When is digital going to get the soul of music?

Jwm, if all of the old analog master tapes have deteriorated and saved only in quad DSD, we have to hope the digital is equal to what used to be master tapes.

Mmakshak, I think the difference between the finest vinyl and digital has closed greatly in the last five years with better dacs and teflon output caps as well as going to read until right hard drives as a digital source. Finally, I have found the finest of isolation, Halcyonics, drives both to their highest levels yet.

I still suspect that neither will ever equal quality reel to reel tapes at close to the originals.

I also believe that neither digital nor vinyl will closely approach live with the speakers and the amplifiers being the major reason for this failure.

With every improvement I have made to pursue realism, I still hear a difference between vinyl and digital. Vinyl now has virtually no surface noise, thanks largely to the Halcyonics and the use of the Walker Audio Prelude four step cleaner. The bass has location and no boom or overhang. Digital has much the same character thanks to no errors in reading the digital information and the clarity of teflon caps. Having the dac well isolated on the Halcyonics also makes a major improvement.

Finally, my new H-Cat amp is like no other I have heard and make both live, but that is another thread.

I think digital has come a very long way, but I really have no idea what "soul" in music means. Is it like pace, foot tapping, or realism?

One of the ways that digital has come far is relatively error correction ripping to a hard drive and played back through a good dac.

Mmakshak, I have had a similar experience with my new Mac/Amarra/Firewire/Weiss Minerva. I have found the soundstage more precise, the top end sweeter and more extended, and the bass deeper and less one note in character than my vinyl system (Shindo Labs combo).

I sought to get more information on Oritek but their webpage cannot be found. Do you have a link?

I have three digital sources that are quite acceptable to me, although I still prefer vinyl. My Mac Powerbook Pro with SSD and playing Pure Music 1.65a in Memory mode with Entreq FW through my Weiss Dac202, the same source using Entreq USB through my H-Cat Dac, and my Exemplar Oppo 83 are these three sources. As yet, I have heard no better digital regardless of price.

I would like to describe my experiences the last several days. I am not bragging about my system, but I think I have the best sound that I have had in nearly 50 years at this. My digital uses an Apple Powerbook Pro running Pure Music on Hog and memory modes and my dacs are the Weiss Dac202 or the H-Cat dac. My vinyl is a Bergman Sindre with the Ortofon A-90 cartridge tracking at 2.00 grams and a H-Cat phono stage. I know few here know the H-Cat stuff, but I find it very resolving.

Last night I compared Frank Sinatra and Count Basie at the Sands using the original vinyl release and the server with the source disc being a SHM release to the hard drive.

I heard a very different music performance. The vinyl is very pleasing with Sinatra sounding very real and smooth. The audience and band are present but somewhat vaguely located in the background. It was very listenable. The digital on the H-Cat dac was very fast and dynamic with the audience quite precisely located and at some points in the performance there was an edge to his voice that might be mike overload or a true edge in his 50 year old voice. This was present with both dacs. Generally, the digital performance sounded more like being there, but at others it sounded strained and discontinuous. This also was true using the Weiss 202 which had 24 bits rather than the 16 of the H-Cat. The Weiss gives a somewhat more distant perspective but otherwise had the same limitations.

I guess that my conclusion is that I can live with either, that both have strong points, that higher definition of backgrounds is better in digital as well as dynamics, that digital sounds piecy, as though it is a puzzle put together. Perhaps, were I to have this recording in 192/24 HD, it might be better. I don't expect ever to have HD resolution on all of my music, however.

So what will I listen to? Well, I have only about a 10-20% overlap in my music, so it will somewhat depend on what music I want to listen too. There is no question that digital on a server is the most convenient, but I will never give up on vinyl for listenability and wholeness.

Objex and Charles1dad, in a long ago posting on this thread, I basically said what you said plus the additional observation that neither was the equal of good magnetic tapes. I have since greatly improved my digital with a music server from Empirical Audio. This has been an awesome improvement, but now using a new BMC MCCI phono stage, I am hearing what I have never thought possible from vinyl. I often think vinyl cannot be achieving this detail, dynamic, depth, etc. You have to go into this unit with balanced ics, but wow!

As good as my digital has become, it will never equal what I am hearing from vinyl, but of course, all I need to do with my digital is to select from among approximately 175 albums from my Ipad using the Remote app and play it. I can then put away all my cds.

Charles1dad, typically, I would entirely agree. Listen to the BMC MCCI if you can, and you will understand.

Detlof, I have to agree that we are strongly moving to much better digital. Recently, I have discovered how substantially vulnerable to vibrations dacs are and how much EMI and RFI gets into dacs from the digital wire to it. The vibrations did not really come as a surprise to me as I have been on a slippery and expensive slope. StillPoints products have been a revelation as to how insidious vibrations are. But recently a friend sent me a Hitachi Finemet core through which I ran the Firewire cable to the Weiss DAC202 dac. It was placed close to the dac. Framkly it transformed my digital. Where can you get one of these cores? I don't know, but I have tried other ferrite rings and they don't do what this does.

This is what I found out about Finemet. "Hitachi Metals developed the first nanocrystalline soft magnetic material in the world, named “FINEMET®”. “FINEMET®” has high saturation flux density and high permeability. It also has stable temperature characteristics. “FINEMET®” provides excellent performance in electromagnetic noise suppression and contributes to energy saving. It will allow reduction in size and weight of electric and electronics devices as well. It is our hope, “FINEMET®” will be the best solution for your application due to its unique soft magnetic properties."

Do I think it is better than my vinyl? No, it is different and certainly more convenient. Do I think it is quite listenable? Yes, certainly.

I think the answer is soon. It will be with a Lenco, a quality amplifier of the cartridge, and recorded at double DSD. I will probably hear it this year.

With the advent of double DSD recordings and native DSD DACs, I think we will be surprised. I now have a few sacds done on my harddrive as DSD files. I don't yet have a native DSD DAC, however, but these are far superior to the sacds played on universal players or HD 192/24 files.

There is, however, a characteristic difference between digital and vinyl. One is a pain to use, especially for albums redone to 45 rpm. The other you can sit and use your Ipad to control everything, mute it, go back to one cut, etc.

Koplo, you said, 'no analogs at all, even at the loudspeakers' terminals.' Without 256 independently driven small drivers, how can you have digital to a speaker?

If you play the music from the hard drive into memory before playback, how would SSDs differ from HHDs? Also SSDs are too limited in size, especially for DSD native.

Charles1dad, while I have not done a comparison of the Duelunds with the Urushi and other blocking caps, I do have two friends who have and both report the Urushis are both cheaper and better. I use them in everything where I can get them in.

Stickman451, I think DSD far surpasses HD PCM. I had many of my sacds playable off my music server and thought the DSD far superior to just playing the sacds. All was great, until my 09 Mac Mini stopped working and my new 13 Mac Mini was screwed up by Apple to get it to work with Windows 8. Many third party programs were screwed by Apple in getting the Mac to run on this worthless MS program. Soon I expect that these third party systems will be updated to work with the 13 Mac Mini. I dearly wish I could dump Apple, but the Remote app on the Ipad is great for running what Itunes thinks is its music data, and the Mac Mini still has Firewire output.

All of this said, however, my Nantasis Lenco, Ikeda 407 arm and Ikeda 9TT blows away even the dsd.

Mapman and Charles1dad, all I can say is that I have many double record 45 rpm reissued great jazz recordings where I have nice remastered cd versions. There is just no comparison in the attack, involvement in the recording, or just realism.

If you are happy with what you hear, and so am I, all is well. I do think that dsd and certainly double dsd will get digital so close that the convenience of hard drive and computer music servers and their convenience will overcome any shortfall of digital.

I suspect that Double DSD will be very close to vinyl. And then there is Quad DSD which is what SONY is usings to archive their tape holdings before the tapes are all lost. Soon, Quad DSD files will be available. There will be nothing closer to achieve. The Sabre 9018 and 19 chips such as in the Oppo 105 can play Double DSD. The real question is getting the information from the hard drive to the dac.

Since Sony preportedly is going to put its master tapes all on quad DSD, I suspect that will be the end of the difference. Master tapes will be digital. I suppose there willl be less dense copies because of portability.

Now all I need is a DSD source for my Exemplar Oppo 105 mod and for the LampizatOr both of which can play native DSD, I think.

I don't know about the soul, but the High Fidelity Ultimate Reference Rhodium pc on the Exemplar eXpo T 105 mod of the Oppo 105, has a more realistic sound stage than my Lenco/Ikeda 407 with their 9TT cartridge/BMC MCCI vinyl. If you don't get goosebumps with realism in a great performance, there is something wrong with you.

Charles1dad, I never thought I would say that either. They are quite different, but digital has gotten quite close, if not ahead.

If as rumored, Sony transfers all it master tapes to quad DSD, master analog tapes will no longer be the definition of best. I'm soon to have a double DSD capable music server. No doubt quad DSD is some way off. But I'm moving to be prepared.

Guidocorona, hi long time no see. I think Schultz merely fines a smooth plating is needed and Rhodium allows it. I personally prefer berelium/copper but that has gotten hard to find in the US.

Having just returned from the RMAF and again heard very musical reproduction of mono records, I think there is a clear difference between the best digital sound and the best vinyl sound. The first is very musical and the second can be very real sounding, as though you are there at the recording.

I bought my first cds in London in 1983. I had no cd player at the time. I can assure you that what I heard when I got my first Dual Audio toaster like cd player has been totally eclipsed today with my present double DSD playback system. Getting the digital filters well beyond 50 kHz has revealed much of the music that they previously obscured.

I think this is a dead end thread. I think digital has the potential now to be the equal of master tapes. Sony is supposedly in the process of preserving its master tapes into quad DSD, but using a device with many opamps which are ruining the recording. So soon vinyl will be digital.

Already I listen to double DSD from sacds and upsampled from SACDs. I am most struck that what I hear from old vinyl differs greatly from that on reissues. Most often the high end is gone reissues.

I have a good vinyl system also but because of the above seldom can I say much about the comparison as they are different mastering.

Audioengr, pretty soon all master tapes will be quad DSD digital tapes. We had better hope that this format captures the "soul" of music.

I really don't think that "soul" is the goal. Rather, the emotion of the musicians is there in both vinyl and digital, but the filters and lost resolution best accounts for the deficiency with 44.1 digital versus the best vinyl.

Colekat, generally I agree with what you say here.

Your last sentence, "If there was a gathering of all these…." is the subjunctive voice. It should be "If there were a gathering of all these…" I grant that few pay any attention to such now days.