Diff in recording/reproduction in Analog/CD/SACD

I can believe that Albert's LP playback system, heard through his superb amplification and speaker system, and using well cleaned new audiophile vinyl is probably very close to the master tapes, and what more could you ask? He has stated that cost-no-object digital sources are, in his system, inferior. I cannot dispute this, because I have never experienced a system like his, and probably never will. However, I have auditioned some fairly high end vinyl playback equipment, just barely within the budget that I could consider, and I still hear problems which would annoy me, that are absent in even moderately priced digital sources.

If we consider only audio quality (neglecting convenience, and the potential of multichannel, where digital is a runaway "winner") I think that the answer depends on the price range of the equipment in question. Specifically, IMHO, a digital player costing about a grand, and playing a well engineered SACD or DVDA, will produce a signal suitable for all but the most costly amplification and speakers. I don't think that the LP can achieve this at the same price point (including, don't forget, the record cleaning machine that the experts say is essential).

Ejlif...We differ in opinion. Who is right or wrong is for others to decide, hopefully by listening to the gear rather than reading this thread. Please note that I report my experience over 50 years of spinning LPs...it's not just a theoretical opinion. It sounds like you got a super deal on your TT/arm/cart. A good MC pickup costs a lot more.

Albertporter....You know how I feel about vinyl surface noise :-)

Tape "Hiss" also annoys me. On many of my older LPs it is evident that even the master tape has hiss, because you can hear it cut in before the music. This problem was largely eliminated by DBX processing of master tapes, and Dolby in home playback systems. Are your 15"/sec tapes DBX? If not, is there hiss?

Albert!!! We have a truce, or at least a cease fire, about LP surface noise :-)

Evidently your tapes are better than many, because the tape hiss that I hear on some old (pre DBX) LPs is obvious at playback levels well below 95dB (peak). Of course it is masked when the music is loud. Only with classical music in very quiet passages is the tape hiss audible while the music is playing.

Stevecham...Sound waves in air are truly analog. But contrary to what you suggest the sense of hearing is ultimately digital in nature. Neurons "fire", or "not"...a "one" or a "zero". The level of activity of a great number of neurons taken as a group conveys the analog information, just as does a digital data stream. Sorry about that. But who cares?

As the digital sampling rate and/or bit resolution gets better and better the difference between digital and anlog disappears. In over words the analog waveform reconstructed from the digital data stream exactly matches the original analog waveform. Isn't that what you want? Are we there yet? With 16bit/44Khz simple electrical measurement instruments clearly say no. The ears, with some ambiguity, also say no. IMHO, the situation is boaderline. With the present "high Resolutuion digital audio" 24 bit/96 KHz (or the SACD equivalent) we have probably reached to point of diminishing returns (not ideal perfection) with respect to waveform error resulting from the digital nature of the information. There are many other ways that the waveform can get distorted, having nothing to do with digital issues, and these mostly afflict analog information processing. Most of all, the analog loudspeaker that creates the sound waves which we hear is the dominant error source.