Dr. Herbert Melcher has shown that the brain has tipping points. Normally music is processed by the limbic centers; this is where toe tapping and other emotional reactions come from. When things go awry with the sound, the brain seamlessly transfers processing to the cerebral cortex- the seat of the conscious portion of the brain. When this happens, the emotion content of the music is diminished or lost.
The problem for digital is that it contains harmonics unrelated to the fundamental tones (instead are intermodulations related to the scan frequency). The ear is used to hearing harmonics that relate to the fundamental tones in some way. Now this inharmonic distortion (aliasing) is not a great amount, but the ear is very sensitive to any harmonic content that is higher ordered (uses it to measure sound pressure so it has to be sensitive) and is also tuned to birdsong frequencies (where many of the aliasing artifacts occur).
In this regard the ear is usually more sensitive than test equipment.
In top of that, the aliasing does not come off as separate tones unless you use special techniques to detect it (an analog sweep tone works rather well though). So the ear converts the result as a tonality of some sort. This is why digital frequently has a crisp sound while analog some how sounds more ’round’. Its a coloration, and unlike analog one that cannot be separated from the music being reproduced.
The result: less emotionally involving/more boring.
(Brought to me by Ralph Karsten, of Atma-sphere)
