The more I delve into the math of discrete signal processing, the more I am convinced that digital will never result in a pure sound. There has to be a better way to make analogue more accessible to NLE.

Hi,
 
Is the distortion really any better? Or is it just weirder?

if your sample rate is high enough, you can play back the broad frequency spectrum (Nyquist>=2x highest freq).  But you need a linear phase brick wall filter to get that highest frequency without aliasing issues.  Linear phase difficult real-time hi res.  192k sample would get you 86k playback.  
I cannot fathom a personal reason to go beyond 24 bits, but there cannot be any valid reason to go beyond 32 bits.  

Define a "pure" sound?

To my mind, even an analog recording is only an "analogy" of the sound you hear in the room.

And what about sounds that were never recorded by a microphone? Synths etc?

I think too much is being read into this

Pure sound = This Song


But serioulsy, I have to agree with Colin.

At the time Edison's wax cylinder was pure, then 78RPMs were pure then 45/33.33333RPMs were then cassette then CD, then 5.1 then then then.....

Another shameless plug. I like your style Ed 

Can we do Mac vs PC instead?

Analogue vs Digital never quite progresses into the depth of silly that platform choices do.

'Best sounding DAW' is usually a good alternative though.

Sooner or later somebody is going to invent a better way to record sound that does not result in quantization error and aliasing. By analogue and pure, I mean "real sound", not equipment type. My post was actually more about the limits of my own ability to see how to improve the state of the art of non linear editing (I am neither educated enough nor smart enough). But I want to. To answer Pedro, I find digital distortion weird, but its not about that per se, as about finding a closer approximation to the original sine than quantized samples and random noise bits. Maybe I am wrong, and we have reached the pinnacle of audio recording already.

without Linear Phase you might as well give up..

foxwolfen


Sooner or later somebody is going to invent a better way to record sound that does not result in quantization error and aliasing. By analogue and pure, I mean "real sound", not equipment type. My post was actually more about the limits of my own ability to see how to improve the state of the art of non linear editing (I am neither educated enough nor smart enough). But I want to. To answer Pedro, I find digital distortion weird, but its not about that per se, as about finding a closer approximation to the original sine than quantized samples and random noise bits. Maybe I am wrong, and we have reached the pinnacle of audio recording already.

That's a better way of looking at it than a digital vs analogue debate.  I think the only way to strive for that kind of perfection is to overlook the idea that what we have is good enough, which it likely is for all practical purposes regarding music making.

I think we've probably reached a plateau rather than the pinnacle I'm sure there's further innovation to come.

The fact that digital audio has definite 'characteristics' even if they are beyond the scope of normal hearing in most cases means there is room for improvement.