Yes, but you can't hear the medium itself without involving the use of the necessary replay equipment - and *that* is what generates the 'signature'.
Exactly! As I've just said, you can't hear any digitally recorded music without the use of the associated playback equipment. That's my point (and the leveller) - and in that respect, I can hear the resulting 'signature' that ANY CD player, or streaming system, playing a digital music file, imbues onto the sound.Obviously the digital playback equipment will have a signature to an extent, that's unavoidable.
Yet it didn't stop some of the finest music recordings ever produced from happening, made in an all-analogue and valve domain, from mike to desk and onto tape. Quite simply, the best of those recordings, sonically BLOW AWAY anything produced in modern times since - and I could easily demonstrate it!Digital encodes the waveform perfectly, tape and vinyl don't.
Therefore, that strongly suggests to me that not only is digital not 'perfect'/'neutral', 'accurate' (ultimately where it matters most, in terms of what the human ear hears), or whatever other term you wish to use to portray its supposed superiority, but that something else is happening in the overall process, which is REAL (and a genuine part of the musical information, not coloration), but that isn't being accounted for in the judgement process.
However, that's a discussion for another day...
As you say, if your vinyl set-up is good enough, then you can easily achieve the above, but I can tell you that most of that is down to experience and know-how, than money!When the character of each different recording you play dominates the sound over the character of the replay equipment that's when you know you are close to accuracy...
Yes, but it'll always sound like digital, and every piece of music played will intrinsically be 'tainted' accordingly. Yes, that also occurs with vinyl, so the reality is that you simply have to 'suck your favourite flavour', as I'm afraid any notion that one or the other is 'perfect', or 100% faithful to anything, when part of a music replay system, is totally misguided. You simply have to choose your compromises.now don't get me wrong, you can get that with vinyl too, but at a level of expense and hassle that I don't really want, not when there's an easier, cheaper option.
Plus, and this is another thing, if when vinyl is done at its absolute best [and I've already mentioned what that constitutes as], there was a significant (and notable) difference in the accuracy of the resulting music signal (i.e. the sound that you end up listening to), then it would ably reveal itself when ripping vinyl onto CD (or creating a digital file from a vinyl recording).
And any time I've done that, aside from some occasional slight surface noise, which is inevitable even with the cleanest and best condition records, it's almost impossible to tell one from the other [or crucially also a commercially produced CD of the same music] - indeed, I've blindfolded myself and also friends (and Del) and asked them to identify the original recording from the rip (or said commercial CD). All so far have struggled, and therefore inevitably get it wrong!
Quite simply, that happens because the sounds/recordings replayed are sonically near-indistinguishable.
So, if in the final analysis [i.e. the sound that we actually hear through our speakers] there is little (almost nothing) to sonically separate two identical pieces of music, recorded respectively in either the digital or analogue domain, then how can vinyl intrinsically be so inferior or less 'accurate' than digital - because ultimately in the circumstances I've just described you'd hear it, wouldn't you?
Think about that....
Marco.