Analog versus Digital (Roon) - not controversial

Audio Gear Talk
1

Hello!

No I am not Seinfeld’s uncle. I used to have a huge vinyl collection as well as a reasonably large CD collection. Over decades, I gradually transitioned to 100% digital. I had one simple reason for this: I am very lazy and didn’t want to get out of my chair every 20 minutes. Currently, I have about 70,000 audio files.

For those of you who don’t know, the sound quality of vinyl and digital are both awesome but DIFFERENT. If you think vinyl is worse because of the pops and crackles, you are comparing apples to oranges… and it’s not because pops and crackles are normal and it adds to the “atmosphere”. I hate pops and crackles. And it’s not because of the touchy-feely" experience of the record cover etc. See below about reading a book.

Here is the problem with “digital” music, and I am not counting the fact that there is actually no such thing as “digital music”. Again, if you don’t know what I am talking about, please read a relevant book. The issue is what the song said: " The toe bone’s connected to the foot bone, The foot bone’s connected to the ankle bone, The ankle bone’s connected to the leg bone, etc, etc."

This is the basic problem with so called “digital music”. When I played a record, it always played (unless there was a power outage). With “digital music”, I don’t know whether problem is: Roon software, Roon server, my PC, my router, my NAS (or just an individual folder), my network cable (did rats chew on it?) or my Music Player (in this case the Aurender A200).

What is better? Reliability or Laziness (until something breaks)? I am not sure anymore. OK, I am still super lazy.

P.S. My wife is Claudia, not me. I am using the account. She doesn’t know what Roon is. This goes back to the old days of Roon, blah, blah etc.

2

I hear you and I get it. For me, it really comes down to my mood and how much time I have. I definitely prefer vinyl. The pops and clicks don’t really happen to me that often. I take really good care of my collection. I’ve got a whole ritual: I sonically clean the stylus before every session, run each record through a cleaning machine, and deionize everything. The payoff is huge — to my ears, it sounds phenomenal compared to digital.

Of course, it also depends on what you’re listening to. A lot of modern music has deep sub‑bass that vinyl just can’t reproduce without sacrificing other parts of the frequency range. Older recordings didn’t really push that low end, so they shine on vinyl.

But honestly, nothing beats the experience of putting on a record, sipping an old fashioned made with good bourbon, and settling into a comfortable listening chair in a dimly lit room. Sonically and atmospherically, it’s unbeatable.

Digital is for everything else or when I’m exploring new music.

3

My system is built on 8 channel DSP (crossover, EQ, driver offset correction) so Roon as the primary music source makes sense. I also relate to the lazy comment. :smiley: I have fancy DIY ADC and analog front end for my Studer A810, 2 turntables, and some other analog gear. I am lazy and like the convenience of digital files. Consequently I listen mostly to digital, having gone from analog diehard to digital turncoat. I have several thousand albums in various digital formats which Roon deals with, and without drama. Will be six years in a couple of months.

For me the war was over when I went to a digital rather than analog backbone for my most recent system build.

I have Tidal and like the integration with Roon, this is how I discover new music - which is important to me.

4

Fix your Roon system so it doesn’t break. I’ve been using Roon for over 6 years with no issues. If the power goes out, I can use my iPhone to stream Tidal and Qobuz to headphones.

My younger brothers got rid of my LP’s 60 years ago when I left home for college.

4 Likes
5

I think analogue vs digital is a different discussion to vinyl vs digital.
Vinyl has so many problems that it can only be considered an historic form of playback, just as 78rpm discs are. A vinyl version today is probably derived from a digital file and will almost certainly have used a digital processor in the process of production. There is no way around it. So modern vinyl is basically a distorted version of a digital file, and historic vinyl is going to be recordings that aren’t available in any other form - and probably the majority are available on CD by now.

All vinyl involves distorting the original, simply to get it to work. The grooves can’t reproduce what was recorded on an analogue tape without corrupting it in some way. The inner grooves, for example, have a different sound to the outer grooves. All the grooves have limited ability to reproduce deep bass accurately. And every cartridge sounds different. The signal to noise ratio is not great, and vinyl doesn’t last well if you play it often. So I don’t think vinyl can really be considered a high quality play back medium, even if it can sometimes sound good. And when it does sound good, it will almost always be derived from a digital file in some way. The only exceptions would be direct to disc mastering. And that will always exhibit the problems inherent in vinyl playback noted above.

Analogue vs digital is therefore a debate about analogue tape vs digital recording. Analogue tape can really sound wonderful. But it has so many disadvantages compared to digital recording and I don’t think anyone sells music in analogue tape form do they? It would be way too expensive to do that.

6

Okay, I think I get what you’re saying, but it’s not in line with my experience. The audio chain with vinyl (or analog) is just as problematic as digital. Example: I tried to play a record the other day since I hadn’t listened to my vinyl rig in a few months. Put on a record, everything’s set right, no sound. I checked my connections, the settings on my amp and preamp, made sure the speakers were properly selected. After many iterations of troubleshooting my Ortofon Blue is bad. Swapped in an old Shure and it plays just fine. How is this different than a bad ethernet cable or poorly performing DAC?