Which is more accurate: digital or vinyl?

i've not read every post above, so forgive me if this has already been said.

to me the issue is which format is most complete. which is different than most accurate. sampling (digital) can be accurate but it's inherently less complete. there are gaps. so at those particular moments when the sample was taken, it may be more accurate. but it turns out that our ears like complete more than accurate.

an analogy i use is "consider a perfectly clean mirror". break it into a million pieces then glue it back together. then look at it. it is accurate. in all the places you see the reflection it shows an accurate refection. but; there are all the areas of the mirror (where you see little cracks filled with glue) without any information; so in the whole it does not look real. then consider a mirror that is dirty, there are not areas which are missing, but the slight amount of dirt is there. it's dirty but it is also complete. the reflection looks real.

i like digital and am not anti-digital. i listen to it often and enjoy it. it does not need to change to be worthy. but in direct comparison to the best analog it comes up short.

Do you really think vinyl playback has progressed much if at all over the last 50 years? How about 20?

the biggest improvement in digital music reproduction happened over 10 years ago; dsd and SACD. when it came out i jumped in big time. now 10 years later the digital players are only marginally better. many people would not hear the difference between my first SACD player and my SOTA digital player now.

OTOH vinyl has been improving dramatically over that same time. all levels of vinyl playback have improved. technology advances and market demand have pushed vinyl perfromance much higher due to the much higher potential of the format. there is simply lots of information in those grooves that improving playback gear keeps uncovering.

i just recieved a new Durand Telos tonearm which further separates the very best digital and top level vinyl.

the vinyl front end i use is less than the $72k that Ralph mentions for the digital at RMAF.

but my point was that all levels (price points) of vinyl playback have improved. a $5k or $10k vinyl front end can sound terrific. just 10 years ago the story was different. there was far fewer choices and less development focus. drive systems, arms, cartridges, and phono stages have all improved up a down the price spectrom.

so yes; maintstream does have better vinly.