By Paul McGowan From PS Audio

It’s common wisdom that because digital breaks up sound into bits there’s missing information between those bits—information not lost with analog. But is that accurate?

The comparison between the uninterrupted straight line picture of analog and the chunky digital copy might lead us to imagine differences that don’t necessarily exist.

If I were to side with the measurementists I could pretty definitively demonstrate there is nothing measurably missing in a proper digital recording.

If I were to then take the opposite side and agree with the analog proponents that correctly point out the audible differences between digital recordings and analog recordings, we would then be at a stalemate.

If nothing is missing in digital what explains the differences in sound quality?

We can say with absolute certainty that a PCM recording of a live feed sounds different than an analog or DSD recording of the same event.

Yet, it is also true that a PCM recording of the analog playback is nearly indistinguishable from the analog playback.

Tomorrow I am going to suggest what might be going on.

For more on this story go to: https://www.psaudio.com/pauls-posts/digital-gaps/