The "Analog vs. Digital" argument - which I guess in the movie world is "Film vs. Digital" - was thrashed out in the audio world long ago. When digital audio first came around it was the final product, a CD; for film it was DVDs. DAT (Digital Audio Tape) was the next step where the final master mix was "printed". Next came digital multitrack recorders, followed very closely by the infant Pro Tools which was primarily an audio editing system for film.
Initially digital audio was thought to sound "thin" and "brittle" and it was. There were several problems. The first was the fact that digital audio was itself "noiseless". All of the audio sources themselves were still noisy, so on the new "noiseless" digital systems all of the noise that originally got lost in the analog tape noise became very noticeable. Add to that the fact that the conversion processors (AD/DA converters) were in their infancy. Also, most signal processors - mic pres, delays, etc. - were transistor based units and were indeed "thin" sounding. The "fat" sound of analog was in large part due to "slamming" the tape (recording in the red) and "saturating" it. This option was not available in the new digital world; recording in the red induced very unpleasant digital clipping and distortion plus other weird audio artifacts.
As computer technology improved so did the design of the front end processors (mic pres, etc.), and the new hyper-quiet tube technology started to emerge. The tubes, which in previous incarnations were abandoned because they were noisy even by analog tape standards, could now take the place of analog tape, imparting "warmth" to the recorded sounds. As AD/DA converters improved audio artifacts were greatly reduced, and as computer processing power increased the ability to emulate analog processing started to emerge (although it is still imperfect). Add to that the fact that the next generation of audio engineers was beginning to appear who were "raised" in the digital domain and had different thoughts as to how music should sound.
A large part of the filmmaking process is digital already, and will become entirely so in the future, with many of the newbs wondering what the big deal about real film was all about. Lenses and lighting are the technical front end of filmmaking, and new technologies and approaches will bring video closer to the film look, while the upcoming generations will be accustomed to and more comfortable with the (improved) digital video look.
But the ultimate basics of all creative endeavors remains the same and is expressed by the old computer crunching dictum "garbage in, garbage out." Computers and their immense (and exponentially growing) processing power allow us to process turds to a higher and higher gloss. But in the end a gold plated turd is still a turd. Great musicians recorded by a talented engineer/producer, and actors and crew directed and managed by a talented director and producer will still produce the best product. I'm sure that we would all rather be polishing and admiring gems regardless of the technological tools that are used to produce them.
