It's easy to demonstrate our ability to digitally capture the sound of vinyl but we cannot do that in reverse.
In other words, if you capture the output of your phono preamplifier by a decent digital capture system, you can reproduce exactly how that vinyl sounds. In fact, few among us would be hard pressed to tell the difference between a direct output of our phono preamplifier and the digital capture of the same.
But go the opposite direction and the experiment falls apart. This is easy to demonstrate as even direct-to-disc recordings sound more like vinyl and less like the live event.
The same is not true for digital. At Octave Records studio, I can compare the direct output of the best microphones in the world to their digitally captured version and there is no difference between the two. Take that same microphone output and make a vinyl copy of it and bam! We have the sound of vinyl.
What to make of this?
I still love the sound of my vinyl but I believe the takeaway is just that. Vinyl has a sound to it while modern digital does not.
Which is counter to what many would suggest, but, there you have it.
