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Dean 
Special Collaborator 
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
 Posted: September 19 2012 at 08:26 |
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 Sorry, José but no. Jitter is the most misunderstood parameter in digital systems by the layperson, part of this is misinformation by unscrupulous system manufactures, part from the continued disinformation perpetrated by audiophilists and part from the misconception that jitter is akin to wow and flutter.
Let's dispense with the last one first - wow and flutter is horrible, it affects every aspect of the playback of a vinyl or tape recording because it varies the speed of the playback which affects the pitch of every frequency in the recording and it affects the timing of every beat in the music. It is so bad that it is immediately obvious and can never be mistaken for anything else - it is rightfully an anathema to any lover of vinyl. The same mechanical defect on an optical disc can never affect the audio component of the recording in that way, it simply doesn't work like that.
Jitter exists - that is a natural consequence of recovering information from a mechanical system - what it does not do is affect the reconstituted analogue signal and there are very good technical reasons why that is. Let's look at the component parts of any system:
1. The optical disc: CDs are circular platters with the data stored on a concentric spiral in a fixed spacing of pits, this data is read from the inside of the disc to the outside edge at a constant linear rate. Since the number of pits on the inner part of the spiral is few than on the outer edge the angular speed of the disc has to slow down as the read-laser moves towards the outer edge, this means that the disc has a varying angular velocity to maintain a fixed linear data-rate. This linear speed is fixed to achieve a data-rate of 1.23Mbits/s on a CD player with a transfer speed of "x1" - you can contrast this with vinyl where the angular velocity is constant but the linear velocity slows down towards the centre of the disc - that varying linear velocity can affect what you hear off vinyl.
2. The CD transport/player: CD players can read at transfer speeds of greater than "1x". When we use transfer speeds of "8x" or "48x" we do not hear the music played 8 or 48 times faster. What this means is the speed that the digital data is read off the optical disc does not affect the analogue signal coming out of the L & R channels of the DAC. In simplistic terms the Master Clock that reads the data off the CD is not the same Master Clock that the DAC uses to convert then digital data into an analogue signal. Two clocks, two different sources of clock jitter but only one of them affects what you hear, and that's the one in the DAC not the one that reads the data off the disc.
3. Jitter: Disc read clock-jitter is caused by minute variations in the read speed of the digital data being read from the disc. This jitter is on the Master Clock which we've already asserted is 1.23MHz and the jitter is measured in picoseconds (10−12) - which is far far above any audio spectrum and simply does not manifest itself as "wow and flutter" in the traditional parlance. On the DAC master clock any jitter is solely caused by the stability of the crystal oscillator used to generate the clock signal - this is completely (and utterly) unaffected by read speeds and all those technical sounding but highly spurious cable transmission factors that audoiphilists love to prattle on about. What jitter can affect is the Signal To Noise Ratio, electronic engineers know all about this jitter and we even have a theoretical maximum formula for it:
SNR(dBFS) = –20log(2πfinσ)
And this formula still comes up with figures that are much much better than the SNR you get off vinyl or tape media even if such variations as read speed and cable effects did have an effect (which they don't).
4. Buffering: because data can be read off the CD at speeds between "1x" and "72x" yet what we hear is at "1x" what happens to the digital data between reading off the CD and playing back through the DAC is it is stored in a piece of memory that can be written at one speed using the Master Clock from the CD transport and read at a completely different speed using the Master Clock from the DAC. There is a technical terminology for this and it is called Staticizing:
This buffering of the data in the digital form completely and utterly eliminates any clock-jitter caused by the reading of the optical CD because the variations in data-rate are during writing are irrelevant: the data bits and the master clock would both be jittering at the same time by the same degree so when you write bit 1 into memory location 1 it fits perfectly and when you write bit 2 into memory location 2 it also fits perfectly regardless of whether jitter causes that write operation to occur a few pico-seconds later than it theoretically should because the clock that clocks the data into the memory is always in sync with the data regardless of the amount of jitter. Once this data has been staticized in the buffer memory we can now read it out at a different rate at a different time using a different master clock, a clock that is not generated by the CD transport and does not get transmitted down co-axial or optical fibre. So the jitter of the CD transport master clock is now totally eliminated - the only clock jitter we have to worry about is in the DAC itself and Mr Wolfson (or Mr Burr-Brown) has got that one licked because the distance the signal travels is so very short.
5. Cost: This solution to jitter is cheap, stupidly cheap, and it's been present in CD players for over a quarter of a century: Remember when anti-jog (or anti-skip) was a big selling point of portable CD players? That's buffering, that is the technique of reading the disc, storing the digital bits in a 3 second memory buffer and then converting the digital to analogue using a different conversion clock; Remember when CD transports first became available with 2x or 4x read and write speeds? That's the same buffering but using larger memories than the 2 or 3 second buffers used in anti-jog systems. And all this technology is in every CD player whether it is $10, $100, $1000 or $10,000 or on your PC.
This is true, and it's something that doesn't happen on digital. I have several vinyls that are ever so slightly warped and a few where the centre hole is just a smidgen off-centre - that does cause distortion and they sound awful. Nothing will fix or compensate for that.
Soundstage is the product of three parameters:
We've already established that digital has a greater usable dynamic range than analogue and since no one here is going to read any technical blurb I post here I will simply state that digital has far greater channel separation that vinyl. Those who want to check that by reading technical specifications can do so, (just remember that 3dB difference is twice as good, 20dB is 100 times better and 30dB is 1000 times better). So that just leaves bandwidth, so lets disect bandwidth and see what the differences are and see whether that realistically and practically affects soundstage:
Bandwidth of digital and analogue causes humongous arguments and its all rather pointless. The audio pectrum can be subdivided into four principle regions:
the first is the subsonics, anything that you feel in your chest and not in your ears is subsonic - digital doesn't have much of that - it is removed by filtering prior to being recorded onto the disc to give the maximum headroom to the audio part of the signal. Unfortunately analogue doesn't have much of that either for pretty much the same reason -super low frequencies cause wide variations in the grooves on a disc and thus reduce the playing time per side - the RIAA pre-emphasis filter removes all subsonics before the disc is cut, no amount of RIAA de-emphasis can recreate those lost subsonics.
the second is the region that contains the fundamental frequecies of the notes being played, and typically this ranges from 30Hz upto around 4.19KHz (C8 on a piano) - simply put: if you cannot hear those frequencies then you cannot hear music.
the third region is the top-end of human hearing, this is the range above C8 that contains the harmonics that colours each note and extends from 8KHz up to around 18Khz - this is the spectrum that all audio media can reproduce.
the final region is the supersonic, these are frequencies above 20KHz that no human can hear. Now while it is impossible to hear thiose frequencies it is possible to hear the effect of them on other frequencies - the interaction between two supersonics or a supersonic and a top-end frequency can be heard in the audio spectrum - this is like the beat between two notes that produces a lower frequency component. UNFORTUNATELY, regardless of how good your analogue audio system is and regardless of how flat your system response is all the way up to 33KHz and beyond those frequencies are completely removed by your RIAA de-emphasis (equalisation filter):
 That roll-off that starts at 2.122KHz does not stop at 20KHz , it keeps going and it keeps going down further attenuating signals above 20KHz by more than the -20dB shown on the graph - and remember what I said before -20dB is 100 times smaller than 0dB. Ah! you may say, but surely the RIAA de-emphasis simply reverses the RIAA pre-emphasis - and it does, except that vinyl mastering removes supersonics above 20KHz from the recording to prevent overheating of the cutter and subsequent warping of the blank being cut... this is one of the reasons why Quadraphonic discs required specialist lathes.
Therefore bandwidth issues between analogue and digital are not that different in reality, however what we see empirically when we do spectral analysis of both system is significantly flatter responses in digital systems - whether that is important or not is open to debate - what it does not affect too greatly is soundstaging because the tonal soundstage you hear is pretty close to what the record producer wanted you to hear.
Sooo.... all things considered the parameters that contribute to soundstaging are technically better with digital - the wider channel separation will result in clearer left-right positioning, the improved dynamic range will contribute to the front-to-back depth and the more or less equally bandwidth will result in similar "height" - whether you like that possibility of a more open soundstaging is another matter altogether but the actual position of each instrument in that soundstage is a direct product of the studio production, not your ability to recreate it in your city room. With a digital system you get closer to the soundstage that the producer and sound engineer wanted you to hear, analogue mushes that up a bit - if you prefer that then that's fine.
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tl;dr
I'm neither knocking analogue nor am I defending digital. I am merely presenting the absolute technical facts above the emotional mythology. I love vinyl and I love my valve (tube) amps, I also love digital and I love my discrete transistor amps and my solid state IC amps and I certainly love the two turntables I own, the Thorens because it's a Thorens (dagnabit!) and the QED because it's a marvel of simplistic British design and it's got a glass platter and that's one of the coolest things I've ever seen and I'm never going to get that emotional or nostalgic over CDs and CD transports. With vinyl I love the ritual associated with the whole shebang - the truing-up of the platter, the levelling of the deck, the balancing of the tone arm, the care and attention I impart on keeping it lubed and dust free and the loving attention I have to give the discs; I love removing them from their sleeves and de-ionising and de-dusting them before placing them reverently on the platter; I love the slight click as the stylus gets lowered onto the groove and the faint crackling rumble of the lead-in to the first note of the first track - everything about this puts me into exactly the right frame-of-mind to sit down and listen - it sets my mood and it settles my mood - and if that ritual makes me think the music sound sweeter then that's a bonus, but because I am an Engineer with a capital "E" I know that is all psychological but it does not matter. I love it just the same.
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Catcher10
Forum Senior Member 
VIP Member Joined: December 23 2009 Location: Emerald City Status: Offline Points: 17846 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 10:57 |
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Thanks Dean.......certainly as I have said before I cannot argue technical specifications, I also said before that my intelligent mind tells me I should always stick to digital because the numbers tell me it should always sound better, with no sibilance/distortion/jitter/W&F/ un-needed noise...call it what you want, in most cases this can be true.
I completely understand your detailed explanation above, again it makes total sense to me......but I fear that these type of explanations cause the normal listener of digital to give them the impression that regardless of equipment they are hearing pure music with no hint of what I will call "distortion".......I just don't believe that to be true and I don't think you would agree with that.
How does the CD spin? What makes it spin? How does the laser housing move from the inner disc to the outer? What does that laser housing ride on? The digital medium is close to perfection, I agree any imperfections are so minute you may never hear them, as well as the the range of music capable on a CD does not matter, you will not hear it...But the spindle motor, the pulley system used to move the laser, the rails the housing rides on.....are all mechanical and can contribute to noise/distortion/sibilance whatever u wanna call it. Just like a vinyl playback system, these parts of a CDP do create noise.....My point is how the music comes off that perfect plastic disc with the perfect 0s and 1s...does not always sound perfect.
Forget about mixing and mastering......if a CD sounds bad its bad music. You cannot tell me that people who have abandoned the stand alone CDP for their laptop disc drive thru some laptop speakers are hearing all the music, to my mind that does not make much sense.....Especially when you go thru so much detail above on explaining the behind the scenes goings on of digital medium.
I am probably wrong...but to hear music the way you have described to me would only happen on a system that most of us could not afford or choose not to afford.....What the digital world describes is too perfect, again why I cannot argue what you wrote nor what the CD can do....its pretty close to perfection........100% agree.
I have more invested in the sound process of my digital sources. I have a standalone DAC, I have a higher end CDP, I use optical cable to connect my portable media player to bypass its internal DAC, which is krap, and run thru the external DAC. I run coax cable from my CDP to the external DAC, and honestly that is a lateral move, the NAD DAC is better...but the ext DAC is valve based so it gives me the analog sound I want....LOL! I do this because I want my CDs to sound the best they can for what I choose to afford......As far as my vinyl setup, well like you said it is always a tweek in progress and I am very close to where I want to be.
Listen, I have heard how bad CDs/Digital can sound.....In most cases the reason is due to the components being used, again forget about mixing/mastering. Since we don't know what the actual recorded music sounded like in the studio, we only have the consumer CD to go by.
If you are a listener of music on your laptop.....I see no way how you can decribe to me soundstage, dynamic range, distortion free music as compared to a well matched hi-fi component system......on the surface. So you are NOT hearing nor taking advantage of what the digital medium can offer, as Dean has described. And please.....I am not advocating you go out and spend US$5,000 or more for a system, that's not my point. That's a different topic/thread......
Back to the OP comment......If listening to Genesis or Yes or Pink Floyd on CD takes you to that special place, that's all that matters....keep listening.
But I agree with the words the OP used.......For me to "hear" some older prog, I prefer to hear that in analog form......I remember one of the first CDs I bought about 1985 was Dire Straits-Brothers In Arms, the SPARS code is DDD, all digital processing....Its about as flawless as music gets on CD. My copy of Madonna-Like A Virgin also DDD, again flawless.....nothing better. But...my DDD copy of Saga-Behaviour from 1985 although very good, does not come close to the other two.
I'll end this excellent thread with this quote.......have a great day and listen to however your ears like, that's the point.
"The new album "Banks Of Eden" was recorded with the band playing live in one room in Varispeed studio in January 2012, a recording much like in the old days of classic prog, before computers hit the market and this time with plenty of original 60's and 70's recording equipment, for a true warm analogue vintage sound. "We aimed for the classic big warm vinyl-sound of old records by Queen, Genesis, Zeppelin or Deep Purple," says Stolt.
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moshkito
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 04 2007 Location: Grok City Status: Offline Points: 17510 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 12:19 |
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Careful ... this is a preference, in many ways. 1. If you had never heard it before on vinyl, you might not know what the difference was. 2. Who's to say, that it was not the music that takes you to another place? Might have been the radio, the tv, the vinyl ... different ways (which is my case on the post above. I don't hear any difference between "now" and "then" ... because I hear the music!) I think it is important that we grab these subtleties and understand them ... because otherwise, the medium of "recording" or "remembering" music, becomes the very medium that kills it ... the veritable/inevitable "Childhood's End" ... and then we would have been better off with the "remembering" ... not the "recording"! It has to be about the music ... not the "recording". Or, even the live thing, is a dead end and looses its importance.
Edited by moshkito - September 19 2012 at 12:25 |
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com |
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 13:56 |
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Unfortunately I cannot agree with you - analogue data in the digital domain cannot be changed by accidental means. I know that's a mahousive pill to swallow but it's true. If the analogue signal has been converted into a sequence of numbers then that sequence can be copied and transmitted as much as you like and nothing will corrupt that sequence of numbers in such away that we would regard it as distortion - sure you can lose the odd bit or two of data, and maybe even a whole packet (this we call drop-outs) but you cannot change the data sequence by accident. You can do it on purpose and that requires some seriously heavy maths and some seriously heavy processing and it's called Digital Signal Processing because you have to process the data-stream in sequence by applying some very complex mathematical algorythms. This isn't something you can do with a resistor and couple of capacitors and it certainly isn't something that an inanimate piece of interconnecting wire can do.
Remember I am only talking about the digital data here - once you feed it into the DAC and convert back it into an analogue signal then it is subject to the same external distortions that any analogue signal can suffer - if the output of your CD player sounds carp then it's the fault of the analogue subsection between the DAC output and the unit's output jack. All those expensive modifications that people pay to have done to their iPlods to make them audiophilist do absolutely nothing to the digital subsection, they don't even change the Wolfson/Burr Brown DAC, all they do is change the capacitors on the analogue outputs. That's it... $250 for two $4 capacitors... Bargain.
No. Simply No. If this is what you beleive then you haven't understood anything of my previous post.
That's not a criticism of you because I know this stuff is counter-intuitive and I know it's difficult to grasp.
First off let's dispense with the laser guidance system - this is the biggest cause of CD transport failure and it's a show stopper - if the laser does not track then the effect is immediately noticable - the disc cannot be read or it sticks or jumps and that is always manifest by the player throwing up some enigmatic error code and freezing - it never results in distortion or bad sound because it cannot, it is as simple as that, it is similar to having the stylus skip on a vinyl disc - it's not distortion, it's skipping tththththththrrrp! - but unlike your turntable when this happens the datastream fails to synchronise to the read circuitry and the logic controller in the player calls a halt to everything.
The motor spindle is just like the spindle in a Wurlitzer juke box, it's floating self-centring hub but in this case controlled not by a simple DC motor but by a complex crystal controlled stepper motor driven from some complex control logic - this is necessary not for data integrity but so the spin speed can be accurately controlled as the laser tracks across the disc - as I said before it is variable speed (variable anglular velocity) to ensure that the data comes off at a constant linear speed. Now this digital data is not organised as a continous stream of 16-bit pairs (left and right channels), it is organised in blocks of six 16-bit audio pairs (a total of 24 8-bit bytes), two sets of 4 redundancy bytes of 8-bits each and one 8-bit sub-code so a total of 33 bytes make up each block and those blocks do not contain the audio information in the order they occur in real time, a convoluted algorythm re-orders 6 stereo samples of 24-bytes each and spreads them over 109 blocks. This ensures that the data from byte to byte on the disc contains changing information that the read logic can use to create the Master Clock that reads the data off the disc - again this sounds counter-intuitive because the master clock is created from the data as it is read off the disc, it is not created by the motor spin or the clock that causes the stepper motor to spin - this means that no matter how wobbly the disc spins (within reason) the clock and the data are always in perfect synchronisation - data bit one occurs on clock edge one, data bit two occurs on clock edge two ad infinitum - it can still be wobbly but because the clock and the data are wobbling together the data is not corrupted.
Sure - if we were to feed this directly into a DAC and used that master clock to control the DAC then the resulting analogue signal would be as wobbly as the master clock, but it is never used like that - it always goes into a buffer memory which statisized the data (ie "makes static") and it is read out using a seperate (and far more stable) clock derived from the DAC that does not have any of the wobble associated with the spin of the disc.
Imagine that this buffer memory is like the cold-water header tank in your loft (or wherever you guys keep your cold-water header tanks), your shower head is your output system and the water flowing out of the shower is at a lower flow-rate than the water flowing into the tank from the rising water main. So if you now turn on your shower the tank will start to empty until the ball-valve drops to allow the tank to re-fill from the rising main - since the inflow is faster than the outflow then the tank will fill quickly and the ball-valve will shut off yet the flow of water out of the shower head will remain constant even though the flow of water into the tank is fluctuating wildly. What you have there is an inflow of data with lots of jitter but the outflow of data is jitter free. That's sort of how the buffer in a CD player works and that's sort of why wobbly spindles and fluctuating motor speeds have no effect on what you hear.
It does not work like that. You have to compare apples with apples and oranges with oranges. Back in the days of purely analogue people were happy listening to cassettes, they were happy listening to the limited bandwith of FM radio and they were happy listening to the even more limited AM radio in all its monaural beauty. Hell, here in the UK we even had a telephone service called Dial-A-Disc that played music down the 3.3KHz telephone system and people were more than happy to pay to listen to that. Yet listening to a CD on a laptop PC is infinitely better than all those systems that people "in our day" were more than happy with. The point is that will all those "apples" systems people are hearing all the music, and we, with our "oranges" systems, are hearing all the same music, just in slightly better quality. If the music is good then it is good music regardless of the quality of the medium. When we start hearing the system rather than the music then it is us that's doing it wrong, not the people listening to music on their laptops.
Nope. Not really - I'm not a fan of price-ticket technology - adequate is good enough and in the digital world adequate is close to perfection anyway. I think we've become bogged down in detail, not the detail that the OP is talking of, but the detail of what is possible rather than the detail of what is actually there. As many posts (including yours and mine) have said - whatever faults we think we don't like it's not the fault of the medium used to carry the music, but of the way it is used or misused.
My laptop has a fan - it whirrs - I don't use laptop speakers (I have a nice pair of Kenwoods but seldom use them) - I plug my headphones into the headphone socket and I can hear the music on a perfect soundstage and it's distortion free and I cannot hear the fan. My desktop has lots of fans - they whirr like crazy - I plug the output from my soundcard into my Audio Innovations amp and blast it out through some humonguous floor standing speakers at such a volume that I cannot hear the fans, or my wife screaming from the next room for me to turn it down so she can hear the telly or my neighbours pounding on the wall. I use that desktop to record and mix music - I use headphones for that because I want to listen to every nuance of every instrument and I want to construct the soundstage exactly how I want it. I have my CD player, NAD amp and Mission speakers in the same room as my laptop and I listen to music while typing away on this thing replying to posts on the PA. I don't notice the fan at all, some times I don't notice the CD has finished either.
Edited by Dean - September 19 2012 at 14:16 |
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Catcher10
Forum Senior Member
VIP Member Joined: December 23 2009 Location: Emerald City Status: Offline Points: 17846 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 15:12 |
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^ Agree or disagree.....all this technical digital talk gives me a headache, just like I get when I listen to too much digital format music, CD or computer files on my home system or thru a portable media player.
Simply from a technical perspective of course you are right, I am sure you are right.....I don't doubt that. You are 100% right, the digital medium, unless introduced on purpose, has no distortion/noise that just appears....I agree, and I get your points with that, no arguement. And I don't think I have said "a CD has distortion".....If I did I was wrong, and I am sure that was not what I meant....If I said that.
People complain about the hiss from vinyl......Is that the vinyl or is it the recording? I just listened to my CD copy of VDGG H to He....it has hisss all thru the CD, my vinyl copy does not exhibt any hisss. So I know that was introduced somewhere in the transfer process, I suppose. Being that its "old prog"......I do not want to listen to my CD copy, as I do not want to hear that noise.
Moshkito.....it is 100% about the music, I have no idea what the recording sounds like, I don't own any master studio tapes, so I can only go by the consumer copies we all have to buy.....And in a lot of cases to "hear" the music of old prog I prefer vinyl. I don't think I need to becareful because it is 100% a preference as I do have a choice, we all do.
In a lot of cases this discussion of analog-digital is the same as someone having a discussion of who is the better prog band......there is no answer, its a choice......And we all have our reasons why we do what we do.
The thought of having to look at my CDs and digital files as Dean explains them, gives me all the more reasons to look at digital as a very sterile medium, it has no life other than black and white....There is no grey area.......Music is not black and white, to me......That's not what I hear. Those early Genesis albums, as veiled by todays hi-fi terms are, back then were special and a lot of people heard the music then. Todays technology maybe has made some of that go away, to me that is sad. The new music lovers of prog may not experience what I think people like Moshkito experienced back in the day, it is people like that who need to keep the music alive......and remind the young ones, its not all 0s and 1s......Its way more colorful than that, there are actual musical notes that make the sounds, not a computer plastic disc with pits or a file on a harddrive you cannot see.
Moshkito, you say you don't hear a difference in either......That is fine, I will not argue that, its your preference, but when I show my kids music I show them a vinyl record, I show them the grooves where that music lives, I get a magnifying glass and we look at the grooves and how they sway sideways and change shape, go from narrow to wide and I explain to them that IMO that is where the magic is........I choose to look at music that way.
Dean I don't think adequate is good enough, this site slams artists who are just adequate. But my choice on whatever media I listen to, I try not to settle for adequate....digital or analog, I prefer better.
Thanks again for all your information on the realities of digital.....I certainly look at it differently now.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 17:56 |
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Do you know what gives me a headache?
Doing this
 does 
You did several times and not in any way that could be mistaken as something else. I would say it doesn't matter but it does. This kind of misrepresentation of what digital media is capable of fuels the arguments that really should not exist. At no point here have I ever denigrated analogue/vinyl or rubished it in any way - I just state the technical facts as they exist, not the subjective, emotional
Another misconception. Hiss comes from magnetic tape. It's called tape hiss. The hiss you are hearing on vinyl comes from the studio master tapes and that same hiss will be transfered to the CD media too. Because CD has more dynamic range than vinyl you can now hear more of this background hiss from the tape - the reason you cannot hear it so much on the vinyl is because vinyl doesn't have that dynamic range. The noise floor of tape is much lower than vinyl and the noise floor of digital is considerably lower than either of them. This still does not make vinyl better than digital just because it is incapable of reproducing this master tape hiss - you are hearing a different type of background noise that is relatively louder than tape hiss, but has a different frequency response and subconsciously you have become innured to it - it's always there so you no longer hear it. What you get from the vinyl media is scratch-noise and surface noise - it can sound a little like hiss because it is random (hiss is random noise) but it has a different audio spectra to tape hiss because it is related directly to the angular velocity of the groove so it is of a much lower frequency and therefore less intrusive. The quality of the vinyl material and the quality of the pressing contributes significantly to this noise. It is not only the physical scratches running over the grooves, it is the minor imperfections in the vinyl itself being picked up by the stylus.
José, I'm 55 years old. I've listened to music since I was born (literally). I was there at the beginning of Prog and I have been involved in audio electronics since I was 15. I have been fanatical about analogue technology for all of that time - while I currently analyse ADCs and DACs for a living (among other things), I also design and build analogue amps and speakers as a hobby and have even built my own turntable and cassette deck. I look at everything scientifically but I listen with my heart, not by brain - if I like something I like something and nothing affects that.
Today's hi-fi terms are no different to those of 1972 - the quality of those early Genesis albums is shoddy by 1972 standards - there are better quality albums recorded in the same studio at the same time - whatever happened to them back then was not special (well it was, but not in a positive way) - a review of Nursery Cryme from 1971 states: "... It's the godawful production, a murky, distant stew that at best bubbles quietly when what is desperately needed are the explosions...", that's not a retrospective view seen through murky spectacles or one measured by today's standards - that was a contemporary view from the year it was released. You cannot blame today's technology for that ("Todays technology maybe has made some of that go away, to me that is sad").
That's not what I said (or meant) - Adequate digital is as close to perfect as anyone needs to be. The returns on going from adequate to absolute perfect are not worth the expense. Seriously. I'm not exaggerating or over-stating the case here - there is so little you can do to improve on a $100 CD player. The technical information I have given over the past 24 hours shows that all the extra money spent on making rock-solid transport mechanics is a wasted effort - its disingenuous marketing to claim that some fancy design of CD transport reduces jitter, because even though it is probably a very true statement, it is irrelevant because transport induced jitter was rendered irrelevant over 25 years ago. A $500 CD player has the same transport mechanism as a $50 CD player and is made by the same manufacturer under licence from Sony or Philips in Korea or China, there is a pretty high probability that they will also use exactly the same DAC chips and controller chips. It is this simple observation that opened my eyes to the dishonesty in hi-fi marketing, not just in these digital systems but across the whole spectrum, from cables through to analogue systems, amplifiers, pre-amps, stands, sound absorption matting and all the other unnecessary paraphernalia they try and sell us. The only two areas that have some integrity left for me are turntables and speakers because they are improved with better mechanical engineering because they are electro-mechanical devices - a better engineered turntable will be better than a cheap plastic one, better engineered speakers will be better than cheap plastic ones.
Edited by Dean - September 20 2012 at 02:21 |
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rogerthat
Prog Reviewer 
Joined: September 03 2006 Location: . Status: Offline Points: 9869 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 20:12 |
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This sounds like it was addressed to me so I will respond to this. First off, I never specified that I use laptop speakers and I don't. I have a desktop and I connect a 5.1 set to its speaker slot. I never use laptop speakers because they are simply too feeble to listen to music on, let alone dynamic or not. If I use the laptop to listen to music, it is only with headphones, whereby you can hear every detail in the recording. As for dynamics blah blah blah, I have remasters of several 60s and 70s albums like Abbey Road, DSOTM, SEBTP, Red, I have CDs that were not remastered like Virgin Killer, Novella and I have contemporary albums of different styles and genres from pop to world music. I have also attended several concerts of rock, world and classical music so I know what is dynamics and when it is and is not captured on a recording. Shakti's Saturday Night Live at Bombay recording sounds possibly better than actually hearing it in concert - and I have seen them live - because there is too much distraction in an actual concert to notice all the details - even with modern sound systems where the mikes don't play mischief with the musicians. So I have good reason to believe the medium is capable of faithfully reproducing what the musicians play, IF that is what they want. Even in the analog age, some artists used delay and overdub in horrible ways to achieve a certain effect so that kind of decision does not reflect the capability of the medium itself. So please don't try to tell me I have not heard dynamics on a digital recording because that is patently untrue. If you don't like digital, that's fine, but it doesn't mean those who use digital format albums cannot derive enjoyment out of those; it only means you with your possibly nostalgic attachment to vinyl cannot. Edited by rogerthat - September 19 2012 at 20:20 |
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presdoug
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 24 2010 Location: Canada Status: Offline Points: 8615 |
Posted: September 19 2012 at 20:32 |
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It is not the fact that today's classical performances are recorded digitally that is the bad thing. It is the interpretive quality that is lacking. Today's orchestras sound so much alike and are so bland because of the lacklustre conducting techniques If Toscanini or Bruno Walter or Leopold Stokowski were alive today and could use today's digital technology, we would have great conducting showing itself in up to date digital recordings, and i bet it would sound! The fact that there are no pianists like Artur Schnabel or Claudio Arrau anymore is not the fault of today's digital technology. Edited by presdoug - September 19 2012 at 20:34 |
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Catcher10
Forum Senior Member
VIP Member Joined: December 23 2009 Location: Emerald City Status: Offline Points: 17846 |
Posted: September 20 2012 at 11:41 |
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Dean please read my posts in this thread, I have not said that.....from the start I have agreed with you over and over on all the techincal aspects of digital. It does matter when you are saying something I have not indicated, and i don't want anyone on this forum to think I believe the digital medium is not the best for music, from a purely numbers perspective....Again I will state what I have said already....I cannot argue the tech specs of digital, there is no discernable distortion within the digital medium, you can't hear any if it exists in the 0s and 1s.
I have been on the CD bandwagon since 1985, when as a 21yr old I purchased my first player a Sony CDP-302.....The best I could afford at that time I remember it was US$599, at 21 that was a ton of money for me, so I remember. I had enough money left to buy 3-4 CDs.....And I was blown away at what I was hearing.....It was better than sliced bread!
That player was built very well, it finally died on me 2yrs ago......The value that player returned to me for over 20yrs was more than worth it. But as a hi-fi enthusiast, I realized about 5-7yrs ago, it was not sounding as good as what I was hearing at hi-fi stores.
Here I feel you are putting words in my mouth and also telling me what I am hearing. I have had a multitude of cassette decks and also still own an Akai reel-reel deck...I know what tape hiss is. And yes you are right the hiss comes from the master recording tapes.....That is all good and fine and I agree. My comment was that the vinyl version I have of this album, you cannot hear the hiss that is present on the CD version. Its what my ears hear, in those cases technical terms do not come into play, its what I actually hear......What the reason is I am not sure because again, your explanation makes sense from a technical position, but the A/B comparison shows me the vinyl has better playback, and again its why I don't listen to this album on CD.....it is what it is.
Your preaching to the choir on vinyl imperfections and how the stylus picks it all up.......Its why I am meticulous on my cleaning and care of vinyl.
Now you are trying to argue subjective comments, which is fine, these are not techincal comments I made. Again, read what I stated already. I said that those early Genesis albums are horrid on vinyl, period. I also own the remastered versions on CD and vinyl and I prefer the vinyl and that's what I listen to. The original Genesis copies I stated are put away for safe keeping since they are original copies. The only remaster copy I do not own is The Lamb...I actually like the original vinyl version I have as its not as veiled as the first few. A small tweek on my Treble knob and its much better...My other system I have a 10-band EQ, and I can make the sound much better to my ears.
You hit on exactly what I am talking about when you wrote.. "whatever happened to them back then was not special (well it was, but not in a positive way)"
Exactly!!! Not positive from a subjective listening point of view....but very positive in the statement they made and to me that feeling comes out more on vinyl than the remastered CD versions. Its ok Dean.....come to the Dark Side, let your feelings flow!!! LOL
I will clarify, adequate is not good enough for me, maybe for you and that is fine.....I will not argue what you prefer, but I will state my experiences.
I am a very frugal buyer when it comes to equipment. I too am not of the camp that $1000 spkr cable is needed to hear the music, or $500 interconnects are the only way to go and I don't believe in wall treatments or blocks to keep my cables off the floor or that this spkr stand makes the music sound better.....Certainly there are people who swear on it, but that is 100% subjective opinion that it "sounds better so it must be right...here is all my money, I am in!" NO...I am not of that camp. The musical return for me on a set of $500 cables is nowhere near worth it.......I have taken many, many sets for trial and returned everyone of them. The most I have spent was about US$12.25 per meter for 10AWG Belden cable with locking banana terminations...These cables were head and shoulders above the mid level 16AWG Monster Cable I was using. The musical return on my investment is easily double the price.
Now I have owned many CDPs, I cannot agree with your conclusion on the build quality of a $100 player compared to a $500 player, and I leave the door open a bit as we are not mentioning any brand names. I think there would be 1000s of R&D, engineers who might have a problem with that, and of course let alone the marketing folks. For example, I have had several $100 DVD players and have connected them to my system and played CDs....completely sound like A$$, the transports make noise, they clank you can hear the disc spinning loudly...I don't have equipment to test the sound, but my ears know the difference and its not good.
Now I agree there is a price point that to me, does not make sense to go over as I agree the upgrade value does not come into play. I have heard many CDP in the $1k to $2k range and I cannot hear an appreciable difference as compared to my NAD player. The dealer I use has Rega, NAD, Rotel, Naim, Marantz......and I have sat and listened to my own CDs and the upper priced, feature loaded players.....nahhh your not getting me to pay $1k+. My auditioning experience has shown me that the price of diminishing returns starts at about $400-$500, after that you are paying for extra features and not sound improvement.....and that is all subjective because if you want to buy it, go ahead its your money.
So I believe the one misconception that both you and I would agree on is......its not the CD that sounds bad, but the equipment that its playing on...then from there people might state, "CDs are not the best...",
I do agree the better engineered CDP are out on the market and have been, not much else they can do although I do believe there are better DACs on the horizon for the audio industry.....The CDP mfgs will need to somehow incorporate higher end DACs that can help fight the download wars and somehow design the plastic CD to allow storage of these hi-rez files and move up from Redbook 16/44.1 (another topic, not going there now)....but maybe not, and there in lies another conversation about is the "CD Dead?". Many listeners here download a lot.......they may not care about CDs anymore.
Basically you technically confirmed what my mind kinda assumed from 25yrs ago......that digital is the best medium. But yes, I do look at the CD and Digital and now more than ever dislike it from its sterile, lifless mathematical perspective. Yes the music sounds excellent......and at the end of the day its all about the ears and the experience...Music is art, subjective art, and to me analog is better for my ears and heart for experiencing music and that is my choice and I will defend it everyday. Nothing is gonna make me stop listening to my CDs or digital files, because on my system they sound amazing! My vinyl also sounds amazing........
But..... a perfect digital photograph copy of the Mona Lisa......is not the Mona Lisa.
Have a great day.....enjoy the music.
Edited by Catcher10 - September 20 2012 at 11:42 |
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 20 2012 at 17:06 |
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Then I have misunderstood what you have been saying everytime you've used the word "distortion" in relation to CD players. If you didn't mean distortion then don't use the word because it has a very specific meaning when referring to audio signals. For example, you said: "But the spindle motor, the pulley system used to move the laser, the rails the housing rides on.....are all mechanical and can contribute to noise/distortion/sibilance whatever u wanna call it" ... after I carefully explained that they cannot. You even drew the parallel to vinyl playback systems which do exhibit those mechanically induced distortions because it is intuitive to assume that if one does then the other must. But that isn't the case.
Sorry, that one is due to my poor explanation, I got a little carried away with my words there.
I'll have one more go then call it quits.
1. In the studio the album is recorded onto a master tape - this tape has tape-hiss
2. That recording is then transfered from the master tape to vinyl but because the vinyl cannot reproduce the hiss you don't hear it.
3. The exact same recording is transferred from the master tape to CD but because the CD can reproduce the hiss you do hear it.
4. From that you state that the vinyl has better playback because you cannot hear the hiss.
I disagree, I accept that you prefer the vinyl version, but I do not accept that it is better - the missing "hiss" also indicates that there are other elements of the actual recording that the vinyl also does not reproduce - all those subtle inflections, the final milliseconds of the decay of a notes and the quiet ambient nuances of each instrument. Of course all those may be irrelevant, but when people start using words like "fidelity" and "audiophile" and decry the modern fashion of over-compression I do start to wonder whether they really want all those things that they strive for, because the opposite of over-compression is no compression at all, and with that the tape-hiss and the subtle nuances of the recording can be heard. To me it seems that what people really want is CD that sounds exactly like vinyl, with all it's flaws and limitations, and I think that is a mistake.
The opening track on Secret Green's To Wake the King is the slowest crescendo I have ever heard - it employs the dynamic range of the digital medium to its fullest starting from absolute zero and steadily rising to maximum volume over the space of three and a half minutes - because it was mastered in the digital domain there is no tape hiss, yet it is far from sterile and cold. It's stunning and it's beautiful and you will never reproduce that on vinyl because the beginning of that crescendo would be lost due to the limited dynamic range of the vinyl media.
I have the feeling I have no real idea what you originally meant, I certainly think I totally misread what you were saying. I thought your comment: "The thought of having to look at my CDs and digital files as Dean explains them, gives me all the more reasons to look at digital as a very sterile medium, it has no life other than black and white....There is no grey area.......Music is not black and white, to me......That's not what I hear. Those early Genesis albums, as veiled by todays hi-fi terms are, back then were special and a lot of people heard the music then. Todays technology maybe has made some of that go away, to me that is sad. " was about looking at those early Genesis albums from a modern perspective and finding them lacking, that somehow what we (and I mentioned my age and background to emphasise that I am of that generation who discovered Genesis when those albums were originally released), thought those albums were better than they sound today. That it was the fault of modern technology that we now find those albums to be of poor production. Obviously I see now that is not what you meant, but since that is the case I do fail to see exactly what you did mean.
Other than that I'm kind of disappointed that I've given the impression that I am totally objective - sure if we're talking technology and engineering I can be coldly objective - that's why the word "better" has such a narrow definition for me - if A is better than B it is because objectively and empirically it can be measured to be better - that is not a subjective word for me so if I prefer A to B then that does not mean (nor can it ever mean) that A is better than B - objectively B can be better than A but I will still prefer A to B. Mike Portnoy is objectively a better drummer than Nick Mason, but subjectively I'll take Nick every time.
I never mentioned build quality so I could not have given a conclusion on that.
I said that $100 and $500 CD players use the same internal transport mechanisms. Just like PC manufacturer they buy them in and install them into their own cases and fit their own electronics - the transport in my LG DVD player is made by LiteOn - the one in my Philips DVD/HDD player is exactly the same as the one in my PC - the one in my Cambridge Audio CD deck was made by Sony. And it's not just limited to $500 decks - there is the infamous incident of Lexicon charging £3500 for an audiophile blu-ray player that was in reality an unmodified $500 Oppo player in a Lexicon box.
Sure the external build quality of a $500 player is better than a $100 one because it has to be, if only for cosmetic purposes, and perhaps internally it may be constructed a little better, and for the money I would hope that the analogue section of the electronics is at least their own design and is made to a high standard. As I said before, if your CD player sounds crap then it's the fault of the analogue section.
I have not said that either.
sorry, you've lost me. You are quoting techincal things that you really need to back up with technical information. As JediJoker7169 as already mentioned SACD and how that has failed to catch on, I am at a loss to see where you are going with this.
Edited by Dean - September 20 2012 at 17:14 |
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pitfall
Forum Senior Member
Joined: June 22 2012 Location: Essex, England Status: Offline Points: 109 |
Posted: September 20 2012 at 17:47 |
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Yes, I agree that the original topic was about recorded sound, but I think that it is deeply connected to the way that the music was created. They are two ends of the same process.
When I record, I have a deep relationship with the instruments and other equipment that I use. Personally, I don't feel any connection to a plug-in or a virtual simulation. They just sound and feel phoney to me.
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Catcher10
Forum Senior Member
VIP Member Joined: December 23 2009 Location: Emerald City Status: Offline Points: 17846 |
Posted: September 20 2012 at 22:39 |
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Dean I am fine with your comments........Some things we agree to disagree on, but not the technical specifications, we are on the same page.
And I am not surprised I may have lost you with my comments.......Its what happens on the internet and forums when trying to explain such things. Some things are better done in person.........one day we will break bread and share a few pints and walk away understanding each other. Have a great day....
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fs_tol
Forum Newbie 
Joined: December 20 2004 Location: Chile Status: Offline Points: 26 |
Posted: September 21 2012 at 02:43 |
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I just read the whole thread and as a sound processing amateur wanted to thank Dean for making such an exhaustive (for a nontechnical forum) case on the shortcomings of analog versus digital sound. If an objective view is to be taken, I'd say a good summary is that digital has the theoretic (thanks to mr. Nyquist) potential to reproduce analog, but not the other way around. Being young enough to not have experienced all the mysticism surrounding vinyls and be biased by extramusical affairs, I prefer this objective victory.
I think it's important to emphasize that the often critiziced sound of digital audio is not due to format but to mastering practices used by modern producers. A little offtopic question to Dean: we know bandwidth is not an issue, but what about resolution? Do you think 16 bits is enough to reproduce music? Edited by fs_tol - September 21 2012 at 02:54 |
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 21 2012 at 07:21 |
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 )
16 bits is a theoretical dynamic range of 90dB - from a signal made of +1step to a maximum of ±32,768step is 90dBs:
 so if you can hear a baby breathing while stood next to a large truck that is a dynamic range of 90dB. Now some people will argue that the 1step "baby breathing" component of that 90dB dynamic range is a square-wave so cannot be an accurate representation of the original recording, and this is true, but first consider the harmonic content of a square-wave:
 As you can see the harmonics are considerably smaller than the fundamental note, and as we've alredy established that the fundamental is -90dB below the maximum volume recorded on the CD then these harmonics are even further down heading towards the threshold of human hearing and probably even below it. For very quiet sounds we cannot tell the tonal quality of that sound, if it is distorted we cannot tell.
Now, that's the classical explanation and it all makes perfect sense, so why then do we use 20 and 24 bits in a studio and why to digital guru's swear by 24-bits? The reason for the former is also very simple and makes perfect sense. The ADCs and DACs are linear, they have to be to accurately reproduce the signal voltages, but we don't hear voltage, we hear power and power is a square law of voltage so our hearing is logarithmic - dBs are logarithmic for that very reason. So when we digitise a signal at half the maximum voltage we get a reduction in power of only 6dB - we can barely notice the difference - we are using ±16384steps (15 bits) instead of ±32,768steps (16bits) and getting a barely noticable reduction in volume. To get a reduction in percieved volume of a half we need to reduce the voltage by considerably more (loudness is realtive so half as loud as a truck would be something around 45dB) - a 45dB reduction in volume equates to an 180 times reduction in voltage which is 364steps or 8.5-bit resolution. The implications of that are pretty obvious - in the studio if you mix two instruments one of maximum volume and one half as loud the second is being recorded with the equivalent resolution of 8-bits. When you do that at 24-bit resolution the equivalent resolution of the second instrument is 12-bits, an obvious improvement. BUT (and that's a big butt) this does not mean that 24-bits will automatically give better quality in any subjective or objective measures, what 24-bits gives the sound recording engineer is more room to play with, it lifts the quiet passages out of the studio's inherrant noise floor and allows greater headroom for any sudden loud bursts.
Remember - this only applies to recording - on playback if you reduce the volume control on your stereo to half volume you are still hearing 16-bits - the volume reduction is applied after conversion to analogue, in the recording studio it is effectively applied before. The aim of a studio is to keep all the components of the mix at as high a resolution as is possible and 24-bits is (at the moment) a technology limit - the dynamic range afforded by 24-bits puts us into the cosmic background-radiation noise region (joke!) - anything greater than 24-bits is way beyond the threshold of human hearing..
So, why do digital guru's then swear by 24-bits when saving their treasured recordings to their iPlods and PCs? Part of the reason is peer pressure and techno-envy - if it's good enough for the studio boys then it's good enough for them. In double-blind ABX testing most people cannot tell the difference, but some can - not enough to produce any statitistically meaningful conclusion - but enough to create a psychological advantage for using 24-bits. There is also the psychological advantage that 24 is bigger than16 and 96K is bigger than 44.1K and that must be better (must it not?).
Some of it is to do with data-rates and file sizes - lossless file formats are still compressing the data - they are not losing any aural information but they are still reducing the file size when storing and the data-rate when transmitting the data. Raw data comming off a pre-recorded CD at 16/44K is a data-rate of 1.35Mb/s (to put that into prespective that is RF - in the UK our national AM radio station transmitted its programming on a carrier wave of 1.2Mhz), for a 24/96K recording the data-rate is 4.49Mb/s ... the resultant file sizes for 3 minutes of music are 30Mb and 99Mb respectively and these are wholey impractical numbers when it comes to storing them on a PC or iPlod. MP3 conversion reduces that by a factor of 10 but with losses (that some can hear and some cannot). I've covered all this ground before in various posts here so I'll not bore everyone further, but what we get with any form of compression are trade-offs between resolution, sampling frequencies, bit-rates and file sizes. Edited by Dean - September 21 2012 at 09:02 |
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Catcher10
Forum Senior Member
VIP Member Joined: December 23 2009 Location: Emerald City Status: Offline Points: 17846 |
Posted: September 21 2012 at 10:21 |
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^ Perfect......I have always stated redbook playback of 16/44.1 is more than enough. I have a couple 24/96 hi-rez downloads and I cannot hear the difference, it sounds wonderful no doubt....But the added cost and the missing pcs of either a physical record label issued booklet/jewelcase or a vinyl gatefold, its not enough.
Even my yellow lab has told me.."dude, even I can't hear any difference...stop already..." he is a funny dog that way.
For those people I have concluded its mostly in their head due to peer pressure and the need to have something better than your next door neighbor.......Which is certainly their right to have.
I have no issue paying more for something better, but the return has to be worth it.
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JediJoker7169
Forum Senior Member
Joined: May 05 2009 Location: West Coast, NA Status: Offline Points: 195 |
Posted: September 21 2012 at 17:04 |
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Someone else made reference to Betamax vs. VHS, which is almost exactly apples to apples in the SACD vs. DVD-Audio arena: - Sony developed both Beta and SACD (the latter with Philips) - Both Beta and SACD were/are inherently superior to their rivals (VHS and DVD-Audio) - Both failed because of obstacles to adoption (licensing for Beta, host of issues for SACD) Given all the givens, I am not surprised that SACD has failed. I am not talking about consumer choices here, but industry ones. DSD is better than PCM. Any discerning artist or recording/mixing/mastering engineer can tell the difference. Sony and Philips are both bona fide industry giants. If they had marketed and licensed DSD properly, as they did S/PDIF, it should have overtaken PCM and become the new standard in digital audio off which every digital A/V filetype was based. Digital audio interfaces (studio and consumer DACs) would be running at 1-bit and sampling at 2.8 or 5.6 MHz instead of 24-bit and 96 or 192 KHz. CDs and CD players would have disappeared, replaced with lower-priced stereo SACDs. Download retailers would be selling compressed DSD files instead of PCM ones. I can't help it. I'm an idealist.
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moshkito
Forum Senior Member
Joined: January 04 2007 Location: Grok City Status: Offline Points: 17510 |
Posted: September 22 2012 at 13:10 |
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Hi,
I just came up with something ... that I believe is important. First ... all the kudos to Dean, in showing what "recording" is really all about ... which is something that most of us take for granted. This is a bit of Zen ... and it does not mean that it is right or wrong! There was a moment in time, that was recorded! That moment can not be duplicated, or enhanced. It might get a "digital" idealization that makes it sound "better" because in those days there were not as many tracks as today to make the separation and the combination of these things as good as before. That moment, has, ALL the feelings and details POSSIBLE for that moment to live, die, be remembered, whatever we want to draw out of it! To think that this process, or that process, can better express that moment is, as Dean suggests a totally subjective art, that could be said to be all about preferences! However, in this, we are confusing ... the original ... for our own ideas. I commented that the rehashes of King Crimson, I just heard, were NOT any livelier to my imagination than they were when I first heard them 40 some years ago ... though they sounded much cleaner and obviously better distributed through out the ears on your headset of stereo equipment! Again, this has nothing to do with the original piece ... and how it can get to you! The HOW, or what clothes the musicians were wearing, is an issue today for advertising, not a fact of the music or its very specific moment in time! I have a hard time accepting that some folks can "hear" this today, and could not "hear" it yesterday ... so it what was it like, then, now? Or what was it like now, compared to "then" ... and as Peter Cook once said ... "smelly"! I really think that we're convincing ourselves that something is better than it really is ... it was great already! But for Robert Fripp's ears, it might have realized some recording potential that he might have enjoyed learning about 40 years ago, and worked with sooner than later! It adds to his sonic knowledge of how he plays and works with things, and this Steven Wilson is a very good helper and teacher for Robert! In reality, it tells you how many studios charged so much and created crap in the end ... and a lot of this music was really lucky to get out in one piece. REALLY LUCKY!
Edited by moshkito - September 22 2012 at 13:13 |
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Music is not just for listening ... it is for LIVING ... you got to feel it to know what's it about! Not being told!
www.pedrosena.com |
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Hercules
Prog Reviewer
Joined: June 14 2007 Location: Near York UK Status: Offline Points: 7024 |
Posted: September 22 2012 at 16:08 |
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@ Dean
"Therefore bandwidth issues between analogue and digital are not that different in reality, however what we see empirically when we do spectral analysis of both system is significantly flatter responses in digital systems - whether that is important or not is open to debate - what it does not affect too greatly is soundstaging because the tonal soundstage you hear is pretty close to what the record producer wanted you to hear."
Unfortunately, any differences in the flatness of frequency response between digital and analogue retrieval equipment will be utterly masked by the speakers in use. No speaker I have ever tested has had a remotely flat response - some major anomalies can occur, particularly round the crossover frequencies. Ironically, this may not affect the subjective performance of the speakers. In the early 80s, my university department acquired a new design - the Tangent RS4 - which we found had an exceptionally fine acoustic performance - but analysis of its frequency response and impedance characteristics showed a very non-linear response. Yet I still have the speakers and use them from time to time and they sound very good to this day. Another design with a much more linear response sounded far worse to all the judges. I spent 6 months with the acoustics team trying to quantify why this was in terms of a mathematical/physical model and we could not put our finger on precisely why.
I think that you can get too hung up on measurements; some seem to matter a lot (wow & flutter, distortion) others are far less important. And whether you prefer digital/analogue is extremely subjective - like why some people drink lager and others drink bitter.
Me, I'm an analogue/real ale man, but that's just my taste.
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A TVR is not a car. It's a way of life.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 22 2012 at 17:48 |
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I never get hung-up on measurements because it is what I do for a living. That's why when non-technical people quote things like jitter, skin effect, field induction and group delay I can tell them it isn't important and I can tell them why it isn't important. Measurements tell you a lot but only if you understand them, it is when measurements get misused and abused that I get hung-up on them.
As I also have said many times before - audiophilists spent 40 years striving for perfection but when we gave them perfection they didn't want it. If you like what you hear then you have the perfect system for you. That is the be all and end all of it. No better no better no best.
Analogue - digital - I'm not that bothered - me and my ears like them both equally.
I don't like any gaseous fizzy beer, real ale is the only way to drink beer - that's not just my taste, that's just taste.
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Dean
Special Collaborator
Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 22 2012 at 19:15 |
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the importance of analog sound in prog
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Catcher10 wrote: