It's far too late to add anything new to the endless analog vs. digital debate, but this snippet from The New Yorker's recent article on Dust To Digital Records and the difficulties involved in transferring analog sources to digital confirms something I've believed for a long time: it isn't vinyl's supposed sonic superiority that people love about it, but its imperfections.

A few years ago, audio engineers played two versions of the same song for a panel of listeners. The first was free of noise. The second was the same recording, only with some random noise dubbed onto it. In almost every case, the listeners preferred the noisy version.

Scratches, hiss, even the occasional skip, people love that stuff, most likely because it equates much more with a live listening experience, where there is always extraneous noise flitting about. As for that quality of "warmth" vinyl aficionados like to go on about, claiming that only analog can reproduce enough of the original sound to create that feeling, I always figured that was turntable rumble, though I doubt you'd ever get an audiophile to admit as much.

The only people who ever listen to music in a completely quiet environment are people who are making records. Music perfectly played and flawlessly recorded, no matter how beautiful it may be, and no matter how high the sampling rate, is always going to sound antiseptic, as if the listener were sitting in an operating room. And just like an operating room, sonic purity scares us a little, makes us uneasy. People like a bit of mess. It reminds us of our lives.