Is Digital actually better than Analog?

Oh my, how could I have miss this most erudite of brawls?

Organic? Does that mean that analog recordings are supposed to be bio-degradable?

3D optical storage = surround sound? Not really. . . it only means that by storing data in 3 dimensions we may in principle achieve higher data density. . . how the higher data density is used remains undefined by the storage medium.

Monna Lisa painted by Picasso? What a fanciful notion. . . last I checked the author was one Leonardo Da Vinci, who lived in Italy some several centuries before Pablo Picasso was even born in Spain.

In general, the proposition that "digital is better than analog" or viceversa remains undecidable.

Pauli and all, I still contend that the question of superiority of digital over analog is not only undecidable, but is likely meaningless and a false one. I grew up in Milan with the live music of the Teatro Alla Scala. I have listened to live music. I have performed live music. I have been in modern concert halls, in big and small theaters, in cathedrals, in country churches, in school cafeterias, under mideval porticos. I have sat on the banks of the Cam, while Handel's Water Music was performed on a barge. I have listened to acoustic music in piazzas and in private parlours and coming from the bandstand of Blackrock park in Dublin while I was sitting on a bench in the rain.
Now, as an audiophile I own a high end digital system, but have also listened to a lot of analog gear. Under no circumstance, I have heard any system -- analog or digital alike -- that can be deemed 'life-like'. What I have listened to is a wealth of atrocious music reproduction, from both types of front ends. And a few marvellous music systems, from both types of front ends. However, even the 'marvellous' ones, do not sound like live music. They sound different, both somewhat worse than those live venues that I have attended, and simultaneously a lot more musically satisfying than those same live experiences. Certain features of the music remain depressed or are slightly distorted, while others -- equally crucial ones -- are enhanced. In some sense, the most musically satisfying reproduction system is hyperrealistic, rather than simply realistic.. This may sound like anathema, but if our goal were to create beauty, instead of mimicking some narrow minded perspective of physical reality--the current rarely high achievements of both analog and digital--if admittedly different--are not bad at all.

GregM, you are absolutely correct. As the intrinsic goal is not realism, but hyperrealism, there will be of necessity be as many optimal versions of it as there are audiophiles, or at least broad schools of audiophiles.