Why is digital audio so complicated? Where did it all go wrong?

[f1eng]

So, I've been thinking about this quite a bit over the past months, following topics all over the place on various forums etc - including here obviously -  as well as from my own experimentation.

Lets just get this out there first - I'm not sure how factually correct any of this, it just one persons opinion - but as far as I can tell, CD was invented about 30 years ago(?) and it bought digital audio to the masses, but many still argue to this day that it takes an ultra-expensive player to make CD sound 'good', and that's still miles from being as good as vinyl, or at least from sounding 'realistic' or 'pleasing' (read natural I suppose).  Computer based audio followed, and it seems like only an uber expensive computer based setup can sound as good as an uber expensive CD player, and in most cases the sounds is still only just believable as being 'real' and 'natural' in many cases, although some say high-end digital is now equal or better than vinyl, so it seems it can be done.

In my mind, the theory's simple - digital data is sent from A and received at B, where it is converted to analogue for output.  If dropouts aren't occurring, then we assume the data arrived unharmed, but that's not quite good enough apparently.  (OK, there are a lot of things in the chain like DACs, amps and speakers but lets ignore those for now and assume they're perfect.).  The bit I'm talking about is this getting the digital data from source to destination, and the related problems that are bounded around.  Jitter, EM interference, Signal Integrity, clock bending, power supply noise, ground noise, galvanic isolation, atomic clocking, digital cable boundary effects, cable impedance, reflections, the list goes on I'm sure - but all seem to contribute in some way towards making this specific audio version of digital, somehow prone to lots of issues, and there is no length you can't go to extract a bit more just by making this digital data 'better'.

Now, we've been to the moon, and are planning to go to Mars, we're starting to get a much deeper understanding of the universe and how it was formed, we've made radical advances in medicine and science - many of us carry computers in our pockets that are more powerful than the early supercomputers.  There's a whole swathe of other things too many to mention here obviously.  (OK so we're not so smart because we've also f'ed up a lot of the planet and caused untold suffering at the same time…but technology-wise we seem to know what we're doing).

So what went wrong with digital audio?  Why has something that in this day and age should be so easy, turned out to be so complicated?  Are the problems all real, or  part real, or is the actual problem just not really understood? Or are there a lot of people taking advantage of the fact that its hard for humans to make decisions about what they hear so are deliberately misinforming or making it more complicated than it needs to be? Or a combination of?

I've done a fair bit of tweaking - albeit nothing compared to some - and think I'm open-minded, but often at the end of it I start to question myself, and wonder whether those that say it's just the brain playing tricks might be right (at least in part).

Be keen to hear what others think….

Back on topic.

I think that the process and handling of digital data is kind of more difficult than the inventors thought. I mean, it's like having the tools to cut a banana into pieces and glue it together again...we know we have the ability to do that...but it nevermore is the same banana again. We just don't have the skills to get back to its origin (until we are on the USS Enterprice and use the replicator ).

There is so much time-phase sensitive processes in digital audio data, so the ADC/DAC can not glue the pieces to the right place in time beside loosing some pieces (CDP) and interpolate them.

If you use a complete analog system you have only minor problems with time-phase. There is a continuous music signal and it's not cut. I think that's the first obvious you get when you are listening to analog music...and due to lack of words you call it naturalness. All the rest like distortion and frequency characteristics are not that much disturbing your ears/brain like that one with the time-phase. For me it's the major reason why so many swear that LP sounds best for them and I have the same quaint feelings when I listen to it.

One other thing is that a digital signal in its origin still is an analog signal. And this is made of frequencies and electrons and...
There are so many things that are carried with the digital signal. It's by far not only the 1s and 0s. Sure you can filter some of the junk but all of it?

Hard core scientist even discuss the possibility that an electron could have a memory. So there you go...if an electron not only having a charge/spin but also some other characteristics you can merely imagine on the consequences for your audio signal being made of it.
So far we come, the less we know   .

gui

Oh dear Gui, what a shame the internet has no peer review or knowledgeable editor.

What you write here has been, more or less, repeated many times on the internet forums but repeating something which is not true over and over again will not make it become true, however plausible the erroneous statement may appear to be to those who do not understand.
The Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem is not a theory, it is mathematically proved.

There are plenty of reasons why digital audio may not be to somebodies liking and there are plenty of ways in which it can be implemented imperfectly, but what you write is completely imagined gobbledygook. 

I am not religious either nor do I believe that homeopathy or acupuncture are anything other than placebos. Blind faith and belief in the implausible is not my thing, so excuse my being blunt.

Some of this is my opinion, some my experience of 50 years recording and some is straightforward mathematics (I concede that very few people have any mathematical aptitude though)

And don't think I have not listened, I am very sceptical and have always believed both that if theory and practice differ that the theory is incomplete and that if 2 things measure the same but sound different the wrong thing is being measured. I always check everything from first principles myself and have done many listening evaluations over the last 45 years.