I'm not implying, I'm stating it outright. A freeware EQ plug-in that's designed properly, and most are, has raw fidelity better than is theoretically possible with the finest analog design and highest quality components. This is easily provable fact, not opinion, as long as we agree that the "fact" is raw fidelity and not euphonic distortion which is a different issue.
So what is a hardware vendor to do now that most people work ITB? All they can do is make up stuff about why their "analog" or "tube" products are better. They either attack digital for being "harsh," or claim its "damaging phase shift" destroys clarity, or that DAW summing narrows the sound stage, and so forth. This is the entire reason I made my
AES Audio Myths video and wrote my Audio Expert book, to dispel nonsense and explain how audio fidelity is defined.
--Ethan
I can't answer for what each manufacturer of analog gear claims or what if any objections they raise to digital audio...but the bottom line is that lots of people use digital and analog too, for a reason, and it's not just because they bought the hype.
If all you use are test numbers to prove why one is better than the other...that's not any kind of proof.
Also...there is this constant thumbing-of-nose by digital proponents that analog is just about adding things like "euphonic distortion", and that while "some may like that" it doesn't mean analog beats out digital.
Hey...I disagree.
I mean, if a manufacturer of analog gear wants to just argue from the point of "numbers"...that's their choice and they can live or die by that....but that's NOT what people listen to or find more pleasing/preferable.
You can try and minimize it by calling it nothing more than "euphonic distortion"...but if some folks prefer it, then you need to accept it that to them it DOES sound better and not keep on trying to argue that "it can't be possible", "your equipment is broken", "it's all in your imagination"....etc.
"Better" is a personal choice thing, and you will NEVER prove it with pure numbers.
If you want to lay down a bunch of criteria about how "better" is going to be defined, and you want to use "numbers" as
the absolute proof...that's a whole other argument that I don't think anyone here is making.
All that said...I don't see high-end analog gear production dying off, if anything, it's booming. IMO, the folks that are winning out are those who have married analog and digital and use both in their SOP to derive what they think sounds best. No amount of "tests and numbers" can prove them right or wrong.....
I'll take a Manley or GML or Tube Tech..etc....any day over anything that comes in a CD sleeve....

As much as I've expanded my digital rig the last few years, and have way more software than I ever did before....I haven't and will not stop buying analog rack gear, and if anything, I've been slowly unloading my "middlin" rack gear and buying up when I could afford it, and very new piece of analog gear has added positively to my rig....
...it's got nothing to do with hype or numbers, I am 100% convinced that my analog tracking front end and my analog mixing back end make things sound better than just the pure ITB/DAW stuff (which I do in the middle of the production process).
Prove me that I'm wrong and that to me it doesn't sound better.
