Quotepure analog, vinyl, all valve (vacuum tube)
Why do so many prefer distorted music? When you consider turntable rumble, microphonics, surface hiss, frequency and dynamic range limitation, vacuum tube thermal noise and more, by the time you get through your analog system, you've added a lot of noise and distortion to the sound. The best vinyl cab produce about 65 dB of dynamic range, compared to 96 dB for CD quality. That's over 1000x the range, from softest to loudest, of vinyl. Also, due to inertia in the cutting lathe and pickup needle, you get nowhere near the frequency range of CDs, that can approach 22 KHz in some systems. Please note, I am not talking about compressed formats, such as MP3, which tend to be "lossy" and lose some detail.
I also recall the direct to disk and 1/2 & 1/4 speed masters, of many years ago, to get around the limitations of vinyl. Of course, we can't forget about tape hiss and wow & flutter, when talking about analog master tapes.
There's a term called "transfer function", which compare s the input and output for fidelity. Many years ago, a manufacturer of transistor amps created one with the same transfer function as a tube amp. The audio purists couldn't tell the difference. Now, amps built with bipolar transistors, as earlier ones were, will tend to generate odd order harmonics, compared with the even order with vacuum tubes. Even order tend to be more pleasant to listen to than odd order. However, later amps are built with some type of FET transistor, which has similar characteristics to vacuum tubes and therefore create similar even order harmonics.
I am also aware that in the early days of transistor apps, some things were done that did cause unwanted artifacts. This might have been the cause of people preferring tube amps as, back in that day, they were better.
At the moment, I'm listening to some MP3s on my tablet, but that's only casual listening. If I want to really listen to music, I put on CDs on my main system. Incidentally, I have both vinyl & CD of much of my music. There's no way the vinyl is as good as CD. The laws of physics, etc., get in the way.
