dlimit

digital vs. analog

the age-old argument. or at least as old as the loop machine, cd player, sampler, mp3.

how digital is something? how analog is it? does it matter?

which is better, vinyl or cds?

it is historically a sensitive topic among audiophiles and djs.  though in this age of computerized DJs and live production, it’s rapidly becoming a non-question.  before we set aside our vinyls and plow headlong into the digital revolution, i’d like to take a minute to explore the idea of this difference.

usually the argument breaks down into which one sounds better. this is an important point when you’re amplifying the sound with thousands of watts of power for thousands, hundreds, tens of people.

after working through an initial bias over the years, i can safely say that both analog and digital can sound good, and both can sound bad. and they definitely sound different.

you could argue that the vinyl record is more authentic because of the analog event, which allows for more information than just what’s in the groove of the needle to become part of the signal. this can be good (sometimes crowd noise creeps in, lending authenticity to a live recording), or it can be bad (evil low-frequency feedback corrupts live recordings). good or bad, it’s real-time, authentic-ass shit. but a laser reading digital information on a cd is also subject to external forces. if the dj gets too excited and bumps the cd player, it will skip – an analog event. there goes the theory.

you could argue that the sound of vinyl is more pure because its source information is, as it were, a direct analogue of the sound being played, whereas the source of the sound of a cd is ones and zeros, compiled into a stream of information that, by its nature, has gaps in it. but the gaps, assuming an appropriately high frequency rate in the signal, are inaudible to the human ear, and as such really make no difference. indeed, on the flip side, as it were, you could argue that the sound of the cd is more pure because it is far less likely to be corrupted by imperfections in the source information, or by other outside influences.

plus technically speaking the “true analogue” itself is based on friction, which can be boiled down to the atomic (read: digital) level. and on the receiving end, the sound information entering your brain is re-encoded from an analog signal (sound waves, eardrum vibrations) into electrical impulses firing through the tissue in your brain.

so in practical terms, digital and analog sound different, but neither necessarily sounds better than the other. and in philosophical terms, neither the nature of the source information nor the nature of the resulting sound necessarily results in a qualitative difference. i could argue all day long that the analog event, the needle tracking in the groove of the record, is by its nature better than a laser reading ones and zeros. that vinyl produces a sound that, by its nature, is better. but i’ve come to realize that philosophically it simply doesn’t hold, and that in practical terms it is just not true.