Ugh, as someone who currently listens to more vinyl records than my digital source, I hate bogus justifications for why "analog sound" is "better."
From the article:
"Analog emotional resonance"
Bullshit. This is just a personal preference masquerading as a theory. This writer *thinks* analog sounds better, and represents some portion of people who think the same, and is moving from this personal feeling to rationalizing a theory for why "analog sounds better." It has "emotional resonance."
But clearly digital-source music has "emotional resonance." I mean for gawds sake, the PEAK of the music industry sales were during the height of the CD sales! People stream music and love it. Look at youtube's vast music videos and look at the countless comments of people swooning over how any particular piece makes them feel. All coming at you digitally.
My son will dance around to music on his laptop. He also likes listening to my stereo system and requests songs. He doesn't give a damn about whether it's a record playing or streaming from Tidal. It's "just music" to him, and rightly so.
I just hate it when people try to turn personal preference in to a theory that posits their preference is Objective Truth of some sort.
(Though there is nothing wrong with doing that insofar as your hypothesis is truly scientific and withstands scientific testing).
"This being science, all of it is testable."
Of course.
So why hasn't the author seemingly tested it? Here's one test: Get an analog-sourced vinyl LP, get a good digitizing system, do an A to D copy, then do a blind comparison between the original LP and the digitized copy. If this writer's hypothesis is correct, they should be easily distinguishable and the digitizing process should somehow ruin the 'emotional resonance' factor.
"Why do engineers think it is perfect while musicians think it is awful?"
They don't. That's just a grossly cherry-picked view of certain musicians. The majority have been getting on with digital for decades just fine.