In my experience, almost all “claims” related to commercial audio systems has a falsehood, that is directly proportional to the equipment’s price. As in the digital front, there are “provable in theory, UNDER CERTAIN CIRCUMSTANCES, with no additional benefit” features in analog systems as well.
At the end; There were some analog, and some digital instruments at a certain point in the past, performed a musical piece. Some portion of audio waves (as in the vibrations of air molecules) were converted to electronic form using microphones, some other portion of audio data (as in electrical signals) were converted using electronic components. At those two conversion points you lose originality of audio. Full STOP.
All conversions, be it, analog, digital or mechanic (think about bee wax phonograph cylinders) are just that , a conversion of one type of environmental variable to another type of environmental data, and ultimately a record of changes in those data in recording cycle, and a flow of data in other way around in playing cycle, from record to environmental variances. And all conversions are losing some data, there is no way around this. If you think about that, Marcus Miller plays a bass guitar with strings. A speaker on the other hand has a cone made out of paper or cloth or wood, it does not have anything like a string…
What I am trying to tell is, if you are not listening a completely acoustic performance in the concert hall (preferably in a chamber) in front of performers, you are receiving something that is not complete, regardless of the way it is carried to you. And yes, all audio equipment manufacturers are bending the truth about fidelity. Mayne more to the point it is necessary to differentiate between marketing hypes and actual features of products and ecosystem.
