When and how did you, if at all, realize vinyl is better?

But both are not detailed specific related aspects, they are generalizations... and are laid on top of the scenario as if they are the perfected fundamentals of the question or equation.

Since the question obviously remains unanswered in a way clear enough for all involved, they are obviously not the specifics of a totally functional question.

As best I can make out this statement is false.

We know that the ear converts distortion into tonality. Further, we know the kinds of distortions made by digital and analog systems.

We also know that the ear is tuned to be most sensitive at birdsong frequencies (Fletcher Munson). So any distortions occurring in that range will be easily detected by the ear.

The distortions of analog tend to be harmonics of the input signal.

The distortions of digital tend to be intermodulations between the scan frequency and the signal (aliasing).

Analog systems tend to lower ordered harmonics (particularly in the case of the LP, where the mastering process makes very little distortion; most of it occurs in playback). These tend to be less audible to the ear and are interpreted as 'warmth'.

The distortion (aliasing) of digital systems manifests as 'birdies'- so called because that's exactly what they sound like. These tend to be higher in frequency, and since the ear generally uses higher ordered harmonics as loudness cues and because the ear is particularly sensitive in this range, and also because the ear converts distortion into tonality, the result is a 'crispness', a brightness inherent in the recording.

Analog hiss, ticks and pops are not always inherent, and often sit in the speaker while the music itself exists in three dimensions. Thus its possible to listen past such artifacts (keeping in mind that the phono preamp can be a major contributor to ticks and pops if it has an unstable design, which is quite common), whereas with digital, the artifact is pretty well built into the resulting signal.

I am confident that this will change in time- it already has changed a lot since the bad old days of digital. Were this difference not there, digital would have replaced analog long ago, no looking back and no mistake and no endless analog digital debate (which is older than the Internet).

So in spite of my long diatribe, you really don't have to know anything more than the fact that analog is still very much here and alive when it really shouldn't be. The market likes it and kept it around for a reason.

So we can answer unequivocally that the highlighted statements are false and that we really do in fact have an answer on this. 

I will admit that ON AVERAGE digital files may be better than analog, because digital sources eliminate this whole issue.

I've not found that to be the case! The fact that there are a lot of poor recordings out there has been going on a long time and digital, if anything, exacerbated that as there are so many more recordings done on laptops and the like with severe budget restraints.

The recording industry wanted digital to happen as the recording cost is so much lower- almost non-existent in many cases. Analog requires that you spend a fair bit on the tape for the multi-channel machine; 1" and 2" tape that only goes for 1/2 hour gets to be a hefty cost in very short order! But if you have a laptop and some cheap microphones you're in business with digital and a lot of such recordings have made their way into the marketplace. 

The way I look at it: the ticks and pops (which can be minimized with good phono preamp design, as a poor design will have a lot more ticks and pops) exist in space separate from the music. With digital, the coloration is inherent in the music itself.

Regarding the former: if the preamp is unstable, ticks and pops are exacerbated. This is nothing to do with bandwidth- its possible to design a phono preamp with 100KHz response and still have it be stable.

There is something therapeutic about analog sound that relaxes me that digital simply lacks. I can't explain it.

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.

Yes Ralph, but she did sell her turntable and vinyl. Is she planning on buying an even better table and more vinyl?

It sounds like she's considering it!

I agree that a lot of cheap turntables (and poorly designed phono preamps) did the LP a major disservice during the 1980s. As a result there are a lot of people that think that tick and pops as well as distortion are the norm!

I have a friend that streams all her music. After hearing the same music on LP at my house, she tells me that she really regrets having sold her LPs and turntable...

2016 was the first year that LP sales outsold streaming in the UK...
from the Guardian UK:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/dec/06/tables-turned-as-vinyl-records-outsell-digital-in-uk-f...

We've showed with a lot of excellent digital gear at shows. One of the best was the Stahltek, so far ahead of the dcs, msb and the like that quite often I found myself looking at the turntable to see if an LP was playing. IOW it was pretty darn musical! Its had better be- the transport and DAC combo was about $72,000 at the time.

The designer was in the room at one show (RMAF) and was playing a Massive Attack cut; I asked him if he would like to hear the same thing on LP. He said 'sure', I put it on and in about 5 seconds he turned to me and said 'digital has such a long way to go'. I chalk it to his pragmatism that he made some of the very best stuff out there.

Speaking of pragmatism, to know that the LP is not in fact inferior, you don't have to hear a comparison or know any technical stuff at all. All you have to know is that the year of least LP production was 1992. That's 25 years ago folks and yet somehow LP production has been on the rise ever since (in the UK, sales eclipsed digital downloads fairly recently).

IOW you know because the market continues to want it. If digital was really in fact better, the LP would have been long gone and no mistake. Superior technologies have a way of committing inferior technologies to the dustbin. This is why 78s went the way. And why no-one makes side-valve internal combustion engines. And so on.

 What the record labels tried to do was ram the CD down our throats. That didn't work because it wasn't actually better. Critics like to say that people prefer the distortion of the LP, but usually they fail to mention in the same breath that people prefer that over the distortion of digital (see my first post in this thread).

If one is to be pragmatic, it would be that one has to accept that we will never get rid of distortion although we will continue to reduce it. Being that such is the case, then it really becomes a matter of understanding how the ear works and which distortions it does not care about so much and which ones it does. To that end, distortions that involve higher frequencies and or harmonics are going to be less musical to the ear. Its possible to accommodate that in design.

So that is what digital has to sort out, and in the last 15 years in particular there has been a lot of excellent work in that area. I think eventually it will get there (it nearly is now although that's been true for a really long time); until then its getting easier and easier to find vinyl.

You will realize vinyl is better if you like snaps, crackles and pops.

In many cases ticks and pops are actually artifacts of the phono section; while the actual tick or pop is on the LP surface, if the phono section is unstable it will exacerbate the tick and make it a lot louder than it really is on the LP. IOW phono preamp design has a huge effect on this and its not a bandwidth thing.

 If you only listen to contemporary music, I doubt you're better off trying to hear it all in vinyl. No point in adding a layer of distance from the original digital recording.

The assumption here is that all modern music is digital and all mastered the same. Its not.

When mastering an LP from a digital source, the LP usually does not employ as much compression since there is no expectation that the LP will be played in a car. Further, the mastering house if often working with the master file that has far less processing applied than the file intended for digital media. So even though using a digital source file it can still sound better.

But analog tape is seeing a comeback too, and pro analog multitrack machines are going for a lot more now than just 5 years ago as demand has increased. IOW there are new LPs coming out now that are recorded analog.

Add to that: vinyl of new titles is a lot easier to find these days!

It always sounded better to me.

Early on using digital recorders, I noticed that there was this weird distortion, which is an intermodulation with the scan frequency. If you record with an analog sweep tone, its easy enough to hear the distortion. Radio Amateurs describe it as 'birdies'; little chirps and cheeps the accompany the actual sweep tone, clearly not there in the source!

This type of distortion is also called 'inharmonic distortion' as it is not harmonically related to the fundamental test tone.

But the digital world does not like the idea that digital can make a distortion (after all, traditional IM and THD are almost non-existent). So they call this distortion 'aliasing'.

The thing is, the ear converts all forms of distortion into tonality and is particularly sensitive to the frequencies where aliasing occurs; this is why digital tends to sound bright compared to the LP, which inherently lacks this form of distortion.

When we started mastering LPs I discovered that a lot of what I thought I knew about the format was incorrect. For example, you can find people that think LPs can have 'saturation' which is nonsense! Here's why: the mastering amplifiers typically can make about ten times the power needed to turn the cutter head into a cinder. But the cutter head can cut undistorted grooves that no tone arm and cartridge combo could trace long before that cutter is overheated! So its arguable that the LP has more headroom than any other format.

Now when a lacquer is cut, if the stylus is set up right with the right angle and temperature (its heated), the resulting cut has a noise floor that is so quiet that no matter what your playback electronics are they will be the noise floor. IOW the noise floor of a lacquer is easily in the same range as a CD. The noise comes in with analog tapes and the pressing process (QRP, Acoustic Sounds' pressing plant, has done exceptional work in this area BTW, rivaling the actual noise floor of the lacquers).

We also found that any LP record combined with playback system made since about 1960 or so can do 30KHz without difficulty. So the LP has had superior bandwidth for a very long time. Most of its distortion comes in during playback and that is one of its weaknesses.