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RE: Generation Loss?

Posted by Ralph on April 19, 2017 at 08:03:40:
I don't think so.

Here's the problem, which has nothing to do with how media has or has not generation loss:

The human ear/brain system converts all forms of distortion into tonality. It only detects distortion as such when it predominates, such as clipping in an amplifier.

Otherwise what the ear does is assign tonality; in most cases this usually results in the playback being "brighter" than the original (as an example, the 2nd harmonic often associated with tubes causes 'warmth' or 'lush' qualities).

However if one were to measure the frequency response, the 'brightness' would not show up in the frequency response test. That is because its not the result of a frequency response error!

The reason it won't show up is that the additional harmonics (or inharmonics) only need to be in trace amounts. This is because the human ear is tuned to birdsong frequencies and also because higher ordered harmonics are used by the ear/brain system to gauge sound pressure. As a result, in this regard the ear is more sensitive than the best test equipment.

The audio industry in general likes to ignore this fact; this is why most audio systems sound like audio systems rather than real music.

So 'A subjective proof of a medium's faithfulness to any signal' has nothing at all to do with generation loss, and everything to do with not making distortion. It does not matter if you can duplicate endlessly if the master recording is distorted. Right now the LP does that better than digital...

In a nutshell, this is the cutting edge of digital technology. We are pushing of course for greater scan frequencies and more bits, but if the basic problem of inharmonic distortion is not solved, then analog will continue to be around. That's the bringing home the bacon aspect that digital has not solved.

Mind you, its a lot better now than it was! So I have hope for the future, but from what I've seen of the industry so far, it regards this matter as trivial because its pulled the wool over its own eyes.