WGIL Radio is right that digital "suffers from an absolute ceiling". Analog's ceiling is more of a moving target. How much distortion can you tolerate on THIS type of music vs. another? Hell, analog distortion sometimes becomes PART OF THE MUSIC! Ever listened to 'Bohemian Rhapsody' by Queen through headphones? Talk about "slamming the tape"! With vinyl, it's a little different...a matter of how well can the stylus track extreme groove modulation. A Shure V15 series would undoubtedly do better than RF's moving coil (at extremely hot tracking), but at a more sane level, almost certainly wouldn't sound as good.
Digital was thought for the first few years to have an "absolute floor"...that nothing below -96db could be recorded. The problem was that when sound dipped below -96db, the d/a converter simply cut off. There were no more bits to "describe" the signal. Then it was learned that with "dither"...low level noise hovering just above the cutoff, keeping the lsb (least significant bit) from ever "toggling off". Guess what? It turns out that with dither, it's actually possible to record sound BELOW -96db! 16 bit recorders WITH DITHER can exceed 16 bit resolution!
We've now had more than three decades of experience with digital audio, and have learned A LOT. RF spoke of dat recorders. Sony's "Super Bit Mapping" does an amazing job of extending (downward) the dynamic range of 16 bit media like dat or cd. When I first got my DTC-A6 back in the mid-90s, I recorded a few minutes of silence with SBM switched off, then with it switched on. I then risked my speaker's very lives by turning up the volume until I could hear the background noise. When SBM was switched in, the ragged digital noise just fell away into a velvety silence. Some AMAZING things have been done to extend the performance of digital, and they (audio engineers) ain't done yet. Digital keeps getting better in ways that analog, sadly, stopped advancing some time ago (the exception being incredibly expensive items like multi-thousand-dollar turntables that no doubt sound great, but sell in the dozens IF THEY'RE LUCKY. Not a serious competitor!).
Anyone who's ever recorded a steady tone into a reel to reel recorder, even a superb one, and listened to the output, or watched it on a meter, then done the same with digital, quickly gets the point that one of them is solid as a rock, and the other wavers all over the place..with levels jumping up and down wildly, and speed fluctuatiing quite audibly. And this is with ONE TONE, at ONE FREQUENCY. Hell, you don't need to measure the harmonic distortion, YOU CAN HEAR IT! That sharp, distinct sine wave has now become diffuse and "harmonic". Obviously with something more complex, like music, the situation gets quite a bit worse.
Record 10, 20, or 40 distinct tones simultaneously on your digital recorder, and look at the results on a scope. There they are...distinct peaks at each of the exact frequencies of the original. Record them on an analog recorder, and do the same. Watch the peaks rise and fall randomly. Now count them. Wait...there are not just the big peaks fluctuating in frequency and amplitude, but what's with all those little peaks that are coming and gong at various frequencies? It's a freaking MESS! You think it sounds good? Fine. Use analog. But don't freakin' try to convince me it's "more accurate". It's so damn easy to demonstrate that it just ain't.
