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In Reply to: RE: High Resolution - Fact or Fiction? posted by StephenJK on April 09, 2014 at 05:33:12
High-resolution analog, there are no artifacts or side effects that would compromise the sound.... 30 ips tape is still the best medium, if one can source music and maintain the playback source..... Vinyl, with exacting alignments, a resolute and linear pickup/step-up, and a stable platform, does well too.
But with digital audio, there are both side effects and overkill to high-resolution playback.
Each digital audio bit switching on and off generates pulses, whose bandwidth goes all the way to RF. The more resolution, the more bits switching and with greater time density, the greater the RFI emissions..... I've never heard a high-resolution digital source (higher bitrate than CD quality) that I thought was truly enjoyable, from a music standpoint.
The overkill in digital audio is from the bit word length. 16 bits is 96 dB dynamic range, 18 bits is 108 dB, 20 bits is 120 dB. And 24 bits, the "standard" for high-resolution playback, is 144 dB. The problem is for music performance, the noise floor is *rarely* over 100 dB. So in my opinion, 18 bits would be ideal for digital audio. Anything over that, the least significant bits will be acting on noise, not the signal. And again, those extra bits also means extra RFI emissions. This is why high-resolution digital audio has so underachieved, for both mainstream consumers and audiophiles.
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Frankly nobody would accept a DA or AD convertor with a frequency response as bad as tape.
The extended HF response at 30ips is paid for by a reduced LF response.
Distortion is also substantially higher than even the cheapest digital convertor.
See link for some typical FRs of multitrack tape machines. Only the last and most expensive Studer gets anywhere close to 16/44.
And yet it is still considered to be far better sounding than all but the very best digital...If not better than ANY digital.
When will you realize that you haven't a clue about what it is that makes devices that measure according to you inferior but to most sound better? Sounds like an issue with the measurements you are parading around with and not the reality.
The truth is that one can easily hear sound well below the noise floor of the tape machine because that noise is uncorrelated with the signal and your brain knows how to ignore as not being part of the music. Also, a good slab of vinyl is actually very quiet (well over 90db down) over a wide range of the frequency response.
"And yet it is still considered to be far better sounding than all but the very best digital...If not better than ANY digital. "You mean can be right - not is?
"The truth is that one can easily hear sound well below the noise floor of the tape machine because that noise is uncorrelated with the signal and your brain knows how to ignore as not being part of the music."Ok and noise that correlates well with the signal is often mistaken as resolution.....
Give me rhythm or give me death!
Edits: 04/12/14
Are our brains so good at ignoring "uncorrelated" background noises? Why bother with noise-filtering power conditioners then?What about the frequency range(s) in which these uncorrelated noises occur? Would our brains be better at ignoring certain types of noises because of the frequencies they reside in?
Edits: 04/12/14 04/13/14
Why bother with noise-filtering power conditioners then?
Because if you look at measurements if the power supply noise is high in some designs you will get noise related IM harmonics in your distortion FFT. So, the noise becomes part of the signal and is no longer uncorrelated with the music signal.
As to the rest I don't have any ready answers for you.
Of all the people in the recording business I know not one of them considers tape to be more accurate or of higher resolution than digital including those who regularly use tape.
Tape is simply inaccurate and distorted in a pleasant way ie euphonic.
Which is nice sometimes or even most of the time but it is far from the best if accuracy is your goal.
.....to hirez digital and tape on a regular basis.I do in my system......and while I enjoy hirez digital quite a bit and have 5 terabytes of dsd and 2xdsd files that I listen to often, my 1/4" and 1/2" master tapes are sonically better on my 2 Studer A-820's.
like morricab mentions; you simply hear much farther into the music with tape. quite a bit more detail on the tape. and if you compare a hirez dub of an Lp to a tape dub of the same Lp it is not close. the hirez dub (even 2xdsd) misses something and the tape does not. you need an appropriately capable tape deck of course.
mikel
Edits: 04/12/14
.., most of us would have no choice but to take your word for it.Stuff that legends are made of, I guess...
Edits: 04/13/14
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.
"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.
"The overkill in digital audio is from the bit word length. 16 bits is 96 dB dynamic range, 18 bits is 108 dB, 20 bits is 120 dB. And 24 bits, the "standard" for high-resolution playback, is 144 dB. The problem is for music performance, the noise floor is *rarely* over 100 dB. So in my opinion, 18 bits would be ideal for digital audio. Anything over that, the least significant bits will be acting on noise, not the signal. And again, those extra bits also means extra RFI emissions. This is why high-resolution digital audio has so underachieved, for both mainstream consumers and audiophiles."
If this were true wouldn't it then become a training issue for people making 24 bit recordings - ie. back off the gain?
Give me rhythm or give me death!
Hi,
i start from the consideration that many people consider tapes the best medium.
So measuring their dynamic range would be a good reference for digital medium requirements.
Moreover i wonder which is the max available dynamic range with vinyl.
I am very curious because also vinyl has many supporters.
I do not think that LPs have more than let's say 96dB dynamic range
Found this ... i do not know it it is true or not, as usual" •Live music can have a dynamic range as high as 100-120 dB (very loud!)
•Compact discs have a maximum dynamic range of 96dB
•An LP has a dynamic range of approximately 65dB
•Magnetic tape (cassette, reel to reel) has a dynamic range of approximately 55-60 dB "If this is true the problem with cd does not seem the dynamic range
Personally i prefer 48k instead of 44.1k
Because i listened to some digital audio tapes and they were fantastic.
I am trying to convince a friend who has bought a really fine Pioneer Dat to make some good copies of high quality LPs for comparison tests.
Thanks a lot.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 04/10/14
At least, that was the published specification. That, with a flat frequency response made it a great machine for very high quality home use with a quarter track 3-3/4 & 7 ips or the half track 7 and 15 ips for two track final mixdown.
And if the sound fails to convince is not for a limited dynamic range
It must be something else.
By the way i would like to have at least the 48k sampling rate
It is just a better feeling
Thanks a lot.
Kind regards,
bg
While the specified dynamic range for CD is way higher than cassette or LP, who would doubt that! - by around 20 dB or so - the *perceived* dynamic range is frequently actually a lot less!! 3 dB is double so 20 dB represents what? One hundred times more?!! Two orders of magnitude! Can my math really be right? LOL Am I the only one who finds off the shelf CDs thin-sounding, like papier mâché, lifeless and blah, like a cheap radio?
Edits: 04/10/14 04/10/14
Too many pebbles and clocks in the room can make CDs sound that way. Remove them all, listen for yourself...
If you take "purist" recordings made with minimal manipulation the quality is very good indeed. It depends on the shelf you buy your CDs from.
I heard spectacular recordings from Labels dedicated to achieve the best quality. Very good indeed.
Still i notice that pros for DAT preferred a higher sampling rate.
I am sure they did some kind of test and found the cd format 44.1k sampling rate not enough.
But 16/48 is a very good combination, on the basis of some DAT listening i did.
I do not like tape in general. They are a pain to use.
Kind regards,
bg
Edits: 04/10/14
Once we get by the manufacturing and playback system issues I think it's clear CDs are capable of far better performance than LPs.And I don't believe any technical discussion is required to hear the obvious. People seem to expect and like the colorations/distortions of vinyl.
Give me rhythm or give me death!
Edits: 04/10/14
You've hit the nail square on the head.
Ever since digital recording came about engineers seem to be desperate to get the general analog 'filth' back by means of adding distortion, using valve mic pre's, tape emulation plug ins etc.
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