macro dynamics within the recording process are not a made up terms and even though "micro" is the nomenclature used, the processes are fairly "macro" at least in terms of what I would consider layman thinking.

Someone who "claims" to know the recording process intimately would know that this property is pretty much exclusively a factor of performance and mixing and mastering, from the time the note is played, to the final master, vinyl, analog tape, or digital is made.  i.e. it is almost all a factor of the specific recording you are playing, and has little to do with the medium. However, like always, there is the potential for digital to have more dynamic range, so technically there is more latitude to play with dynamics. 


No point me retyping all of this, but i copied a critical section below so people can understand that this is not about the playback or recording medium, but is pretty much all the recording itself.

https://miloburke.com/blogs/personal-blog/posts/micro-dynamics-and-macro-dynamics

How can a mastering engineer improve the micro-dynamics of a song?

• If the micro-dynamics are out of control, the mastering engineer can use compression to get the instruments to gel together more smoothly, and to avoid excessive volume variation.
   
• If the micro-dynamics of the song are too squashed from the mix, the mastering engineer can use expansion to bring out volume variation within a measure.
   
• If the transients of the drums aren't getting enough attention, the mastering engineer can compress with a slower attack.
   
• If the transients of the drums are too excessive, the mastering engineer can tame them by using a compressor with very fast attack and release times.
   
• A mastering engineer can bring out the groove and shape of each measure by balancing a compressor just right, to have the level of the mix subtly bounce and sway around the rhythm of the drums.

Frogman, for all your experience you still don't get this recording and playback process. I am glad you complained about microphone position. Few recording engineers are overly familiar with effective live ensemble recording. They know what they were taught but can't visually the sound field and make bad decisions.

However it's all moot. The only thing you can record is what reaches the microphone. All else is periphery and deflection. If you want to accurately capture what reaches that microphone analog does not do that and has not need as good at doing that for 2+ decades.

When you accept that digital can record and playback vinyl without being able to tell the two apart you have to accept that vinyl is no more colorations or a transfer function of you will no different from the many used day in and day out in the recording industry. You may play an instrument but you seem oblivious to what happens after the sound reaches the microphone.

No one is trying to convince you that you are not hearing what you are claiming to hear. They are telling you it has nothing to do with vinyl, that vinyl absolutely does not have superior signal recreation capability, that what you hear is purely the particular recording and personal preference. That digital is more capable of whatever nuance you may claim which should be self evident given you can record vinyl on digital and play it back and not be able to distinguish the two.


I am also saying your claim that recording engineers think analog/vinyl is more "real" on average is made up.