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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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General Asylum General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories. |
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In Reply to: Both........... posted by Todd Krieger on April 9, 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.
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Follow Ups
- Dynamic range is not the only issue, of course - Tom Schuman 12:33:10 04/10/14 (2)
- RE: Dynamic range is not the only issue, of course - Todd Krieger 12:53:33 04/10/14 (0)
- I never got into SACD.... - StephenJK 12:50:33 04/10/14 (0)
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