I doubt he understands anything, fully or otherwise. Your description was perfectly clear and irrefutably logical.
The part about feeling goes with the way you describe cassettes or old 78s. The one time I heard a 78 on a gramophone was some years ago but I still remember the feeling. In audiophile terms the sound was just as crappy as you would expect. But the way I have tried to describe it, it is like our systems when they are really good create the illusion of the singer being there in front of us in the room. When we do this with analog in particular the illusion can be tingly-real. With the gramophone it is more like the singer is in there. Listening to it is like, there's a person somewhere in there singing, and I'm hearing it through this metal and stuff. But she's in there!
Or if you ever did the can with string thing as a kid, you can totally tell it is a real person and not a recording on the other end. The old telephone calls were like that too. Not this cell phone BS we have today.
Very hard to explain in terms of anything we can measure. Very easy to understand in terms of things we know and feel. Another example I like to use, if you see a trout in a brook the image of the fish is distorted by the water, by the waves, by sunlight glint and glare off the water, silt and whatever else might be in the water, but yet with all of that you know for sure you are looking at a trout. A real live trout.
As opposed to if you take a picture or video of a trout, and look at it the same way, there is no doubt which is which. The video however good is never gonna be confused with the fish. Probably no amount of pixel or wavelength counting will ever figure this out, but we do it with ease.
Something is going on, whether it is with tubes needles or the direction of wires or whatever, something somehow improves or shortens the link, the connection between things. Between us and them. Sorry, but it really is hard not to get metaphysical about it.
The part about feeling goes with the way you describe cassettes or old 78s. The one time I heard a 78 on a gramophone was some years ago but I still remember the feeling. In audiophile terms the sound was just as crappy as you would expect. But the way I have tried to describe it, it is like our systems when they are really good create the illusion of the singer being there in front of us in the room. When we do this with analog in particular the illusion can be tingly-real. With the gramophone it is more like the singer is in there. Listening to it is like, there's a person somewhere in there singing, and I'm hearing it through this metal and stuff. But she's in there!
Or if you ever did the can with string thing as a kid, you can totally tell it is a real person and not a recording on the other end. The old telephone calls were like that too. Not this cell phone BS we have today.
Very hard to explain in terms of anything we can measure. Very easy to understand in terms of things we know and feel. Another example I like to use, if you see a trout in a brook the image of the fish is distorted by the water, by the waves, by sunlight glint and glare off the water, silt and whatever else might be in the water, but yet with all of that you know for sure you are looking at a trout. A real live trout.
As opposed to if you take a picture or video of a trout, and look at it the same way, there is no doubt which is which. The video however good is never gonna be confused with the fish. Probably no amount of pixel or wavelength counting will ever figure this out, but we do it with ease.
Something is going on, whether it is with tubes needles or the direction of wires or whatever, something somehow improves or shortens the link, the connection between things. Between us and them. Sorry, but it really is hard not to get metaphysical about it.