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In Reply to: RE: Both........... posted by Todd Krieger on April 09, 2014 at 23:32:50
As you know, there are a host of problems with digital audio, and "dynamic range" is not really one of them. The best tapes have about as much dynamic range as the old 14 (real) bit philips machines, which tells you that the barriers to good digital sound still have more to do with jitter, digital filters, digital processing, perhaps RFI, etc. than with signal to noise ratio as traditionally measured.
In any case, I'd rather listen to a great analog recording with a lower signal to noise ratio, on an analog system, than a sterile, high S/N digital recording, with its artificial 'black' background. As James Taylor once put it, when listening to CD, there's no 'there' there. The space between the notes is lost in the digitization.
Higher resolution digital can sound better than CD not because it has a higher S/N ratio, but because there's more real information, more 'there' there. And because it doesn't have to brickwall filter the output at 20kHz.
Too bad DVD audio and SACD are almost dead, DVD-A was really promising.
Downsampling 24/96 to CD standard causes all sorts of unecessary problems. If they had gone with DVD as the standard storage medium and say 16 or 20 bits / 88kHz as the standard sampling freq., we'd all be complaining less about digital sound. Alas, the marketplace had other ideas, due to Sonyphilips et al trying to protect patents, and little agreement in the industry about standards. Not to mention the further, unrelated complexities of getting reproduced music to sound like the real thing (transistors, crossovers, etc).
But that's all hindsight.
I have great sounding CDs, and I have great sounding LPs, and I have crappy sounding CDs and LPs. I haven't heard a crappy sounding SACD, then again, something like the Rolling Stones on SACD can also be underwhelming because of the mastering.
Follow Ups:
"As James Taylor once put it, when listening to CD, there's no 'there' there. The space between the notes is lost in the digitization."
Prior to the digital age, audiophiles often talked about "intertransient silence", as an important element of high quality audio playback.... But since digitized audio became the norm, the term is no longer a part of audio discussion.
it just never peeked up over the horizon for me. Like a lot of people, I was getting a bit burned out after having bought CD's at over $20.00 each, some up to $25.00.
And around the same time, out comes DVD and now we get to replace all of our VHS tapes. And then, SACD? Hah! Not gonna happen!
As you say, it's too bad that things went the way they did. Of course, what's best for the consumer was never factored into it - what's best for the corporation and the shareholders will always take precedence.
And then, as we can see from popular opinion, many believe that CD sound is just fine, thank you very much. So maybe Sony and Philips did have it right - they certainly had a considerable return on their investment.
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