I think we're surfing on religion here! At the end, the listener can prefer possibly a more distorted version of the original sound coming out of the instruments played by the musicians! A more "colorful" sound liked by this user, which for another may be completely different.
I'm an electrical engineer with 27 years of experience... and i'm an audiophile too. I've seen the arrival of digital sound. The first CD Player i listened to sounded awful, thanks to brickwall analog filters that destroyed the sound. Then technology refined and then came oversampling + noise shaping en refinement in electronic. It took time to get DACs that could do the job properly. It reminds me the first big Wadia DAC.
As we speak, now the electronic in audio is something we master much better and it translates into high quality for decent price. Engineering is like that: You can do many things but at the end, you're selling a product for profit. You have many constraints: Price, Technology, Production, Quality, Components Tolerance, etc. And you target an audience, a customer. There is of course competition: How to sell your product? What can you offer that will translate into sale?
Over all those years, i listened to many many very high end audio kits assembled for shows, in listening rooms, etc. The system you like might not be the most expensive. And my friend, which is an audiophile too, doesn't necessarily like the same system. In our case though, it's clear that we can't go back to vinyl for many reason. We liked back then the great Linn-Sondek LP12 playing through Mark-Levinson (No 23.5 + No 26) electronic and the Kef R107 speakers. But what we have now, because of convenience and excellent audio without surface noise / clicks, superior separation and dynamics, is very pleasing to listen (for us!): Ayre QB9, Krell (KSA-100s + KRC) + Dynaudio Confidence 20. We just use a little Atom Mini-ITX system running Debian + MPD + front end, hooked to a file server containing FLAC file, for us it is the perfect system. Other may like to handling / playing vinyls over the great looking and sounding turntables (VPI HR-X, wow) !!
Last year, when we went to our nearby HiFi shop, we listened to an expensive system (150K $ +) that featured the big Mac amplifiers / preamp and i don't remember the rest: Didn't like it that much... But it may surely please someone else! And you have the "placebo" effect too: Your brain will "contribute" to confirm what you believe! That's really not a problem: Listen to music and have fun (which is the ultimate goal) !
So if you consider sound coming from instruments and finally reaching your ears, you have a "transmission line" that modify the sound as it travels: Microphones, ADCs, mixing, transfer to medium, playback by your record player, preamp ( DAC / RIAA ) , amp, wires, speaker, listening room and finally your ears / brain / taste!!! So here we are with this topic.
You know what, it doesn't bother me at all the someone prefers vinyl! I prefer digital but i agree that listening low quality streaming music played back with a mediocre sound system sounds awful! I could say the same with low quality vinyls, badly recorded played back on a bad system!
Saying that science failed with music is just a bit exaggerated... Saying that engineers "don't get it" is a bit of a lack of respect IMHO... Sure, bad engineering exists...as bad musician and "believers" listeners... But as an engineer, your job is to design things with constraints and come up with a solution: Sometimes the best solution is the one that translate into more profit, best looking, most convenient, most portable, etc.
I'm an electrical engineer with 27 years of experience... and i'm an audiophile too. I've seen the arrival of digital sound. The first CD Player i listened to sounded awful, thanks to brickwall analog filters that destroyed the sound. Then technology refined and then came oversampling + noise shaping en refinement in electronic. It took time to get DACs that could do the job properly. It reminds me the first big Wadia DAC.
As we speak, now the electronic in audio is something we master much better and it translates into high quality for decent price. Engineering is like that: You can do many things but at the end, you're selling a product for profit. You have many constraints: Price, Technology, Production, Quality, Components Tolerance, etc. And you target an audience, a customer. There is of course competition: How to sell your product? What can you offer that will translate into sale?
Over all those years, i listened to many many very high end audio kits assembled for shows, in listening rooms, etc. The system you like might not be the most expensive. And my friend, which is an audiophile too, doesn't necessarily like the same system. In our case though, it's clear that we can't go back to vinyl for many reason. We liked back then the great Linn-Sondek LP12 playing through Mark-Levinson (No 23.5 + No 26) electronic and the Kef R107 speakers. But what we have now, because of convenience and excellent audio without surface noise / clicks, superior separation and dynamics, is very pleasing to listen (for us!): Ayre QB9, Krell (KSA-100s + KRC) + Dynaudio Confidence 20. We just use a little Atom Mini-ITX system running Debian + MPD + front end, hooked to a file server containing FLAC file, for us it is the perfect system. Other may like to handling / playing vinyls over the great looking and sounding turntables (VPI HR-X, wow) !!
Last year, when we went to our nearby HiFi shop, we listened to an expensive system (150K $ +) that featured the big Mac amplifiers / preamp and i don't remember the rest: Didn't like it that much... But it may surely please someone else! And you have the "placebo" effect too: Your brain will "contribute" to confirm what you believe! That's really not a problem: Listen to music and have fun (which is the ultimate goal) !
So if you consider sound coming from instruments and finally reaching your ears, you have a "transmission line" that modify the sound as it travels: Microphones, ADCs, mixing, transfer to medium, playback by your record player, preamp ( DAC / RIAA ) , amp, wires, speaker, listening room and finally your ears / brain / taste!!! So here we are with this topic.
You know what, it doesn't bother me at all the someone prefers vinyl! I prefer digital but i agree that listening low quality streaming music played back with a mediocre sound system sounds awful! I could say the same with low quality vinyls, badly recorded played back on a bad system!
Saying that science failed with music is just a bit exaggerated... Saying that engineers "don't get it" is a bit of a lack of respect IMHO... Sure, bad engineering exists...as bad musician and "believers" listeners... But as an engineer, your job is to design things with constraints and come up with a solution: Sometimes the best solution is the one that translate into more profit, best looking, most convenient, most portable, etc.