Quote Originally Posted by Marco View Post
For me, very good digital playback, quite simply doesn't sound 'digital', in the sense that many assume it, based on their experience to date of listening to it, as much of what's considered as wrong, simply doesn't exist, and merely an artefact of poor design.

As I've said before, if your turntable makes vinyl sound 'vinyl-ly', or your CD player makes CD sound 'digital', then they're most likely not making the most of their respective formats, as experience shows it doesn't need to be like that.

When either is truly *right*, one is too immersed in the music itself to remotely be concerned whether one is listening to vinyl or digital. That is the reality: the music is showcased in all its glory, first and foremost, not the respective traits of the playback equipment.

In that respect, it's rather like driving: you never notice the best drivers on the road, because they're just doing what they're good at, thus don't draw attention to themselves - and so it is with the best vinyl and digital sources. What's 'noticed', therefore, is simply the music

Marco.
That's a good analogy (good drivers vs bad drivers). I was actually referring to this quote from the above article:

"It is a painful irony that higher fidelity does not guarantee (or does not just guarantee) more lifelike sound. What it does guarantee, provided that the fidelity really is higher, is a more accurate recreation of what was recorded, of what the tapeheads heard and what the mastering engineers subsequently did to the mastertapes. It is an even more painful irony that, in the case of computer audio, higher-fidelity playback (and I will concede that computer audio can be higher fidelity) exposes the flaws of digital recordings even more clearly and, in so doing, often makes them even less compellingly listenable and lifelike, IMO, than the playback of certain stand-alone CD and SACD players—and generally less listenable and lifelike than analog sources like LP and tape."