There's no doubt that the data and measurements would tell us that this analog gear is objectively less accurate than a laptop's worth of high-quality digital gear.

What gets overlooked, though, is that analog gear often sounds more pleasing because some kinds of distortion sound subjectively "good" to our ears.

The easiest example is electric guitars. They are full of (intentionally introduced) distortion and (when everything is set up and played well) they sound freaking awesome. We all know this, right?

We also know that most distortion sounds bad -- when your mp3 is corrupted, or when you're using the headphone output of a crappy laptop with a bunch of random noise.

So that tells us what? Some distortion sounds good, some sounds bad.

Clipping and random noise are forms of distortion that sound bad, generally, unless you're intentionally going for some kind of glitches-out sound like some artists do.

Some distortion sounds pleasing through, just like our electric guitar example. Second-order harmonic distortion (and other even-order distortion) often sounds good to us. Second order distortion introduces distortion that is exactly one octave higher and one octave lower than the fundamental frequency of the note being played. It's basically a "chorus" effect and it can be very pleasing and musical.

This is why tube amplification can be very enjoyable. Objectively, it's shit. Subjectively, it can sound nice, because most of the distortion is second-order harmonic distortion.

I don't know what kind of technology exists inside this console, but just know that accuracy is not always the highest goal of art. It's why we have paintings instead of photographs, and why movies have dramatic lighting inside of just clinically lighting everything like it was the inside of an operating room.

Or, just use your ears. Because Dark Side of the Moon sounds as good as any album you've heard in your life, and significantly better than most.