One day this Merging Nadac v nr SOTA vinyl v 15ips R2R shootout will happen, but it isn't on the horizon anytime soon.
What is great about all the claims that SOTA digital is going to beat SOTA vinyl any moment/has beaten it, is that the parameters are changing all the time, and even though a mature technology like analog vinyl seems on the surface not to have really gone anywhere in decades, and digital has made exponential bounds since cd's inception in the early 80s, and hence on the surface you'd expect digital to have eclipsed analog, it hasn't happened IMHO, and I'm confident the quality gap will remain.
My thought is that in the 70s and 80s, vinyl had reached an excellent standard, w/the LP12 and Technics SP10 bearers of the standard. And of course that first Phillips cdp came along in '83, we all know what our reaction to that baby was.
Things ticked along ok in the digital world in the rest of the 80s and early 90s, all that "revolutionary" bitstream, but the picket fences were up, and you stuck to one camp or the other.
There's no doubt in the intervening three decades digital really did become more palatable to analog diehards like me, esp w/the introduction of SACD in 2000, and in my case my Emm Labs CDSA SE from the mid 00's was in many ways doing better than my Michell/SME/Transfiguration analog rig.
But analog has snuck a march on digital again, w/massive impvts in materials application/suspension/vibration control/speed stability/arm geometry/optimal arm-vibration management/cart tracking/phono electronics, so that in my way of thinking, there was a whole stack of analog superiority bottled up in 70's technology, just waiting to be liberated.
Having heard DCS, PD dac's, and GG playing dsd, much as I really like current digital (and could listen to cd's all day on my Eera Tentation cdp), the impvts in analog replay via modern tech/materials opening the window further, are in excess of what digital has managed w/original 16'44>bitstream>sacd>dsd.
I am truly happy to have got an amazing combination of the most precise, digital-friendly sounding analog rig, and the most analog-like digital rig. I love both, but even w/this convergence of sonics, they both sound VERY different from each other, my tt still appearing to have an endless upper limit to what it can achieve w/each upgrade, the digital more small steps in sound impvts.
And am I the only one to feel that dsd is not necessarily the destination we should all be aiming for? I still contend that good 'ol fashioned 16/44 rbcd has an urgency and drive that dsd never matches. It's almost as if the push to dsd because of it's emulation of analog warmth (which it surpasses 16/44 on), has allowed what was great about the lower standard to be slightly lost. Analog doesn't just beat 16/44 on natural warmth (which dsd partially addresses), it also does on dynamics and speed (which dsd doesn't).
**************IMHO************
