The Digital Myth

Pour ceux qui sont abonnés en ligne au fameux SOS - voici par excellence un article a controverse "The Digital Myth" ou comment redonner du blason à la fameuse disgrâce digitale que les "anciens" opposent aux "modernes" ;-)

English spoken of course.

"So there we have it. Even if we ignore the risk of errors in the storage and the replay of digital samples, the effects of non-linearity, jitter, an inadequate number of bits, aliasing and poor signal processing all contribute to signal degradation and to the audible problems exhibited by early digital systems. As a result, the myth entered the public consciousness that digital audio per se sounded bad in some systematic and irresolvable way. But if we accept the Sampling Theorem and embrace good engineering practices, there is no reason why today's digital audio systems should be anything other than superb ways to store, manipulate and replay audio. Using modern technology, developers can approach the ideals much more closely, so that, in the real world, digital audio is not by necessity any worse sounding than the best analogue equipment, and in many ways it can be superior. In truth, there are trade-offs in terms of noise, accuracy and flexibility with both the analogue and digital approaches, and the question "Which is better?" should probably be met with the disdainful response, "For what?"."