I'm sure you will get many responses about this, but it's clear that a reader quoted in a past issue of this thread doesn't understand how digital audio works, and what the differences between digital and analog are.

First, his explanation shows that he is unaware of the Nyquist theorem, which is the theoretical foundation that explains why digital audio and sampling work. Without going into too much detail, basically it says that a _band-limited_ continuous waveform can be converted into a finite set of points (i.e. the samples), and back, with zero information loss. It is counterintuitive, but true, that a continuous analog waveform has contains a finite amount of information. He says that the grooves in the record "exactly mirror the original's sound waveform", which implies that vinyl has "infinite" fidelity, which is of course false. There are many reasons why the mechanical process of converting grooves to a waveform introduces an incredible amount of distortion. Vinyl has a higher noise floor and must pass through an RIAA filter which attempts to correct its poor frequency response.

The reader is also conflating fidelity vs. personal preference. Because you prefer the sound of vinyl does not imply anything about its fidelity either way. There is something known as euphonic distortion (which is caused by vinyl), which the human ear finds pleasing when applied to music. Basically part of the reason is because the distortion creates frequencies which are harmonically related to the source material. Tube amps and tapes also cause euphonic distortion. It is very common in audio production to use distorting tube amps and tapes, e.g. in rock music on drums and guitars. Frequently you will record the direct signal to a digital medium, and use tubes / tape as a signal processor by recording that signal to them, and then recording the output back onto a digital medium.

In short it is well known that digital formats (with sufficiently high sample rates, etc.) have higher fidelity than vinyl. If you prefer vinyl to CD, you would probably also prefer a vinyl record recorded to CD to an original CD. Vinyl just colors the sound in a way that some people like, which is fine, but it is a common misconception to think analog is "exact" while digital is only a finite approximation of the "exact" sound. Quite the opposite: digital has measurably higher fidelity, which again says nothing about what sounds better to a human.

Andy

 

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