the importance of analog sound in prog

Dean wrote:           Let's talk about efficiency of valve amplifiers.

Snow Dog wrote: Dean wrote:           Let's talk about efficiency of valve amplifiers.

   Good afternoon to all. Listen guys I found a really good article that I feel best explains both the importance of digital and analogue sound. This article does give great presidence to what we've been discussing about for the last few days.
Mainly, near the end of the article by B&W they talk about the emergence of FLAC by how the FLAC format can take 16bit recordings and upgrade it to 24bit. Personally, I find this a bit hard to digest but read on my friends and fellow proggers. Like to know what you think. That goes for all of you!


http://blog.bowers-wilkins.com/speakers/definitive-guides/the-definitive-guide-to-24-bit-flac/?hq_e=el&hq_m=2060885&hq_l=8&hq_v=6022c80984


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Dean,

You are giving up because you finally admitted that both the inward and outward conversions to and from the digital domain are inherently flawed.  This is something analog listeners have known because we hear it.  If 1's and 0's are so perfect, which I can accept to some degree as long as things stay in the inaudible digital domain, there is no problem and the science all works great... but once you bring in the necessity of having ot convert in and out.. you run into the same problems analog had before.  It's inescapable, and each machine has subjective characteristics that sound different and these differences cannot be accurate, because if they were simply accurate, there would be no deviation from one machine to the other.

Thoughts from a mathematician...

The real issue with digital is the Red Book Standard and the use of sine x/x.
I'm sure you are aware the use of sine x/x means that all the calculations are truncated.
If they had used tan x for example the calculations would have yielded whole numbers and there would be no truncation errors.
My view is that digital is fundamentally flawed, not because of the concept, but due to the maths being incorrect and the way it has been implemented..
One of the biggest issues in developing digital product is that most audio engineers are engineers not mathematicians.

Edited by Dean - October 24 2012 at 18:23

Give it up Dean. This guy will never listen. He is totally entrenched in his view. Whenever you stop posting he will consider it a victory. 

Dean,

To 99.9% of the people who will ever read this thread, no one is going to understand the science formulas.  What people do know is their ears.  Most people don't have a good enough system to tell the difference between hi fidelity sound and poor sound.  These days, the majority of people are listening to music on ipods which is a shame.  This thread is about the importance of analog sound in prog.  Being somewhat opened ended, I would include the recording process in that also. 

There really is no digital music.  One can argue CD, Redbook etc.. but we can't hear digits.  The fantasy land of digital only exists inside the computer represented by 1's and 0's.. but it is not that way coming in or leaving the conversions.

The digital concept is inherently flawed by this conversion process.  You have stated it in your own words that the analog circuitry needed for the conversion in and out of the digital domain has limits, it has "characteristics" which will always be subjective and as any logical person knows.. a digital representation cannot exceed the quality of the input source.

The reason things went digital in the first place is for convenience.  The rouge consumer doesn't want to clean and take care of their vinyl collection.  They didn't like 1/8th inch magnetic tape getting eaten up in their car stereo.  They can't play vinyl at the beach very easily.  Solid state amps the same thing.  They don't sound as good, but the user doesn't have to worry about changing tubes or dealing with selenium rectifiers.   But again, while convenient, it is not better.

Prog arrived in the analog age. The music was created and performed and recorded to be heard on tape and vinyl.  All the greatest pro offerings came from the golden age when musicians had to play better than they do now. 

The digital world of editing is nothing more than a black hole of dishonesty.  Anything can and is done.  One can alter the pitch, the metering, the tightness, and the end users now get homogenized sounding releases that are not representative of the artists abilities.   It's become more about the engineering post recording than playing in a natural human groove with all the flaws and characteristics of human musicians. 

Digital playback is hampered by the sound card conversion... both in and out.  Then the user has to deal with another their conversion from digits to sound waves often on very poor equipment such as ipods or car stereo CD players.

While this was good enough for Steve Jobs, it sure is not good enough for the true audiophile.  The dumbing down of humanity is a far greater concern that just digital music. 

Surrealist wrote: Dean,

Edited by Dean - October 25 2012 at 16:53

The simple answer is, that, for music recorded before 1980, you are missing a lot if you only have C..D.
16 bit 44.1 digital is capable of 65,000 variations of level ( the human ear is capable of much more & can detect differences as small as 6ns).