Digital is still a reproduction, it's not real. It's the best we've ever had that's true and continues to improve whilst continuing to evolve itself. This subject has been flogged to death many times but full analogue still has its strong appeal as archaic as its process and form may be. It's a different method of reproduction and for some it does it in a way that resonates with them closer to a form of real representation. Both are just facsimiles and that's all they ever will be. Preference will continue to be subjective.
Sorry to challenge this and go away from a snooty HiFi/EyeFi show report, but this viewpoint above doesn't fit with this site really, methinks. You really must move away from this suspicion of digital audio playback, as the basics are well researched and the progress over the years has been in simplifying circuitry and hugely reducing costs of the state of the art (I mean, look how good the SMSL SU1 dac is in every way for eighty or so quid except fancy-foo casework and facilities such as balanced output)... It doesn't mean the early domestic dacs in the mid 80s (Sony and others) are crap now, just very complex and limited in what they can do over and above red book standards...
'Digital' done carefully can exactly reproduce the signal that goes into it to a point well above our high frequency hearing abilities, even 16/44 files from a Sony 1610 of decades back. It's what's done *after* this that can cause trouble and now, some less diligent 'engineers' I feel can mess things up and not give a stuff about it.
I asked in another thread, has anyone else heard a first generation Sony CDP 101 recently? It may not resolve tape hiss quite as well as modern 16 bit digital systems do, but 'music signals' themselves sound very open and honest in many of the discs I've played on a surviving example a while ago.
Analogue and master tapes are dead now in most pro recording and I'm about to post a thread regarding mastering the eleven Alan parsons Project albums at Abbey Road, I think mainly for a vinyl box set but I'm assuming the CD's matter too here. The mastering engineer, who's a hugely dedicated vinyl and vinyl cutting fan himself, spent a considerable amount of time collating the very best masters (duplicate masters of many of these albums held by the composer were better condition apparently than the originally identical ones held by the record company), analogue AND digital, of these AP albums and I was shocked by a mid-ish 80s release mastered to a pro video cassette (original master 16/44 Sony 1610 I gather from his description) and the record company couldn't play it now. He fought to get this original master over to the UK from Arista and three engineers at Abbey Road took three days to free the (pro video - think a large Betamax apparently) master off, but they did it, getting the material off this first generation digital tape and putting the album back together as originally presented. I have another beef as regards a favourite 1974 album being finally released on CD with bonus tracks back in 2007 and with a glaring drop-out in the mostly vocal chorus of one song - masked a bit on speakers but clear as daylight on headphones. I have said song on a few compilations and now an original 1974 vinyl pressing and guess what, the vinyl, despite not sounding anywhere near as good as all the digital releases to me, doesn't have the dropout but as the digital releases progress over the decades, the drop-out gradually seems worse (unless some compression or processing has been added, as I don't know how often the analogue original was played over fifty years) and the 2007 CD issue shows it in sharp relief
The paragraph above *to me,* transcends any domestic audiophool wittering about analogue vs digital these days. We have a race against time to preserve these old and often treasured recordings for posterity and even early pro digital formats are breaking down it seems, let alone the 80's recordings on tape which needs baking so it can be played once for the best digital capture. I'll post the link and, even if you don't like the Alan Parsons Project, think of the many millions of master recordings out there gradually deteriorating due to age and the desperate fight to preserve as much as possible - Who'd have thought the (what we thought as low rent) Emitape holds its signal better for longer than so many other designer pro brands...