PC Rules

Rather than comparing vinyl to a hard drive recording of that vinyl you actually may have compared the line stages of a solid state preamp to a solid state preamp running through a tube buffer stage and differences in turntable stands/supports. What you should have done was make recordings of the stock interface and then recordings of the upgraded interface and then compared.

I also have a problem with your declaration that one sounds better. A recording can only sound faithful to its original or not. If the recording doesn't sound like the original, then by definition there is distortion in the recording chain. For any number of reasons you make like the sound of those distortions better than the undistorted original, but you are listening to a distorted version.

Unless your squigly things generates some sort of immaculate conception the rebirth process must involve the passage of data from one generation to the next. The issue then becomes whether that data is passed unaltered, or does some distortion creep in?

BTW, none of this will matter after 8:11pm.

Read the fable about the wager between the North Wind and the Sun. It might help you better reframe your arguments.

Unless you where in the mastering room at the time the final mixes were approved you can never know the true sound of a recording. What I can determine is whether a recording of a vinyl, CD or tape recording sounds like the original recording when played back on the same systems in the same room. In other words a copy of a copy should be indistinguishable from the "original" copy. If I want to remaster the copy that's a whole other thing.

Redbook CD is a single digital format and should not be used to judge the capabilities of digital recording. Unless someone starts engineering new vinyl mastering lathes or tape recorders, and that ain't happening, then the future of digital is virtually unlimited when compared to analog. Will digital's potential ever be commercially realized? That's another issue.

Orpheus10, I think you're on the wrong track about what's going on. In analog every stage loses some fidelity, whereas in digital that doesn't have to be the case. In your example the square wave single isn't getting improved as it passes through your upgraded device. The best that can happen is that it doesn't get degraded as much as previously done with your non-upgraded device.