"By way of analogy, I'd like to compare the recording dynamics with photographing a large skyscraper. As you can imagine, due to its enormous height it's difficult to capture the entire building in perfect focus. Here's where Analogue and Digital technology differ, by limiting our focus to distinctly different areas of the building."
A mate of mine made the case that this is also true of digital photography and, although I can't remember all the argument, I can see how it works in that the brightest and darkest areas of the image become the peaks in the dynamic range of colours.