What does it mean when people describe Digital as Sounding like "Analog"? Best term?

[kach22i]

Is the real test the percentage amount of time those with analog and digital in their systems use one versus the other?

Maybe not, could just be an indicator of convenience or one's music collection at a certain point in their life and how nostalgic they may be at times.

Perhaps a better indicator is which medium keeps you past up your bedtime and makes you lose track of time.

And which medium fatigues your ears quicker.

And which medium commands your attention persuading you not to multitask.

 

[PeterA]

Another interesting indication is what format visiting guests request when they have the option of hearing both in the same system. I usually request one over the other and my hosts usually comply.

I am waiting to once enter these rooms with eyes wide shut and hearing my host ask me if I think his "Digital sounds like Analog". I may wait a long time.

 

[Joe Whip]

No intent to be snarky: Can you tell the difference between live unamplified music and a recording? I don't know if that is a function of aural memory but I'll guess most people can.

Yeah, your being snarky, you know darn well what I meant.

You remind me of the people who whined incessantly about the Blu-Ray version of Raiders of the Lost Ark that I published a review on way back when. even though Spielberg and the cinema photographer said that they went back to insure the transfer faithful to the original release and taken from the original negative and color graded correctly, there were those who insisted that the red in the Nazi flag was different than what they recalled from when they saw the film in the theater or cinema for my UK friends, 30 years prior. Yeah, sure. Sure if we were in a room when they were playing live and then a stereo, we can tell the difference. But a week later, could we pick out what violin they were playing if they played the same and also three different violins for us again? I would say not likely, as that level of aural recall is too fleeting.

 

[PeterA]

I must admit as I listen while fine tuning my cartridge set up, as I am about to do later today because I will switch my two cartridges and arms, I will try to remember what a live violin sounds like from the last time I heard one long prior to the lock down, but I will also be comparing it to the sound I heard just immediately before with the last setting to see if it sounds better.

I think we go back and forth switching between our memories of live sounds vs the much more direct, A-B-A comparisons in our own systems as we make fine tuning adjustments. This is a balancing act, and we use the tools are at our disposal to pass judgment about sonics. Perhaps everyone has a different process and we do what works best for us, until we learn, or someone points out to us, a better process. I am learning a lot these days from others and by testing. What else is there?

 

[spiritofmusic]

Yeah, your being snarky, you know darn well what I meant.

You remind me of the people who whined incessantly about the Blu-Ray version of Raiders of the Lost Ark that I published a review on way back when. even though Spielberg and the cinema photographer said that they went back to insure the transfer faithful to the original release and taken from the original negative and color graded correctly, there were those who insisted that the red in the Nazi flag was different than what they recalled from when they saw the film in the theater or cinema for my UK friends, 30 years prior. Yeah, sure. Sure if we were in a room when they were playing live and then a stereo, we can tell the difference. But a week later, could we pick out what violin they were playing if they played the same and also three different violins for us again? I would say not likely, as that level of aural recall is too fleeting.

Film restoration color grading...now THERE'S a real argument. Arguments in audiophilia are as nothing compared to the vitriol of those who compare individual frames to attack restorers.

 

[Joe Whip]

Tell me about it. I was at a presentation with Robert Harris after The Godfather films were released. He talked about that.

 

[the sound of Tao]

All unamplified live music is analog.

gestalt
noun - a configuration, pattern, or organized field having specific properties that cannot be derived from the summation of its component parts; a unified whole.

Can we say the "gestalt of analog" is redundant?

For me it’s all in the moments of realness that recall the experience and connection to gestalt of music. So how close does that need to be. I’d suggest close at all is actually close enough and a connection itself is sufficiently valid to connect then through to the whole.

Some systems fail to connect and some aren’t even close. But a systems connecting you to music is not necessarily a direct relationship to a system’s capacity to play the parts of the sound well but is rather a system’s capacity to communicate successfully a fragment of the whole experience of the music held within the sound.

Ultimately what we actually hear in both analogue and digital is always ultimately analogue. So perhaps then analogue purely has a clear head start but certainly digital has been getting much, much better at the whole regathering the A back into the DAC part.

What I would suggest is that the gestalt of music (which as Tim says is within the analogue) is the ultimate captured expression of the whole and a fragment from the core of music that connects. Being sufficiently able to glimpse that whole quality is the bridging of the gap to enable recall and allow us connect back through to the origin of the music in the original experience.

While ever we are hearing separation within the parts we are also then being held back from the reconnection of the whole reality. It doesn’t need to be exact, it just needs to be a recognisable fragment that expresses the whole. The brilliant sonic fabric isn’t perhaps the end thing itself but while that can always be a valued part it is also then a means to connect to a musical end.

Some struggle with the use of holistic terms in assessment like equating the qualities of being musical and sounding natural but I believe that is because some may be trying to quantify rather than qualify the numinous so these things are beyond measurement but simply either are or aren’t what us experienced. It is in the whole assessments (unless you are chasing the experience of just disparate sounds) that these qualifiers are then the most essential and valid assessments for a system for replaying music as opposed to a system for playing sounds.

So it is all in the analogue in the end. I believe we are at times listening to the sounds and also listening to the music and then sometimes just one or the other but perhaps we need to be able to identify that there is an essential difference in perception between hearing the sound and it’s parts and the capacity to pull them then into the believable analogue at the end that is the experience of listening to music. This then (for me) is a greater distinction rather than whether we are listening to that analogue via analogue or listening to that analogue via digital.

When digital finally flipped the musical connection switch and got to being musical and also sounding sufficiently natural it demonstrated it had bridged the gap for reaching through to the analogue, which isn’t a vinyl sounding analogue or an analogue tape sounding analogue but is a digital analogue which is apparently now unlocked in that A within the DAC.

 

[andromedaaudio]

One clear attribute of analogue tape is dynamic build up .
I never heard any digital do it like that , it goes from soft to loud in a different natural way.
I dont care if officially digital has " more " dynamic range .

In this working from home time and with all these goodies i ve got plenty of time to compare

 

[spiritofmusic]

Tell me about it. I was at a presentation with Robert Harris after The Godfather films were released. He talked about that.

Joe, we ought to take this to PM. Have the French Connection and Terminator 2 fans yet forgiven William Friedkin and James Cameron?

 

[Al M.]

One clear attribute of analogue tape is dynamic build up .
I never heard any digital do it like that , it goes from soft to loud in a different natural way.
I dont care if officially digital has " more " dynamic range .

In this working from home time and with all these goodies i ve got plenty of time to compare

That's a short one: the digital that you heard sucks. Next...

 

[andromedaaudio]

That's a short one: the digital that you heard sucks. Next...

Im sure you can post a picture of your analogue set up
What you use for comparison??

 

[RogerD]

Maybe not, could just be an indicator of convenience or one's music collection at a certain point in their life and how nostalgic they may be at times.

Perhaps a better indicator is which medium keeps you past up your bedtime and makes you lose track of time.

And which medium fatigues your ears quicker.

And which medium commands your attention persuading you not to multitask.

Not all systems are created equally, especially digital.
Maybe Caesar should ask....what benefits more digital or analog from grounding?

"JSX also has an electrolytic grounding system that can take ground impedance to nearly zero, according to director of advanced technology Aaron Reiff. In a system the company recently installed, he measured "only a fraction of an ohm" resistance between system ground and earth ground, something that can take the perceived noise floor into true darkness. A visit to the company's lab is in the near future; look here for a follow-up report."

I wish JSX was still in business....looks like they were cutting edge to me.

https://www.soundandvision.com/content/jsx-sound-designs

 

[Al M.]

Im sure you can post a picture of your analogue set up
What you use for comparison??

I have heard digital vs. analog in the systems of friends whose vinyl setups are quite advanced and who use the DAC that I have. I have also heard tape in one of them. And I know the dynamics of my own system, which I love and which have been positively commented on by others, too. I have heard nothing yet that makes me believe that analog has an edge when it comes to dynamics.

It is certainly the case that NOT all digital is equal in terms of dynamics. Mine is among the better examples when it comes to that aspect, both in terms of macro- and micro-dynamics.

 

[tima]

Here we go on Coke versus Pepsi again ... It is known since long ago that the answer depends on the conditions and methods of the test.

Huh? How does one preference vs another relate to the ability to distinguish between live vs recorded music? And yes everything happens in a context, I think we know that.

 

[tima]

Yeah, your being snarky, you know darn well what I meant.

You remind me of the people who whined incessantly about the Blu-Ray version of Raiders of the Lost Ark that I published a review on way back when. even though Spielberg and the cinema photographer said that they went back to insure the transfer faithful to the original release and taken from the original negative and color graded correctly, there were those who insisted that the red in the Nazi flag was different than what they recalled from when they saw the film in the theater or cinema for my UK friends, 30 years prior. Yeah, sure. Sure if we were in a room when they were playing live and then a stereo, we can tell the difference. But a week later, could we pick out what violin they were playing if they played the same and also three different violins for us again? I would say not likely, as that level of aural recall is too fleeting.

Sigh... I was trying to tease out whether there can be degrees of aural memory, or if discriminating live from recorded music was something other than 'remembering'.

If one hears enough live music I think you know what it sounds like - you've learned what it sounds like. I was asking if that is the same as remembering, if knowledge is different from memory. If you know what a live piano sounds like I don't know if that requires remembering what a specific note sounds like from a specific piano.

 

[tima]

For me it’s all in the moments of realness that recall the experience and connection to gestalt of music. So how close does that need to be. I’d suggest close at all is actually close enough and a connection itself is sufficiently valid to connect then through to the whole.

Some systems fail to connect and some aren’t even close. But a systems connecting you to music is not necessarily a direct relationship to a system’s capacity to play the parts of the sound well but is rather a system’s capacity to communicate successfully a fragment of the whole experience of the music held within the sound.

Ultimately what we actually hear in both analogue and digital is always ultimately analogue. So perhaps then analogue purely has a clear head start but certainly digital has been getting much, much better at the whole regathering the A back into the DAC part.

What I would suggest is that the gestalt of music (which as Tim says is within the analogue) is the ultimate captured expression of the whole and a fragment from the core of music that connects. Being sufficiently able to glimpse that whole quality is the bridging of the gap to enable recall and allow us connect back through to the origin of the music in the original experience.

While ever we are hearing separation within the parts we are also then being held back from the reconnection of the whole reality. It doesn’t need to be exact, it just needs to be a recognisable fragment that expresses the whole. The brilliant sonic fabric isn’t perhaps the end thing itself but while that can always be a valued part it is also then a means to connect to a musical end.

Some struggle with the use of holistic terms in assessment like equating the qualities of being musical and sounding natural but I believe that is because some may be trying to quantify rather than qualify the numinous so these things are beyond measurement but simply either are or aren’t what us experienced. It is in the whole assessments (unless you are chasing the experience of just disparate sounds) that these qualifiers are then the most essential and valid assessments for a system for replaying music as opposed to a system for playing sounds.

So it is all in the analogue in the end. I believe we are at times listening to the sounds and also listening to the music and then sometimes just one or the other but perhaps we need to be able to identify that there is an essential difference in perception between hearing the sound and it’s parts and the capacity to pull them then into the believable analogue at the end that is the experience of listening to music. This then (for me) is a greater distinction rather than whether we are listening to that analogue via analogue or listening to that analogue via digital.

When digital finally flipped the musical connection switch and got to being musical and also sounding sufficiently natural it demonstrated it had bridged the gap for reaching through to the analogue, which isn’t a vinyl sounding analogue or an analogue tape sounding analogue but is a digital analogue which is apparently now unlocked in that A within the DAC.

I liked your response, much broader than where I came from.

To fill in further ...

Can we say the "gestalt of analog" is redundant? If so, can we say the 'gestalt of digital' is self-contradictory?

 

[ack]

I have heard digital vs. analog in the systems of friends whose vinyl setups are quite advanced and who use the DAC that I have. I have also heard tape in one of them. And I know the dynamics of my own system, which I love and which have been positively commented on by others, too. I have heard nothing yet that makes me believe that analog has an edge when it comes to dynamics.

It is certainly the case that NOT all digital is equal in terms of dynamics. Mine is among the better examples when it comes to that aspect, both in terms of macro- and micro-dynamics.

When you visit next - and God knows when that will be - we will do another comparison in here; you may not believe the level of performance I have been able to achieve in here lately. I'll play that 45 Appasionata D2D, For Duke, Symphonie Fantastique and others ... and we'll see.

 

[the sound of Tao]

I liked your response, much broader than where I came from.

To fill in further ...

Can we say the "gestalt of analog" is redundant? If so, can we say the 'gestalt of digital' is self-contradictory?

Thanks Tim, I’d also feel we are too focussed on hearing differences and not focussed enough on hearing correlations and this is what takes us further away from the whole.

So is the determination of gestalt of analogue redundant I’d think so, its the gestalt of music alone and that is really only available to us through the end stage in the universally analogue spectra of listening. The bits of digital are just a phase that a signal may or may not have been through and it’s in its coming together rather than in its separation that we can find the music again. There are translations going on the whole way in every path... from mechanical to electrical and analogue to digital and back again. The truth can become less clear in any stage and in any translation.

So yes, I’d believe so Tim, the digital distinction is something of a straw man as nobody is actually listening to digital and happily we’re all in the analogue together.

 

[Al M.]

I liked your response, much broader than where I came from.

To fill in further ...

Can we say the "gestalt of analog" is redundant? If so, can we say the 'gestalt of digital' is self-contradictory?

There is no "gestalt of digital" since we don't hear in sample points (which are not stair cases, for the uninitiated ). The output from a DAC is analog wave forms, thus digital also delivers a "gestalt of analog".

 

[Al M.]

When you visit next - and God knows when that will be - we will do another comparison in here; you may not believe the level of performance I have been able to achieve in here lately. I'll play that 45 Appasionata D2D, For Duke, Symphonie Fantastique and others ... and we'll see.

Sure, they have always sounded very dynamic, but so has your digital -- and now it is even more dynamic since you switched to the same DAC that I have . If your analog is now even more dynamic and in turn beats that, I look forward to hear it!

While this has to wait, I must say that the dynamic jump factor of also my system often makes me laugh out loud when it hits me unexpectedly. What a sensation! (Gosh, I love my system.)