Quote Originally Posted by Sir Terrence the Terrible
The digital you heard at that show was 16bit digital, that is all they had there. And what SACD's they had were played through players that transcoded the DSD stream to PCM, which is the worst way to handle SACD. There were ZERO demonstrations of high resolution audio done right - and the only one that had any high resolution recordings done right was me. When you have nothing legitimate to compare too, it is easy to make the argument that vinyl sounded better. Another thing is there were far more tube based amps at this show than SS, and most of them were in the larger rooms where the sound could stretch its legs sort of speak. This show was more tailored to vinyl and tubes than any show I have ever been to. I think CES is better at having more of a variety of both high end digital and analog, and high end tubes and SS.



He was referring to 16bit digital, and we are now at 24 and 32 bit digital. It looks to me like the older guys are slow to move on.




1993 was seventeen years ago... Do you really think that digital technology has stood still for that long?





They played plain old 16bit digital or DSD transcoded to PCM on that rig, hardly a way to present SACD. And finally, I know that reel to reel tape sounds better than most digital, we actually agree on this.

Tube Fan, you really need to get out and hear DXD based recordings. You probably won't give up either tubes or vinyl after listening to it(you are much too emotionally tied to both), but at least it will reset your notions of the current state of the art in digital, instead of you hanging on to a thirty year old memory.

I am beginning to get a clearer picture of why some wax nostalgic over tubes and vinyl, they are very emotionally attached to it. When you are this emotionally attached to something, you psychologically block out everything else(including what sounds better) to maintain that psychological connection. (now putting on my RE coat) Those of us that do not have that connection, don't really "marry" ourselves that closely to any format unless it has a sonic superiority over a previous format. When the next better sounding format comes along, we move on to that. We progress, and are not inclined to wax nostalgic over something when something better comes along. I am also beginning to think there is an age component to this as well.
You 100% incorrect that I have ANY emotional ties to either analogue or digital. Both are a huge pain. Tubes age and go bad. TTs and cartridges have numerous problems. However, until I hear digital that sounds realistic, I am forced to stick to analogue. I check out the shows and our top audio stores every 6 months, and I've never been impressed with the ss or digital sound.