Analogue warmth

[Blackmorec]

Let’s not compare digital to analog....let’s compare them both to live music, which after all is the goal. Analog sounds more like music than digital and that’s why people prefer it. As an audiophile I’ve spent my life trying to build the most accurate and transparent system that reproduces the music with no sonic signature of its own. Digital may be ‘cleaner’ than analog but in a clinical, unpleasant way. There’s nothing clinical about live music....its rich and natural....analog-like. Interestingly, the higher up the resolution scale we move in digital the less clinical and more musical and natural it sounds. Devialet has reached the point that it can exploit the benefits of digital without the clinical downsides. General consumer digital has yet to get anywhere near that standard, hence people still prefer the old analog sound.

[Axel]

Let’s not compare digital to analog....let’s compare them both to live music, which after all is the goal. Analog sounds more like music than digital and that’s why people prefer it. As an audiophile I’ve spent my life trying to build the most accurate and transparent system that reproduces the music with no sonic signature of its own. Digital may be ‘cleaner’ than analog but in a clinical, unpleasant way. There’s nothing clinical about live music....its rich and natural....analog-like. Interestingly, the higher up the resolution scale we move in digital the less clinical and more musical and natural it sounds. Devialet has reached the point that it can exploit the benefits of digital without the clinical downsides. General consumer digital has yet to get anywhere near that standard, hence people still prefer the old analog sound.

That’s because it is analogue! 

[thumb5]

Let’s not compare digital to analog....let’s compare them both to live music, which after all is the goal. Analog sounds more like music than digital and that’s why people prefer it.
...

...in your opinion, of course.

[thumb5]

Let’s not compare digital to analog....let’s compare them both to live music, which after all is the goal. Analog sounds more like music than digital and that’s why people prefer it. As an audiophile I’ve spent my life trying to build the most accurate and transparent system that reproduces the music with no sonic signature of its own. Digital may be ‘cleaner’ than analog but in a clinical, unpleasant way. There’s nothing clinical about live music....its rich and natural....analog-like. Interestingly, the higher up the resolution scale we move in digital the less clinical and more musical and natural it sounds. Devialet has reached the point that it can exploit the benefits of digital without the clinical downsides. General consumer digital has yet to get anywhere near that standard, hence people still prefer the old analog sound.

That’s because it is analogue! 

And it is equally analog by the time it reaches our ears, whether digital or analog methods were used to reproduce it.

[Confused]

If only life were this simple.....

The last live band I listened to, and they were only a 'local' band in a pub, used an absolute stack of digital kit. Many professional PA systems use class D amplification. The last '180g Audiophile pressing' LP that I bought was mastered in PCM digital. A £6k Devialet 'Lost Recording' play once lacquer is remastered in 24/176.4pcm. A while back I listened to some 24/96bit 'needle drops' taken from a pretty decent LP12 deck and played back on a pretty decent digital system. Would I be able to tell these apart from an actual LP12 in a blind test? I doubt it.

I also have very much music in 16/44.1 which if I am honest sounds very 'digital', it is not that pleasant to listen to and can make you think that you have wasted money hifi. I also have very much music in 16/44.1 that sounds absolutely sublime. I have a stack of vinyl that sounds pretty poor also, I could go on .......

From a technical perspective, there is no analogue recording or playback system on the planet that can match the accuracy of a modern 24bit digital equivalent.

[Blackmorec]

I don’t think I’m getting my point across. I’m not saying that the very best of digital can’t sound fantastic. It can...indeed it better as I’ve just bought a Devialet and an Innuos streamer. What I am saying is that the vast majority of digital music we hear sounds like crap and the reason it does is that its manipulated, filtered, compressed and condensed to the point very little of the original music remains. It’s not so much that digital can’t sound musical, because it can. But the argument that people prefer analog recordings because of its inherent distortions is just rubbish. People prefer analog recordings above the majority of consumer digital because the digital has been so badly mauled and mutilated that very little of the original music remains. Listen to a carefully recorded high resolution 24/96+ File through a capable DAC and it sounds great...good enough that consumers almost certainly aren’t going to pine for old analog recordings. But that’s the bleeding edge of digital technology, where you guys live. For the most part and for the vast majority of the music consuming public, the digital recordings they hear every day and that people buy and download are nothing like that. They are at best 16/44.1 and at worst some hideous sounding MP3
So again, the reason people are pining over the warmth in good analog recordings is not because they are distorted...its because the digital cattle fodder they’re being fed is sooo bad and utterly lacking in any musical attributes.

[yabaVR]

I don’t think I’m getting my point across. I’m not saying that the very best of digital can’t sound fantastic. It can...indeed it better as I’ve just bought a Devialet and an Innuos streamer. What I am saying is that the vast majority of digital music we hear sounds like crap and the reason it does is that its manipulated, filtered, compressed and condensed to the point very little of the original music remains. It’s not so much that digital can’t sound musical, because it can. But the argument that people prefer analog recordings because of its inherent distortions is just rubbish. People prefer analog recordings above the majority of consumer digital because the digital has been so badly mauled and mutilated that very little of the original music remains. Listen to a carefully recorded high resolution 24/96+  File through a capable DAC and it sounds great...good enough that consumers almost certainly aren’t going to pine for old analog recordings. But that’s the bleeding edge of digital technology, where you guys live. For the most part and for the vast majority of the music consuming public, the digital recordings they hear every day and that people buy and download are nothing like that. They are at best 16/44.1 and at worst some hideous sounding MP3
So again, the reason people are pining over the warmth in good analog recordings is not because they are distorted...its because the digital cattle fodder they’re being fed is sooo bad and utterly lacking in any musical attributes.

+1
...and I think the problem here is that many of us don't take into account that a distorted or altered digital signal has nothing to do with a distorted or altered analog signal. In technical terms the impact of the unwanted side effects when altering a digital signal compared to an analog signal is completely different. That's why it is almost impossible to compare them directly.
The appearing sound patterns by manipulating the audio signal are different in each domain (digital vs. analog) but many of us try to compare them with equal words and terms. Our languange is very limited while wishing to be precise here.

My thoughts on this are:

Analog.
If recording analog the audio signal stays very coherent on the time domain during the whole process of recording/mastering etc. There might also be some errors in the time domain in analog recordings but these errors stay (timely) coherent in the signal. It's like a fluid...nothing is cut hard and put back on another time line hence the brain can address distortion etc. (ignore it or change it by imagination). I can imagine that distortions even give emphasis on the perception of a coherent time line...a naturallness.
All together everything in an analog signal stays in a natural domain (timeline) (distorted or not) and this kind of naturalness the brain can handle with ease (that's why it's called natural   ). Its easy for the brain to tell that this pattern is a distortion and the other is a flutter or else. You even don't have to think of it...all is handled in the unconscious part of the mind.

Digital.
With a digital recording everything is different. The audio signal is cut into 'pits and lands' and the time domain is handled alongside. The crux is to get them together in the right way nobody can tell they ever were apart.
Now with all the processing on the digital signal errors pop up and mostly they pop up in the time domain. Some 0s and 1s also get lost (or substituted) but the bad digital sound we get from the time domain and hence an incoherent audio signal. Here we have patterns cut out hard and put back in on another time and (maybe) to another frequency. Notice that there is no connection to a frequency in the digital signal (vs. a direct connection to frequency patterns in analog). There is no prefix like a 'Bass-0' or a 'Highs-1'. Some '0s & 1s' belong to a bass note and the others next to them belong to some highs. If you cut them out in a nanoseconds and they are interchanged you get something very unnaturally in a audio signal and the brain is confused by this. It can not put the patterns together again.

One might capture a digital pattern like a hiss in his music and he likes to put it into words but the 'digital hiss' you hear is completely different to the 'analog hiss' you can hear from analog distortions. They are not the same origin in technical terms and the digital one we can't forgive vs. the analog one we can accept because of its naturalness.
The analog hiss might origin in an over saturated signal but it is directly connected in time to the oversaturation else the digital hiss just origins in '0s or 1s' artificially placed in the digital signal by coincidence and hence can not be connected to.

Does this make sense to anyone?

gui

[Music or sound]

Neither analog nor digital sound is live sound, both distort the original acoustic event only in very different forms. I think present digital technology can come closer to record the original event but almost never does.
The main reason why digital and a lot analog recordings sound artificial because they are. We experience music with 2 ears in a room what means direct and indirect sound (and that is the reason why different rooms sound different). The recording techniques of the 50 to 60s tried reproduce this with 2 microphones but after the invention of the mixing console that approach was abandoned (except for a few small companies like MA). Now different instruments are close miced (now sometimes several microphones per instrument) and then assembled with a lot of processing into an artificial sound space. The natural time relationship of direct and indirect sound of the individual sound sources is not existing.
Most analog recording are produced in the same fashion as digital (even many from the major companies are derived from a digital recording) only that some of deficiencies are less obvious (and the compression issue is different between analog and digital).
I talked to some younger recording engineers and they only look at me as if I am from an other universe. My analogy is if you completely grown up with processed food you have a hard time to incorporate real food into your eating habit.
Basically it is not a technological problem but a conceptual one.

[Damon]

I don’t think I’m getting my point across.....
So again, the reason people are pining over the warmth in good analog recordings is not because they are distorted...its because the digital cattle fodder they’re being fed is sooo bad and utterly lacking in any musical attributes.

Actually, I think that you are getting your point across; I'd suggest that most others here simply don't agree with your position, hence your feeling that you are not being fairly understood.

Please remember that there are members here who have considerable experience with recording techniques, including microphones and other equipment used in recording music, either live or in studio. There are also members here who are musicians and so have a very good idea of what 'live' music sounds like, both amplified and purely acoustic. And most of us have plenty of experience attending live music events. Like you, it  gives us ample experience of the variations in sound, and the live experience, and qualifies us to have equally valid opinions and preferences in sound reproduction.

There are plenty of examples of good and bad recordings, both digital and analog, and many recordings are a combination of both technologies. The 'cattle fodder' is not exclusive to the digital world. And frankly, live sound is often terrible, so no, that is not the goal of reproduction of recorded music, nor is it the ideal. 

Finally, I think it is also fair to say that we're kind of tired of the digital vs analog debate, just as we don't spend a lot of time on the Class D vs Class A or AB  debate. It happens over and over again on other forums, and it loses it's appeal.

If you look at the list of turntables owned by members here, you will see that many, including me, have digital and analog sources. Some also have tube amps, or antique products. The article posted is interesting reading, and the perspective of the author is not uncommon, and is accepted by many audio enthusiasts who still maintain a preference for analog reproduction.