Per-Olof Karlsson wrote:
You got it all right buddy :)
Music is analog, no matter how it was produced. The end result is sound, and sound is an analog phenomenon. No matter how sophisticated your equipment and recording techniques are, it is impossible to perfectly reproduce an analog signal by using digital approximations. A sound wave is a coherent signal, whereas a digital sample is an approximation of this wave. Even if you were to use 128 bits of resolution and a sample rate of 4GHz you wouldn't be able to reproduce it perfectly (although you'd be pretty goddamn close! ;)
Another thing that makes digital media a problem is that of timing, or what people tend to call "jitter". It's almost, if not totally, impossible to make a clock that is 100% accurate, and/or make the signals clock-accurate given distance and the timing deficiencies that occur when you transmit the digital signal through cables and such. This all leads to tiny timing problems that are very difficult to control, resulting in an output signal that is not properly synced. From my experience, this is the major reason why so many people think of vinyl as "more alive" and "less artificial", because from analog sources timing is never an issue (there is no clock, just a signal). I'm sure somebody with better knowledge in digital electronics can explain this much better than I can..
Besides, any music that is not played on purely digital instruments (e.g. "constructed" sounds) started their life as analog, since sound itself is analog ;)
-------------------- Interesting...the real world IS analog! This may mean that digital will always be inherently inferior to real, continuous sound waves! amir