Either approach doesn't effect the quality with which a movie can be experienced.
At least it shouldn't, if it does your doing something wrong.
That has nothing to do with the projected image or sound quality.
I strongly disagree. How an image is presented, can influence our perception and experience. That should actually be obvious.
It’s true that people are capable of getting into a movie even on the crap quality screens (including the old CRT’s we grew up with). But that is different from the idea that careful attention to presentation details does not affect the experience.
I’m as much a Home Theatre fanatic as I am an audiophile (almost 17,000 posts on AVSForum, goodness, help me). And I’ve been pretty fanatical in investigating how to influence perception of an image.
Even back when plasma were relatively new, I was the only person I knew who was masking for 2:35:1 AR and using large black velvet backdrops behind the plasma to increase the pop, dimensionality and immersiveness of the image. Everyone who viewed my house always came away, thinking it was the best flatscreen experience they ever had.
You may think that you are only concentrating on an image, but our perception is also influenced by what our eyes can see around the image as well. (that’s why different coloured backgrounds for this can affect her perception of colour on a screen., as only one example)
In a similar way, I went to town on my Home Theatre. I made my screen wall entirely black velvet around the image, and gradually covered more and more visible items in Black velvet so they would disappear. And every time I did, the image became more immersive and window like. I can play a movie where the entire room is blacked out with black velvet, including the floor and visible ceiling. All you were aware of in front of you is just the image floating in black. and it absolutely does make it more immersive and dimensional - like you can walk into the image sometimes. Pretty much every guest I’ve had over the years who have their own projection based Home Theatre or who’ve experienced other ones, let alone going to the cinema, have expressed “wow” at the experience, because they hadn’t seen a projected image before with that much attention to detail to removing rest of the room.
So as I say, I strongly disagree. Visible speakers, lots of visible drivers or other equipment around the image will affect perception. You’ll notice a difference the moment you remove those visual cues around the image.
(I put a lot of effort into my two channel system also to produce a certain type of experience I’m looking for… Which has left some experienced audio files, shaking their heads saying “how did you do that?”)
Is the ability of being able to hear into the recording, the inner details, minus distortions, and all the rest important to you?
Hearing the details of a recording is very important to me. I love to hear everything down to the precise type of reverb they put on some instrument, way back in the corner of the mix.
If so why wouldn't you use the source that in the vast, vast majority of cases will come from a digital source,
Because in my system, I find the difference in hearing recorded detail between digital and my turntable, is often very subtle at best.
There isn’t some big obvious win for digital.
They’re definitely is an audible advantage for digital. But as I say, it is usually very small. My vinyl is capable of extracting, glorious levels of detail and clarity from records. So I totally get my audiophile Jones off from recorded details from vinyl as well from digital.
Yes, if it's "all about the music",
As I’ve said before, I don’t even know what you mean about it “ all being about the music.” If I was forced to talk that way, I’d say my audio gear hobby means I’m not “just about the music” and neither are you.
I get pleasure from the audio gear itself, how it works, how it looks, how I get to play with sound, and how I get to enjoy the sensuousness of beautiful sound itself along with the musical content, and which compliments and can enrich my musical listening experience on the system.
I love the gear. I love the music. There’s zero problem in doing both.
all the other "pleasures" of playing with vinyl should take a secondary place in importance.
As I mentioned, at least in my system, I don’t find a dramatic advantage for digital in terms of showing me recorded detail. I can certainly appreciate it when I’m in the mood to appreciate it. But I’m trying to take the larger perspective here.
So with vinyl, I get a very satisfying level of recorded detail, but also some characteristics that I often favour over my digital source, which I’ve mentioned many times before (a type of textual vividness, that can make the sound sometimes feel a bit more solid).
And then add into that all the other pleasures I get from buying records, owning them, owning a turntable that I find to be beautiful and a pleasure to use, and how it all tends to
allow me to more easily relax and unplug from screens the digital world, and effortlessly listen to whole albums….
All that adds up pretty heavily to why I enjoy records as part of the hobby.
Listening to my digital source still blows me away. So does up mixing stereo to surround on my surround system. The fact I can really enjoy one doesn’t mean I don’t use enjoy other ways as well.
And that’s one thing that you and you-know-who seem to often forget in your crusade to tamp down on our enthusiasm for records:
All the members in this thread who play records also have a digital front end and use it as well. It’s not like we don’t regularly experience being able to compare digital to vinyl ourselves, and it’s not like we’ve just fully abandoned digital. We can just admit how much we like both formats.