When did you switch to CDs, and why?

[Mxsmanic]

I am generally not a pioneer when it comes to new technology. I prefer to let
someone else spend the big bucks and pay to get the bugs out of new gadgets.
However, one important exception I made was audio CDs. When they first came
out, they seemed to have so many advantages over phonograph records--and so
few disadvantages--that I was literally one of the first people in the city to
buy a CD player and a CD (Vivaldi, which I still have). It seemed like a
technology that just couldn't lose.

So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
did you/do you prefer it?

[Soundhaspriority]

I switched in the late 80's. At that time, a lot of CDs sounded really
rotten, but I was attracted to the convenience and durability. The early
90's were a time of rapid progress, rapidly diminishing the negative aspects
of subjective sound quality, eventually exceeding that of LP's.

Bob Morein
(310) 237-6511

[cedricl]

On Jan 26, 1:53 pm, Mxsmanic <mxsma...@gmail.com> wrote:

> So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
> Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
> always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
> did you/do you prefer it?

I combined LPs and CDs very early in their development. I worked at a
record store, so I was getting good discounts on records. It was sort
of an "all in" kind of thing with the CD. You had to have the hardware
to play them. So, once I invested in a CD player (the second
generation Sony Diskman, the one with the docking station so it worked
as a regular CD player), I started buying more CDs as they released
recordings that I wanted. I'd guess, through the '90s, I still bought
LPs and CDs, depending on what format had what I wanted (I listen to
Jazz almost exclusively, and not "smooth" jazz) so a lot of what I was
looking for was only on LP. Once everything started to be released and
re-released on CD, I just listen to CD now. I'll pull out the old LPs,
every now and then, but the convenience of playing a CD is so much
more attractive. The dog won't walk by (I have a big dog) and make the
CD skip. I don't have to turn it and holding it without touching the
playing surface can be accomplished with one hand.

[Mxsmanic]

I recall hearing people say that early CDs sounded terrible, but at least the
ones I bought sounded okay to me. What was wrong with the way early CDs were
made? Or was it only an isolated problem?

[Scott Dorsey]

A lot of it had to do with early CD players having horribly screechy sounding
converters, due to linearity issues. The second generation Philips was actually
much worse than the first generation in that regard.

Add to that the original mastering being done with pretty nasty sounding
converters on those PCM-1610 machines. Thank God all of those are gone.

On top of THAT, record companies were reaching into the back catalogue and
trying to get everything available as quickly as possible, and that meant
using whatever tapes were handy, and as little time spent in the mastering
room as possible. There was a huge press buildup when the first four
Beatles albums first came out on CD... but when they did, they were clearly
full-track mono tapes played on a stereo machine without the channels summed,
and on one of them the deck azimuth was off so the sound was a little cockeyed
from the delay.
--scott

--
"C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

[Soundhaspriority]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:3as3i71ff7alete9r...@4ax.com...

The A/D converters weren't good enough, noise shaping wasn't in wide use,
and the DAW chains weren't good enough. On a superficial level, they didn't
have enough resolution, but there were many internal problems, related to
incomplete engineering knowledge. Modern A/D converters are much more
refined, using combinations of techniques to provide excellent high and low
level linearity. The first good A/D converters had a lot of custom chips and
high parts counts, so they were extremely expensive, and available only to
the well-heeled. So the best recordings of the 80's were still analog, mixed
to two channels before conversion. By 1987, there were some good digital
recordings, and these were distinguished by advertising and labeling. But my
personal impression (and ears will vary) is that before noise shaping, there
was always a subjective lack. Many audiophile products used doubtful methods
to make those early recordings listenable: DACs with deliberate coloration,
tubes in the chain, etc.

On the DAW end, mixing was originally done with 16 bits, then 24, and
finally, floating point. Before floating point, mixing introduced additional
quantization error.

Bob Morein
(310) 237-6511

[Mxsmanic]

Soundhaspriority writes:

> The A/D converters weren't good enough, noise shaping wasn't in wide use,
> and the DAW chains weren't good enough. On a superficial level, they didn't
> have enough resolution, but there were many internal problems, related to
> incomplete engineering knowledge. Modern A/D converters are much more
> refined, using combinations of techniques to provide excellent high and low
> level linearity. The first good A/D converters had a lot of custom chips and
> high parts counts, so they were extremely expensive, and available only to
> the well-heeled. So the best recordings of the 80's were still analog, mixed
> to two channels before conversion. By 1987, there were some good digital
> recordings, and these were distinguished by advertising and labeling. But my
> personal impression (and ears will vary) is that before noise shaping, there
> was always a subjective lack. Many audiophile products used doubtful methods
> to make those early recordings listenable: DACs with deliberate coloration,
> tubes in the chain, etc.

Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer equipment, or
was the damage done when they were made, permanently leaving them with poorer
sound?

> On the DAW end, mixing was originally done with 16 bits, then 24, and
> finally, floating point. Before floating point, mixing introduced additional
> quantization error.

So I should prefer 32-bit floating point WAV files to 24-bit signed WAV files?
I've been using the latter because I don't know how many bits of precision
32-bit provides (if the total length of the number is 32 bits, then the
precision is far lower than 32 bits and probably less than 24 bits, depending
on the floating-point format used).

[William Sommerwerck]

I had always preferred open-reel tape to LP, so the switch to CD was easy.
Once I bought a player -- it was a not-expensive Yamaha -- I started buying
CDs. This was fairly early in the introduction.

What one might more profitably ask is... When did you stop playing LPs? Last
year I sold almost all my audiophile LPs (which I thought I never would do).
I rarely listen to LPs, and it's mostly to hear SQ quadraphonic disks, 99%
of which have never been transferred to a digital multi-ch medium.

[Doug McDonald]

I was the fifth in our town to buy a CD player ... the CDP-101, which
I still have and which still works. I also still have and
listen to the first disks I bought.

Why? Because I expected better sound, and, except for
audiophile LPs played the very first time, I got it.
But Barclay-Crocker open reel Dolby tapes were and
still are excellent, though I have digitized all of those I won and
retired my beloved Sony TV-755.

Doug McDonald

[Arkansan Raider]

I had around 110 or so vinyl albums right up to USMC boot camp in 1985.
When I came home, all but two had been stolen.

I went without anything but cassette until the end of 1987, when I
bought myself my first cd deck and a few cds.

Got back into vinyl around 2005 or so. I listen to both for a number of
reasons. Vinyl for the different sound, experimentation on the cheap,
and nostalgia. CD for easy handling and easy clean sound. If I want it
even easier and handier, I go with my computer or iPod.

But I'm still not throwing away the records. I still get way too much
enjoyment out of 'em.

JMHSO

---Jeff

[hank alrich]

Crap conversion.

--
shut up and play your guitar * http://hankalrich.com/
http://www.youtube.com/walkinaymusic
http://www.sonicbids.com/HankandShaidri

[PStamler]

On Jan 26, 7:58 pm, walki...@nv.net (hank alrich) wrote:
> > I recall hearing people say that early CDs sounded terrible, but at least the
> > ones I bought sounded okay to me. What was wrong with the way early CDs were
> > made? Or was it only an isolated problem?
>
> Crap conversion.

And crap post-production; many early CDs were edited on a Sony editing
console which (I'm told) stopped being 16-bit resolution and reverted
to 14-bit whenever the master gain was set at something other than
unity. And there was this bizarre idea of "following the fade" -- that
is, as the sound died out after the last note the mastering engineer
would fade the signal out in parallel, making the fade down to ambient
noise into a (truncated-word) fade into total silence.

I first heard decent digital recording on, of all things, a consumer
DAT deck -- Sony's first generation of home DAT recorders using 1-bit
converters. I liked it, and I bought it, even though you could only
record analog at 48kHz sampling rate. Used it to make some nice-
sounding recordings.

When did I buy my first CD player? Actually, I didn't; it was given to
me by my parents when they got a better one. It was about 1990, which
was also the time the improved Sony DAT machines came out. One reason
I waited: most of the music I was interested in didn't start coming
out on CD until the 90s. (I had a buddy say he wouldn't buy a CD
player until he could get a CD of Robert Jr. Lockwood. It was the
mid-90s before that happened.)

Peace,
Paul

[Adrian Tuddenham]

Mxsmanic <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote:

[...]

> So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
> Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
> always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
> did you/do you prefer it?

I was given a secondhand CD player, so I went out and bought one CD to
test it; the music was a compilation transfered from 78s, many of which
I had already collected and knew extremely well. The transfer had been
beaten to pulp by badly-operated Cedar and the sound quality was
dreadful.

I went back to listening to 78s for pleasure.

--
~ Adrian Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

[William Sommerwerck]

"hank alrich" <walk...@nv.net> wrote in message
news:1kehlkf.6nbgp21pj4kygN%walk...@nv.net...

> Mxsmanic <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> I recall hearing people say that early CDs sounded terrible, but at least
>> the ones I bought sounded okay to me. What was wrong with the way
>> early CDs were made? Or was it only an isolated problem?

> Crap conversion.

This is partly true -- the early Sony ADCs weren't that good. It also
appears that many recordings weren't transferred from the original
recordings, but from "masters" made for LPs. These often had HF EQ and other
manipulations not needed for CDs.

[Arny Krueger]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:5mi3i712qut77gtgq...@4ax.com...

> So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph
> records?

I decided to switch to digital audio over analog in 1981 or so, based on
hearing PCM-F1-based recordings that a certain unnamed and unnamable
engineer was bootlegging from events he worked.

I switched to CDs as my favored medium in March 1983. I bought a CDP 101
(one of the first few sold in Detroit). There were a whopping 16 different
CD titles at the local record store (now long departed). I bought them all.

In those days I did quite a bit of business travel, and found any number of
new titles in various places like Chicago (obvious) and Bismarck North
Dakota (not so obvious). It turns out that there were a goodly number of
wealthy farmers who were interested in the arts but were cut off from them
from the standpoint of broadcast audio and video by their location. Many
parts of the great plains had maybe 1 TV station that delivered a
substandard picture even with heroic antennas and receivers. So, they were
early adopters of various formats of pre-recorded audio and video.

BTW, AFAIK the most heroic personal TV reception system I've seen belonged
to a farmer in Ontario who lived north of 403 between Sarnia and London. He
had a 300+ foot tower built and put the best Yagi he could find on top of
it. This was a six-figure project, if memory serves.

Of course the yagi was on a rotator and the feed line (over 600 feet long)
had booster amps. It turned out to be only marginally successful. No
serious problems with signal strength, but he was never able to find a
commercial VHF antenna that had enough directivity to separate stations in
Detroit, Toledo, and Cleveland. There were stations on alternate channels
(Detroit/Toledo) or the same channels (Detroit/Cleveland) that interfered
with each other. Some problems with propagation.

[Les Cargill]

Mxsmanic wrote:
> Soundhaspriority writes:
>
>> The A/D converters weren't good enough, noise shaping wasn't in wide use,
>> and the DAW chains weren't good enough. On a superficial level, they didn't
>> have enough resolution, but there were many internal problems, related to
>> incomplete engineering knowledge. Modern A/D converters are much more
>> refined, using combinations of techniques to provide excellent high and low
>> level linearity. The first good A/D converters had a lot of custom chips and
>> high parts counts, so they were extremely expensive, and available only to
>> the well-heeled. So the best recordings of the 80's were still analog, mixed
>> to two channels before conversion. By 1987, there were some good digital
>> recordings, and these were distinguished by advertising and labeling. But my
>> personal impression (and ears will vary) is that before noise shaping, there
>> was always a subjective lack. Many audiophile products used doubtful methods
>> to make those early recordings listenable: DACs with deliberate coloration,
>> tubes in the chain, etc.
>
> Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer equipment, or
> was the damage done when they were made, permanently leaving them with poorer
> sound?
>

Broken is broken. The first CD I even bought was "Hotel California" and
it sounds remarkably like the vinyl. For years, I'd thought it
was the pressing - nope.

>> On the DAW end, mixing was originally done with 16 bits, then 24, and
>> finally, floating point. Before floating point, mixing introduced additional
>> quantization error.
>
> So I should prefer 32-bit floating point WAV files to 24-bit signed WAV files?

You should prefer *mixing* in 32 bit floating point. 24 vs 16 is your
call for storage, but I know of no compelling reason to save stuff in
32float.

I don't know how you'd mix in anything other than 32float these days.
You'd have to go back to software targeted for pre-Pentium
era computers ( or whatever the corresponding Mac is)

> I've been using the latter because I don't know how many bits of precision
> 32-bit provides (if the total length of the number is 32 bits, then the
> precision is far lower than 32 bits and probably less than 24 bits, depending
> on the floating-point format used).

No - not true. The exponent is information, too - not just the
mantissa.

You'll get a pretty accurate picture of the analog noise of the
recording chain at 24 bit. This being said, with 32float,
you're more likely to survive level mistakes than in pure linear PCM
without damage.


--
Les Cargill

[Arny Krueger]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:3as3i71ff7alete9r...@4ax.com...

For the most part the early CDs that sounded bad (which were IME in a tiny
minority) sounded bad due to production mistakes.

[this]@ri.t-com.hr Edi Zubovic]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 07:12:41 -0500, "Arny Krueger" <ar...@cocmast.net>
wrote:

>
>"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:5mi3i712qut77gtgq...@4ax.com...
>
>> So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph
>> records?
>
>I decided to switch to digital audio over analog in 1981 or so, based on
>hearing PCM-F1-based recordings that a certain unnamed and unnamable
>engineer was bootlegging from events he worked.

--------------8<-----------------------------

-- On a very good German site I've found a story on how Mr. Studer met
Mr. Morita at IFA or CeBIT in 1987. This is a Google translation (oh,
"Race Cars" = Boliden = Studer reel to reel machines, of course). A
legend or not, it shows how an era began to go towards its end:--

http://translate.google.hr/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=hr&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tonbandmuseum.info%2Fdiedatlegende.html&act=url

(hope the link works well)

Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia

[Scott Dorsey]

William Sommerwerck <grizzle...@comcast.net> wrote:
>What one might more profitably ask is... When did you stop playing LPs? Last
>year I sold almost all my audiophile LPs (which I thought I never would do).
>I rarely listen to LPs, and it's mostly to hear SQ quadraphonic disks, 99%
>of which have never been transferred to a digital multi-ch medium.

I just cut two sides yesterday afternoon. If that counts as listening...

[Anahata]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 06:06:00 +0100, Mxsmanic wrote:

> Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer
> equipment

Both ends.

> So I should prefer 32-bit floating point WAV files to 24-bit signed WAV
> files? I've been using the latter because I don't know how many bits of
> precision 32-bit provides (if the total length of the number is 32 bits,
> then the precision is far lower than 32 bits and probably less than 24
> bits, depending on the floating-point format used).

IEEE 32 bit float is 8 bit exponent and 24 bit signed mantissa, which
means it's at least as good as 24 bit linear and mostly much better.

--
Anahata
ana...@treewind.co.uk -+- http://www.treewind.co.uk
Home: 01638 720444 Mob: 07976 263827

[Scott Dorsey]

PStamler <psta...@pobox.com> wrote:
>
>And crap post-production; many early CDs were edited on a Sony editing
>console which (I'm told) stopped being 16-bit resolution and reverted
>to 14-bit whenever the master gain was set at something other than
>unity. And there was this bizarre idea of "following the fade" -- that
>is, as the sound died out after the last note the mastering engineer
>would fade the signal out in parallel, making the fade down to ambient
>noise into a (truncated-word) fade into total silence.

Oh, yeah. I forgot all about that. Those things also had weird zipper
noises when you adjusted the gain.

>I first heard decent digital recording on, of all things, a consumer
>DAT deck -- Sony's first generation of home DAT recorders using 1-bit
>converters. I liked it, and I bought it, even though you could only
>record analog at 48kHz sampling rate. Used it to make some nice-
>sounding recordings.

For me, it was the PCM F-1 at the NPR affiliate in Atlanta. The low end
was just so clean and solid... it was the first time I had ever heard a
recording with the kind of low end that you hear in the hall. It took me
a bit of listening to realize just how awful the high end was, though.

>When did I buy my first CD player? Actually, I didn't; it was given to
>me by my parents when they got a better one. It was about 1990, which
>was also the time the improved Sony DAT machines came out. One reason
>I waited: most of the music I was interested in didn't start coming
>out on CD until the 90s. (I had a buddy say he wouldn't buy a CD
>player until he could get a CD of Robert Jr. Lockwood. It was the
>mid-90s before that happened.)

I bought a 14-bit Philips when the 16-bit ones came out, on the advice of
Audio Amateur.

[Soundhaspriority]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:p1c4i71pq0pge21id...@4ax.com...

>
> Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer
> equipment, or
> was the damage done when they were made, permanently leaving them with
> poorer
> sound?
>

The damage was done when they were made, but many tricks have been used in
audiophile equipment to make them more palatable, tricks which have lived on
in low end equipment for home studios. Not a quote, but "funk hides junk."

Bob Morein
(310) 237-6511

[Frank Stearns]

Mxsmanic <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote:

>> So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
>> Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
>> always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
>> did you/do you prefer it?

I had been perfectly happy with LPs played by a Shure V15-IV MR (IIRC) into a custom
phono preamp built around API 2520s by one of the guys at Quad-Eight.

But then several new classical releases I wanted were only on CD. This was around
1988 or so.

I began a 2 year quest to find a CD player that sounded half-way decent.
Auditioning some 20+ units, from cheap to as much as a new car of the day, the
disappointment was epic. All of them had terrible imaging, and way too many had grit
or other sonic issues, sometimes intential problems designed to "fix" other
underlying problems.

Then I was loaned a stock Pioneer PD75. This was pretty good. No grit, better (but
not perfect) imaging. Then the dealer next loaned me a PD75 they'd hot-rodded
(better caps with bypasses, additional PS bypasses, removing the botched balanced
outputs, etc) and wow! What great sound. Razor perfect imaging, zero grit or edge
(unless the CD had been badly done); none of the inherent sonic limitations of
recoards. I was hooked.

Years later, I dug in a bit to what Pioneer had done. There were several separate
power supplies completely isolating digital, analog, and transport power needs.
They'd used a stereo DAC for EACH channel, with a clever inversion scheme designed
to linearize the conversion process. They'd done several things to mitigate jitter,
which had been a serious problem and was a contributor to what many folks disliked
about "digital sound".

I still have the thing, it still works, and in some ways it still sounds the best
(even compared to the Avocet monitor controller), though it does have its own
signature -- just happens to be a pretty good one.

Frank
Mobile Audio
--
.

[Mxsmanic]

Les Cargill writes:

> No - not true. The exponent is information, too - not just the
> mantissa.

Yeah, but it's magnitude rather than precision. Just like any other floating
point. When I hear 32-bit, I wonder about the size of the mantissa. If it's a
32-bit mantissa, great, but if it's eight bits of exponent and two sign bits,
plus 22 bits of mantissa, it's potentially worse than signed 24-bit.

For high accuracy in other types of computer processing, very large integers
are often used rather than floating point--although that's also a question of
performance and decimal precision, and the latter probably isn't important for
audio.

> You'll get a pretty accurate picture of the analog noise of the
> recording chain at 24 bit. This being said, with 32float,
> you're more likely to survive level mistakes than in pure linear PCM
> without damage.

I guess with the poor quality of my gear I'm splitting hairs, but I still
worry about accuracy and precision.

[gregz]

Mid 80's, bought a cd player to be cool, a hitachi, about $180 .
Took it along with my DJ friends to play some good old cd music. Had to
almost hold it to keep it from skipping while playing from floor vibration.

Greg

[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

> What one might more profitably ask is... When did you stop playing LPs? Last
> year I sold almost all my audiophile LPs (which I thought I never would do).
> I rarely listen to LPs, and it's mostly to hear SQ quadraphonic disks, 99%
> of which have never been transferred to a digital multi-ch medium.

My listening to LPs fell way off once I had bought my first CDs. In many cases
it wasn't so much that the LPs sounded worse, it's just that there was too
much overhead to playing them, as opposed to popping a CD into a player.

I recall brushing each LP with some special brush I got before each play, and
squirting anti-static something-or-other at it before playing it. I could
never tell if the anti-static gun thing actually did any good, though (I
wasn't sure, but I figured it wouldn't hurt). I think there was even some sort
of liquid that I was supposed to put on the LP before brushing it to
perfection.

[Mxsmanic]

Edi Zubovic <edi.zubovic[rem this]@ri.t-com.hr> writes:

> -- On a very good German site I've found a story on how Mr. Studer met
> Mr. Morita at IFA or CeBIT in 1987. This is a Google translation (oh,
> "Race Cars" = Boliden = Studer reel to reel machines, of course). A
> legend or not, it shows how an era began to go towards its end:--
>
> http://translate.google.hr/translate?sl=de&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=hr&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.tonbandmuseum.info%2Fdiedatlegende.html&act=url

So if I understand the translation, Morita gave Studer two of the first
digital recording devices, and (apparently) Studer did not have much
experience with digital?

[this]@ri.t-com.hr Edi Zubovic]

On Fri, 27 Jan 2012 21:40:47 +0100, Mxsmanic <mxsm...@gmail.com>
wrote:

-- I can't tell whether the situation mentioned in the article was a
fact or fiction. However, I think that Studer _did_ almost miss the
digital train. Why it is so I can't explain. What Studer did with
microprocessors has been more automation and synchronisation and
better handling of analog tapes. The only Studer DAT machine known to
me is D780. But then again, the article deals with DAT devices in
1978, but I think that Sony begun the digital recording era with the
Sony PCM-1600 , based on U-Matic. A friend of mine told me about his
first experiences with that machines in the 80's. DAT as RDAT cassette
format came later. I have a Sony SDT-9000 streamer which has a
firmware version allowing reproduction and recording of DAT. With a
specialized software (I use WaveDat, a Japanese software best suited
for the purpose, there are some other programs too) I am able to
transfer DAT tapes to the hard drive without the hassle with DAT
machines.

Edi Zubovic, Crikvenica, Croatia

[Scott Dorsey]

Mxsmanic <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>So if I understand the translation, Morita gave Studer two of the first
>digital recording devices, and (apparently) Studer did not have much
>experience with digital?

Nobody did. Outside of a few folks in Japan, the whole idea was pretty
alien in the industry.

The thing is, Studer got to see early DAT systems before anyone else did,
and that led them to being one of the first of the old line outfits to
get into the digital market.

[Les Cargill]

Mxsmanic wrote:
> Les Cargill writes:
>
>> No - not true. The exponent is information, too - not just the
>> mantissa.
>
> Yeah, but it's magnitude rather than precision.

It's both. If you seriously want to understand floating point, you have
to play with 'em.

> Just like any other floating
> point. When I hear 32-bit, I wonder about the size of the mantissa. If it's a
> 32-bit mantissa, great, but if it's eight bits of exponent and two sign bits,
> plus 22 bits of mantissa, it's potentially worse than signed 24-bit.
>

Not really... so do this:

1) Write a 'C' program to read in a 24 bit file.
2) In the same program, convert every sample to a 32 bit float.
3) Write that file out.
3.1) Bring up the resulting file in a .wav editor to make sure it's
scaled properly.
4) Write a different program to read in the 32 bit float file.
5) Convert each sample to 24 bit.
6) Write that back out.
6.1 Bring the result up in a .wav editor...
7) Literally take the difference signal between the original 24 bit
file and the resulting 24 bit file. IOW, for each sample s in
each file, subtract one from the other and then look at
*that* result.

If you have CoolEdit*, you may not even have to write any 'C' code.
*others may do this as well, but I don't know that.

You may need to scale things. And really, you should dither.

It's been forever since I had done this, but I do not recall any loss
at all.

And what we're both not talking about is: as you do math with 32 bit
floats, you get *less error* in things like plugins. The 'error
spectrum' for 23 bit float is way better than for pure PCM samples.

> For high accuracy in other types of computer processing, very large integers
> are often used rather than floating point--although that's also a question of
> performance and decimal precision, and the latter probably isn't important for
> audio.
>

Bigints have their place, but I've never been in that place.... to
be brutally honest, everything I do is still 16 bit, so....

>> You'll get a pretty accurate picture of the analog noise of the
>> recording chain at 24 bit. This being said, with 32float,
>> you're more likely to survive level mistakes than in pure linear PCM
>> without damage.
>
> I guess with the poor quality of my gear I'm splitting hairs, but I still
> worry about accuracy and precision.

That's a good thing. But it's important to do experiments so you
know what to worry about. Very nearly all gear made in the last 10
years or so simply doesn't *have* any digital signal processing
problems.

--
Les Cargill

[rrus...@hotmail.com]

On Jan 27, 6:58 am, "Arny Krueger" <ar...@cocmast.net> wrote:
> "Mxsmanic" <mxsma...@gmail.com> wrote in message

Many early CDs were bad. Arguably most.

I got rid of my records in the early 90s because of moving and
personal issues. The sad thing is that that was well after people
noticed there was something not right with CD. I have stayed with CD
but also have got back into vinyl because I enjoy many LPs not
available on CD or available only with lousy, squashed mastering, plus
LP is fun to tinker with. I now have a much better table (actually
two: a much modified Linn Sondek and a vintage Fairchild) than I did
before.

Neither vinyl nor CD sounds as good as tape....but there's no way I'm
paying "Tape Project" prices.

[Ralph Barone]

I'll third the CDP-101. Bought it used in (I think) 1985. First CD was
"Turn of a friendly card", by Alan Parsons, which my girlfriend bought me
for Christmas. I had to wait a month or so to play it, as I had bought the
CDP-101 on layaway and hadn't finished paying for it. Still have the Sony
and it still works.

[Dave C]

"Scott Dorsey" <klu...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:jfuivh$fqu$1...@panix2.panix.com...
> PStamler <psta...@pobox.com> wrote:
<snip>.

>
>>When did I buy my first CD player? Actually, I didn't; it was given to
>>me by my parents when they got a better one. It was about 1990, which
>>was also the time the improved Sony DAT machines came out. One reason
>>I waited: most of the music I was interested in didn't start coming
>>out on CD until the 90s. (I had a buddy say he wouldn't buy a CD
>>player until he could get a CD of Robert Jr. Lockwood. It was the
>>mid-90s before that happened.)
>
> I bought a 14-bit Philips when the 16-bit ones came out, on the advice of
> Audio Amateur.
> --scott
> --
> "C'est un Nagra. C'est suisse, et tres, tres precis."

Likewise - a CD350 in fact. Ran faultlessly and rather better then many of
that era for 15 years plus.

Dave


--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to ne...@netfront.net ---

[Hank]

In article <5mi3i712qut77gtgq...@4ax.com>,

Mxsmanic <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>I am generally not a pioneer when it comes to new technology. I prefer to let
>someone else spend the big bucks and pay to get the bugs out of new gadgets.
>However, one important exception I made was audio CDs. When they first came
>out, they seemed to have so many advantages over phonograph records--and so
>few disadvantages--that I was literally one of the first people in the city to
>buy a CD player and a CD (Vivaldi, which I still have). It seemed like a
>technology that just couldn't lose.
>

>So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?

>Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
>always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
>did you/do you prefer it?

I bought a Yamaha CD player in 1986 along with a few new classical
recordings. The speakers I had clearly did not do justice to the
music, so I got a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls. I was quite pleased with
the results and never really looked back.

Hank

[Mike Rivers]

On 1/27/2012 1:14 AM, PStamler wrote:

> One reason
> I waited: most of the music I was interested in didn't start coming
> out on CD until the 90s. (I had a buddy say he wouldn't buy a CD
> player until he could get a CD of Robert Jr. Lockwood. It was the
> mid-90s before that happened.)

That sounds like a good reason. I decided that when someone
gave me a CD that I wanted to listen to, that would be when
I would buy a CD player. I don't remember the year, but when
one of my best friends, a recording engineer from
California, came to visit me and brought me a copy of his
first project that had been made as a CD (it was an analog
recording of a jazz band), I figured that would be a good
time to get a player. So we went to the local appliance
store together and came home with a Magnavox, which has a
S/PDIF output and which still works - which is more than I
can say for the Yamaha that a friend gave me (it has a tray
problem that can be dealt with using a finger).

I rarely play music that I own any more, but I still get
something out on occasion. Mostly I listen to radio over the
Internet these days and I don't let the lack of audiophile
fidelity spoil my listening experience.

--
"Today's production equipment is IT based and cannot be
operated without a passing knowledge of computing, although
it seems that it can be operated without a passing knowledge
of audio." - John Watkinson

http://mikeriversaudio.wordpress.com - useful and
interesting audio stuff

[Sean Conolly]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:5mi3i712qut77gtgq...@4ax.com...

>I am generally not a pioneer when it comes to new technology. I prefer to
>let
> someone else spend the big bucks and pay to get the bugs out of new
> gadgets.
> However, one important exception I made was audio CDs. When they first
> came
> out, they seemed to have so many advantages over phonograph records--and
> so
> few disadvantages--that I was literally one of the first people in the
> city to
> buy a CD player and a CD (Vivaldi, which I still have). It seemed like a
> technology that just couldn't lose.
>
> So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph
> records?
> Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if
> you've
> always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever),
> why
> did you/do you prefer it?

I was always interested in digital audio as a concept, and as soon as CD
players dropped below the $200 mark I bought one - 84 or 85. And despite the
flaws, which I couldn't hear, CD's sounded vastly better than the LP and
cassette tape systems *in that price range*. For me it was a trade of flaws
which were constant distractions for flaws that weren't.

If I had been used to listening to a high end system with a good
reel-to-reel, I might not have been so impressed.

Sean

[ChrisCoaster]

On Jan 26, 4:53 pm, Mxsmanic <mxsma...@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> So, when did you first decide to switch to CD audio over phonograph records?
> Or, if you'eve never switched, what made you stay with records? And if you've
> always preferred some other technology (reel-to-reel tape, or whatever), why
> did you/do you prefer it?

___
1988. Didnt really 'switch' to CD, that was just the year I got a
player and started buying discs for it.

-CC

[geoff]

Mxsmanic wrote:

> Soundhaspriority writes:

>
> Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer
> equipment, or was the damage done when they were made, permanently
> leaving them with poorer sound?

It surprises me how many CDs of 70s and 80s pop/rock music have essentially
NO LOW BASS to speak of.

Was there none recorded or were these taken from a dodgey master ?

Can't think of a title off the top of my head, but will try.

And then there are ones likeOscar Petersen's 1965 'We Get Requests' which
has wonderful bass (such asw You Look Good To Me), but tinny piano ....

geoff

[Arny Krueger]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:p1c4i71pq0pge21id...@4ax.com...

> Soundhaspriority writes:

>> The A/D converters weren't good enough, noise shaping wasn't in wide use,
>> and the DAW chains weren't good enough.

Audiophile myth.

Prior to the introduction of the CD we did DBTs of an Ampex digital delay
that was designed to assist with vinyl cutting. No matter how we examined it
with high resolution playback systems, and no matter how we stressed it with
live feeds and playback of high speed wide track analog masters, it was
simply audibly perfect.

I've personally gone back and analyzed and carefully listened to some of the
most damned digital recordings (e.g. Ry Cooder's Bop Till Your Drop),
recorders (PCM-F1) and players ( CDP-101) and the bottom line is that they
both represented dramatic advances in terms of sonic accuracy as compared to
where analog was before, during and even after them. The noise shaping
comment is a red herring because noise shaping isn't needed for sonic
transparency with 16 bits: 1 LSB unshaped TPDF dither suffices. The
evidence that can be heard in the many fine recordings of the era is there:
There was widespread use of entirely adequate production techiques . OK,
there were screw ups but what technology is immune to screw ups?

>> On a superficial level, they didn't have enough resolution,

False claim.

>> but there were many internal problems, related to
>> incomplete engineering knowledge.

The many fine digital recordings from the early 80s onward belie that. If
the technology had inherent or even common implementation flaws, then there
would not be so many fine-sounding recordings from that era.

>> Modern A/D converters are much more refined, using combinations of
>> techniques to provide excellent high and low
>> level linearity.

In fact, the only signfiicant thing that has happened since the late 1970s
is that sonically transparent digital converters have gotten smaller and
cheaper by several orders of magnitude. There were sonically perfect
converters in the late 1970s, but they were physically large, contained
inherently expensive parts, required careful care and feeding, weren't the
rule, and weren't sold on every street corner for $40 or less in finished
products. Today, all those problems have been solved, and have been solved
for at least 5 years.

>> The first good A/D converters had a lot of custom chips and
>> high parts counts, so they were extremely expensive, and available only
>> to
>> the well-heeled. So the best recordings of the 80's were still analog,
>> mixed
>> to two channels before conversion.

Not the rule the author pretends it is because many of the finest classical
and some pop and jazz recordings of that era were being made using
minimal-microphone techniques. IOW there was no analog mixer, just two mics,
two mic preamps, and a digital recorder. This trend had evolved well before
digital, and as far as classical recording was concerned, it was the most
generally accepted way to do things. Many of the first generation of
practical digital recorders that were in use supported 4 channels which is
pretty much all that existed in the way of analog recorders just 15-20
years earlier.

The Soundstream Digital recorder that was used for Telarc's earliest digital
recordings (from 1978 onward) had 4 channels and used a 50 KHz sample rate.
4 channels allows the use of one channel per mic for most generally accepted
high quality orchestral recording techniques to this day.

>> By 1987, there were some good digital
>> recordings, and these were distinguished by advertising and labeling.

There were good all-digital recordings from the onset. Does anybody remember
Telarc?

> Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer
> equipment, or
> was the damage done when they were made, permanently leaving them with
> poorer
> sound?

IME the CDs that sounded great in 1983 through 1985 still sound great.

>> On the DAW end, mixing was originally done with 16 bits, then 24, and
>> finally, floating point. Before floating point, mixing introduced
>> additional
>> quantization error.

False. It is trivial to do good digital mixing with fixed point arithmetic.
Furthermore, when as few as 16 bits are used, the remaining analog
components of the production chain (ncluding irreducable sources such as
microphones and rooms) have more than enough noise for self-dithering unless
there is gain riding and/or fade-outs.

[William Sommerwerck]

"Arny Krueger" <ar...@cocmast.net> wrote in message
news:1-GdnYuVEbClCLvS...@giganews.com...

> I've personally gone back and analyzed and carefully listened to some of
> the most damned digital recordings (e.g. Ry Cooder's Bop Till Your Drop),
> recorders (PCM-F1) and players ( CDP-101) and the bottom line is that
> they both represented dramatic advances in terms of sonic accuracy as
> compared to where analog was before, during and even after them.

That's true, but it's not the same thing as being perfect. I won't disagree
that digital represented a significant improvement over analog, but the idea
that early digital equipment was therefore necessarily perfect is an invalid
conclusion. In fact, it's simple intellectual foolishness.

I made simultaneous recordings with the Nakamich version of the PCM-F1 and
the dbx 700. The recordings did not sound the same (the Sony was harder and
brighter-sounding), so they could not have both been perfect.

[anahata]

On Mon, 30 Jan 2012 08:03:48 -0500, Arny Krueger wrote:

>> Soundhaspriority writes:
>
>>> The A/D converters weren't good enough, noise shaping wasn't in wide
>>> use, and the DAW chains weren't good enough.
>
> Audiophile myth.

> There were sonically
> perfect converters in the late 1970s, but they were physically large,
> contained inherently expensive parts, required careful care and feeding,
> weren't the rule, and weren't sold on every street corner for $40 or
> less in finished products.

I don't doubt that there were perfect converters in the late 1970's, when
they were more of a research item, designed by people who knew what they
were doing, and cost didn't matter much.

However it also seems pretty clear that the subsequent rush to go digital
resulted in a lot of cheap and poor products by designers who didn't
understand digital conversion and processing properly, or were simply
under pressure to cut corners.

> Today, all those problems have been solved,
> and have been solved for at least 5 years.

Sure; the dark ages were somewhere in 80s and 90s.

--
Anahata
ana...@treewind.co.uk --/-- http://www.treewind.co.uk
+44 (0)1638 720444

[Scott Dorsey]

In article <A--dnQarVZ-ArrvS...@giganews.com>,

geoff <ge...@nospampaf.co.nz> wrote:
>Mxsmanic wrote:
>> Soundhaspriority writes:
>
>> Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer
>> equipment, or was the damage done when they were made, permanently
>> leaving them with poorer sound?
>
>It surprises me how many CDs of 70s and 80s pop/rock music have essentially
>NO LOW BASS to speak of.
>
>Was there none recorded or were these taken from a dodgey master ?

In many cases there was none recorded. Low end extension makes it hard to
cut LPs, so often tracking and even arrangement was done with the basic
intention of not having a huge amount of low end.

Some of this, though, was the result of the push in the 1970s to build
rooms that were severely damped at high frequencies without any low end
control. Everybody wanted isolation and I don't think people really
understood what was happening to the bottom end at the time.

And of course some of it was cocaine.

On the other hand we get "Itchykoo Park" with this weird cardboard-sounding
kick drum that was a great test for tonearm setup... cheap turntables just
couldn't track it without skipping because it was all sub-bass. The CD reissue
is totally different sounding on the bottom.

>Can't think of a title off the top of my head, but will try.

Well, here's a counterexample: Leon Russell Live, where the LP had no low
end and the CD had far more extension.

[Arny Krueger]

"geoff" <ge...@nospampaf.co.nz> wrote in message
news:A--dnQarVZ-ArrvS...@giganews.com...

> Mxsmanic wrote:
>> Soundhaspriority writes:
>
>>
>> Does this apply at both ends? Will old CDs sound better on newer
>> equipment, or was the damage done when they were made, permanently
>> leaving them with poorer sound?

> It surprises me how many CDs of 70s and 80s pop/rock music have
> essentially NO LOW BASS to speak of.

When you are producing music for cutting on LPs, particularly LPs you know
are going to be played on cheap players, any kind of serious bass is your
enemy.

In some recording studios, the bass disappeared in the console channels. I
happen to personally know 2 of the 3 top tech people at Motown when they
were in Detroit. They tell me that their consoles had high pass filters
right in the input stages. If memory serves, the filters were 4th order with
a corner frequency of 80 Hz.

This feeds back into things like micing because if you can't hear it on the
monitors, there's no need to worry about how it is played or miced.

> Was there none recorded or were these taken from a dodgey master ?

Often, none recorded.

> Can't think of a title off the top of my head, but will try.

Check the Motown catalog from before they moved to LA.

> And then there are ones likeOscar Petersen's 1965 'We Get Requests' which
> has wonderful bass (such asw You Look Good To Me), but tinny piano ....

Many possible causes, but in fact the piano might have been tinny.

[Scott Dorsey]

In article <1-GdnYuVEbClCLvS...@giganews.com>,

Arny Krueger <ar...@cocmast.net> wrote:
>
>"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>news:p1c4i71pq0pge21id...@4ax.com...
>
>> Soundhaspriority writes:
>
>>> The A/D converters weren't good enough, noise shaping wasn't in wide use,
>>> and the DAW chains weren't good enough.
>
>Audiophile myth.
>
>Prior to the introduction of the CD we did DBTs of an Ampex digital delay
>that was designed to assist with vinyl cutting. No matter how we examined it
>with high resolution playback systems, and no matter how we stressed it with
>live feeds and playback of high speed wide track analog masters, it was
>simply audibly perfect.

If you mean the Ampex ADD-1, it did some interesting trickery. 14-bit
converters running really fast to avoid having sharp slope anti-aliasing
filters, and aggressive pre-emphasis and de-emphasis to deal with the
distortion issues. There must have been a million inductors in those
filters.

I am pretty surprised it passed a good DBT.... it was very clean for its
day, but it sure wasn't clean by modern standards. Studer made a similar
unit at the time.

For a really interesting experience, try and run signal through something
like this with the peak level at -50 dBFS or so. You very quickly get a
sense of what units were well-designed and what ones were not.

>I've personally gone back and analyzed and carefully listened to some of the
>most damned digital recordings (e.g. Ry Cooder's Bop Till Your Drop),
>recorders (PCM-F1) and players ( CDP-101) and the bottom line is that they
>both represented dramatic advances in terms of sonic accuracy as compared to
>where analog was before, during and even after them. The noise shaping
>comment is a red herring because noise shaping isn't needed for sonic
>transparency with 16 bits: 1 LSB unshaped TPDF dither suffices. The
>evidence that can be heard in the many fine recordings of the era is there:
>There was widespread use of entirely adequate production techiques . OK,
>there were screw ups but what technology is immune to screw ups?

You can point the blame at the technology or you can point the blame at the
equipment or you can point the blame at the users and sometimes it can be
hard to really know what is responsible. But so many of those recordings
just sounded so bad....

>In fact, the only signfiicant thing that has happened since the late 1970s
>is that sonically transparent digital converters have gotten smaller and
>cheaper by several orders of magnitude. There were sonically perfect
>converters in the late 1970s, but they were physically large, contained
>inherently expensive parts, required careful care and feeding, weren't the
>rule, and weren't sold on every street corner for $40 or less in finished
>products. Today, all those problems have been solved, and have been solved
>for at least 5 years.

Not really. An enormous amount of research has gone into making converters
with good linearity, most of it in the 1990s when people started noticing how
bad the early digital stuff was.

A couple things happened: first of all, we started getting oversampling
converters, then we started getting sigma-delta converters to deal with the
filtering issues.

At the same time there was a big push to make everything monolithic for low
cost, and that has some real advantages for ladder converters because you can
keep the whole ladder at the same temperature.

Things have changed a _lot_ in converter design since the seventies, beginning
with having actual stability and not having to constantly tweak offset values
all the time. That's something else sigma-delta systems finally eliminated
completely.

But even more importantly, it wasn't until the 1990s that people actually
realized what attributes were needed to make a good-sounding converter. A
lot of crazy stuff happened early on.. and some of the crazy stuff turned out
to be a good idea (such as the 14-bit oversampling systems turning out to
sound better than 16-bit systems, which surprised everywone), and some of
the crazy stuff turned out to be really bad (such as Wadia's converters
without reconstruction filters).

>>> On the DAW end, mixing was originally done with 16 bits, then 24, and
>>> finally, floating point. Before floating point, mixing introduced
>>> additional
>>> quantization error.
>
>False. It is trivial to do good digital mixing with fixed point arithmetic.

Yes, but Sony didn't.

[Mxsmanic]

Arny Krueger writes:

> There were good all-digital recordings from the onset. Does anybody remember
> Telarc?

I do, although I can't remember specific titles now.

[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

> That's true, but it's not the same thing as being perfect. I won't disagree
> that digital represented a significant improvement over analog, but the idea
> that early digital equipment was therefore necessarily perfect is an invalid
> conclusion. In fact, it's simple intellectual foolishness.

This sounds suspect to me.

In the digital domain, practical perfection is extremely easy to achieve. Once
everything is converted to numbers, you are no longer subject to the
tolerances and unpredictability of imperfect analog circuits. If the
conversion to digital is clean, perfection is trivial from that point on. It's
all ones and zeroes, and whether the ones and zeroes are blurry or sharp is
irrelevant, since perfection is the result either way. That's the whole
advantage of digital.

> I made simultaneous recordings with the Nakamich version of the PCM-F1 and
> the dbx 700. The recordings did not sound the same (the Sony was harder and
> brighter-sounding), so they could not have both been perfect.

When I first started listening to CDs, I did notice that they sounded harder
and brighter ... just like live music. It didn't seem like a defect to me.

[William Sommerwerck]

>> There were good all-digital recordings from the onset.
>> Does anybody remember Telarc?

> I do, although I can't remember specific titles now.

You should certainly remember the recording of Holst's band music.

[William Sommerwerck]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:fd0ei7h5jv5rk2qkt...@4ax.com...

> William Sommerwerck writes:

>> That's true, but it's not the same thing as being perfect. I won't
disagree
>> that digital represented a significant improvement over analog, but the
idea
>> that early digital equipment was therefore necessarily perfect is an
invalid
>> conclusion. In fact, it's simple intellectual foolishness.

> This sounds suspect to me.

> In the digital domain, practical perfection is extremely easy to achieve.
Once
> everything is converted to numbers, you are no longer subject to the
> tolerances and unpredictability of imperfect analog circuits.

...Yes! Once everything is converted to numbers!

DUH! THAT is the issue.

> If the conversion to digital is clean, perfection is trivial from that
point on.

I can't believe that someone is actually saying this.

>> I made simultaneous recordings with the Nakamich version of the PCM-F1
>> and the dbx 700. The recordings did not sound the same (the Sony was
>> harder and brighter-sounding), so they could not have both been perfect.

> When I first started listening to CDs, I did notice that they sounded
harder
> and brighter ... just like live music. It didn't seem like a defect to me.

<WS finds wall and bangs head against it.>

[Scott Dorsey]

Mxsmanic <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>William Sommerwerck writes:
>
>> That's true, but it's not the same thing as being perfect. I won't disagree
>> that digital represented a significant improvement over analog, but the idea
>> that early digital equipment was therefore necessarily perfect is an invalid
>> conclusion. In fact, it's simple intellectual foolishness.
>
>This sounds suspect to me.
>
>In the digital domain, practical perfection is extremely easy to achieve. Once
>everything is converted to numbers, you are no longer subject to the
>tolerances and unpredictability of imperfect analog circuits. If the
>conversion to digital is clean, perfection is trivial from that point on. It's
>all ones and zeroes, and whether the ones and zeroes are blurry or sharp is
>irrelevant, since perfection is the result either way. That's the whole
>advantage of digital.

Right. The problem is that conversion step. That turns out to be really
pretty hard.

[Mike Rivers]

On 1/30/2012 3:49 PM, Mxsmanic wrote:

> In the digital domain, practical perfection is extremely easy to achieve. Once
> everything is converted to numbers, you are no longer subject to the
> tolerances and unpredictability of imperfect analog circuits.

Yes, but there are no native digital audio transducers. Air
has to move something. And assuming a conventional path with
A/D and D/A converters, the accuracy of converting to or
from numbers is what you're concerned with. It's getting
pretty good, and probably better than any analog transducer,
but it's not perfect.

> When I first started listening to CDs, I did notice that they sounded harder
> and brighter ... just like live music. It didn't seem like a defect to me.

The first thing I noticed about CDs was that there was no
surface noise. While I don't let the occasional tick bother
me, none was really an ear opener. Since I don't know what
it sounded like in the control or mastering room, I really
can't say anything about the accuracy.

[Arny Krueger]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:pb0ei7t0s4rf0h84a...@4ax.com...

Read about them and more at:
http://www.aes.org/aeshc/pdf/fine_dawn-of-digital.pdf

[Arkansan Raider]

Arny Krueger wrote:

> There were good all-digital recordings from the onset. Does anybody remember
> Telarc?
>

Some of the first classical music I ever bought in *any* format. A
Marine buddy got me started listening to it, reinforced by friends who
played it while we played role-playing games and while wargaming on the
sand table.

Telarc put out some damned fine material. My first was Tchaikovsky's
"1812 Overture," second was Beethoven's "Wellington's Victory." Yeah, I
was into the recorded firearms. ;^)

My gaming buddies got me into Wagner. That had me going to some Telarc
and a lot of Deutsche Grammophon, who put out some pretty danged good
digital conversions of analog recordings.

---Jeff

[Trevor]

"Scott Dorsey" <klu...@panix.com> wrote in message

news:jg7209$87g$1...@panix2.panix.com...

>>In the digital domain, practical perfection is extremely easy to achieve.
>>Once
>>everything is converted to numbers, you are no longer subject to the
>>tolerances and unpredictability of imperfect analog circuits. If the
>>conversion to digital is clean, perfection is trivial from that point on.
>>It's
>>all ones and zeroes, and whether the ones and zeroes are blurry or sharp
>>is
>>irrelevant, since perfection is the result either way. That's the whole
>>advantage of digital.
>
> Right. The problem is that conversion step. That turns out to be really
> pretty hard.

Only if you actually bothered to specify the problem conversion step being
the sonic/mechanical/electrical one, rather than the electrical A-D/D-A one.
The latter is pretty easy these days.


Trevor.

[Trevor]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:pb0ei7t0s4rf0h84a...@4ax.com...

I've still got dozens of them. Their 1812 Overture was my first CD. Enjoyed
the Eric Kunzel "Pop Symphonic" stuff too.

Trevor.

[Arkansan Raider]

Yeah, I forgot about the Eric Kunzel one. I have that one, too.

Back then I wasn't all that into classical music, other than
experimenting with some of the stuff that was somewhat familiar to me
from movies and such, but it kind of grew on me. Then when I started on
the path to my music degree, I found that I was getting to truly enjoy it.

I'm still primarily a rock/blues listener, but I'll listen to just about
any genre at this point because of that experience. And I'm still a huge
Richard Wagner fan--enough to make him the subject of a few term papers.
Let me correct that--I'm a huge fan of his *music* but his personal life
was not one I'm interested in emulating. It looked, ummmmmmm... Painful.

---Jeff

[geoff]

Scott Dorsey wrote:
>
> Right. The problem is that conversion step. That turns out to be
> really pretty hard.

Harder than dragging a bouncing rock through medium-hard plastic, all on
resonant mechanical equipment ?

geoff

[Trevor]

"Arkansan Raider" <yom...@yomama.com> wrote in message
news:jg7rbn$d1g$2...@dont-email.me...

>>>> There were good all-digital recordings from the onset. Does anybody
>>>> remember
>>>> Telarc?
>>> I do, although I can't remember specific titles now.
>>
>> I've still got dozens of them. Their 1812 Overture was my first CD.
>> Enjoyed the Eric Kunzel "Pop Symphonic" stuff too.
>

> Yeah, I forgot about the Eric Kunzel one. I have that one, too.

ONE? I have seven, and I'm sure there were probably more.

Trevor.

[PStamler]

No, it's still hard. But some smart designers have succeeded in doing
it well even though it's hard. So they make it look easy -- but it's
still hard.

Peace,
Paul

[Trevor]

"PStamler" <psta...@pobox.com> wrote in message
news:ed6f0a35-7c76-4621...@f11g2000yql.googlegroups.com...

>No, it's still hard. But some smart designers have succeeded in doing
>it well even though it's hard. So they make it look easy -- but it's
>still hard.

Well nearly everything is hard using that logic, BUT since the hard work has
been done, and off the shelf harware is more than good enough now, it is no
longer a problem USERS need to worry about. (beyond avoiding whatever crap
may still be available)

Trevor.

[Arny Krueger]

"Trevor" <tre...@home.net> wrote in message
news:jg7ofe$da7$1...@speranza.aioe.org...

And that is the point. The best minds in the industry decided in the 60s and
70s that vinyl LP technology was pretty much at its zenith, and could not be
materially improved at any cost.

Any number of alternative technologies were tried, including several flavors
of FM coding, but none were adequate. Analog media and media contact-based
playback had to go.

By the time the CD came out, its key technologies had already been proven
over several years in the form of the Laserdisc.

[Les Cargill]

Arny Krueger wrote:
> "Trevor"<tre...@home.net> wrote in message
> news:jg7ofe$da7$1...@speranza.aioe.org...
>>
>> "Scott Dorsey"<klu...@panix.com> wrote in message
>> news:jg7209$87g$1...@panix2.panix.com...
>>>> In the digital domain, practical perfection is extremely easy to achieve.
>>>> Once
>>>> everything is converted to numbers, you are no longer subject to the
>>>> tolerances and unpredictability of imperfect analog circuits. If the
>>>> conversion to digital is clean, perfection is trivial from that point on.
>>>> It's
>>>> all ones and zeroes, and whether the ones and zeroes are blurry or sharp
>>>> is
>>>> irrelevant, since perfection is the result either way. That's the whole
>>>> advantage of digital.
>>>
>>> Right. The problem is that conversion step. That turns out to be really
>>> pretty hard.
>
>> Only if you actually bothered to specify the problem conversion step being
>> the sonic/mechanical/electrical one, rather than the electrical A-D/D-A
>> one. The latter is pretty easy these days.
>
> And that is the point. The best minds in the industry decided in the 60s and
> 70s that vinyl LP technology was pretty much at its zenith, and could not be
> materially improved at any cost.
>

But vinyl varied. Radically. Turntables/cartriges/stylii varied. When
I stopped getting Stereo Review ( in 1979) , these things were all still
in some state of R&D - or at least new products were being sold. there
were dedicated retail outlets for the technology even in smallish
towns.

But reading you say this - I realize I had been exposed to something
like propaganda for digital media since the mid '70s. And now the
propaganda seems like they* wish they could put the genie back in the
bottle.

*it's rather a different "they" now.

> Any number of alternative technologies were tried, including several flavors
> of FM coding, but none were adequate. Analog media and media contact-based
> playback had to go.
>
> By the time the CD came out, its key technologies had already been proven
> over several years in the form of the Laserdisc.
>
>

And they still got it wrong in cases...

--
Les Cargill

[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

> ...Yes! Once everything is converted to numbers!
>
> DUH! THAT is the issue.

A conversion can only be so good. There is an ideal conversion to digital,
beyond which the conversion cannot be improved. It's not like pure analog,
where you can tweak infinitely. For any given analog waveform, there is an
optimal conversion to digital. Once a converter achieves that optimal
conversion, no further improvement is possible.

[Mxsmanic]

Scott Dorsey writes:

> Right. The problem is that conversion step. That turns out to be really
> pretty hard.

Hard, perhaps, but not impossible. Since the accuracy of digital is finite,
there will be some possible analog system that can fully exploit whatever
accuracy it provides. Beyond that, no improvement in the conversion is
possible.

[Mxsmanic]

Arny Krueger writes:

> By the time the CD came out, its key technologies had already been proven
> over several years in the form of the Laserdisc.

The advantages of CDs were known long before there was any way to manufacture
them, And the advantages of digital recording in general have been understood
for a hundred years. It was just the engineering part that had to catch up.

[Mxsmanic]

Mike Rivers writes:

> Yes, but there are no native digital audio transducers. Air
> has to move something. And assuming a conventional path with
> A/D and D/A converters, the accuracy of converting to or
> from numbers is what you're concerned with. It's getting
> pretty good, and probably better than any analog transducer,
> but it's not perfect.

It can indeed be perfect, because it need only match the resolution of the
digital domain.

For any waveform, no matter how complex, there is a single, optimal conversion
to a given implementation of the digital domain. Once you achieve that optimal
conversion, no further improvement in the conversion is necessary or possible.
And it is possible to achieve that optimal conversion in the real world. So
beyond a certain point, converters work perfectly, and nothing better will
ever be possible or needed.

> The first thing I noticed about CDs was that there was no
> surface noise. While I don't let the occasional tick bother
> me, none was really an ear opener. Since I don't know what
> it sounded like in the control or mastering room, I really
> can't say anything about the accuracy.

I recall my first experiences with CD, listening to a recording that had no
background noise. On a few early occasions I cranked up the volume on the
assumption that it was set too low, only to be blasted by the music when it
actually started. Unlike LPs, you could not guess at an appropriate volume
setting based on background noise, so sometimes you were surprised.

[William Sommerwerck]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:32rfi7lsvfrk8dl4e...@4ax.com...

> William Sommerwerck writes:

>> ...Yes! Once everything is converted to numbers!
>> DUH! THAT is the issue.

> A conversion can only be so good.

Precisely. It's possible to transmit digital information "perfectly", but
that has nothing whatever to do with whether the conversion was itself
perfect. Don't you understand?

[William Sommerwerck]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:q5rfi75k3ge0svjiq...@4ax.com...

But you claimed that digital conversion is or can be perfect. Read what you
wrote!

[William Sommerwerck]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:idrfi7p2maf75i367...@4ax.com...

> For any waveform, no matter how complex, there is a single, optimal
conversion
> to a given implementation of the digital domain. Once you achieve that
optimal
> conversion, no further improvement in the conversion is necessary or
possible.

And your proof that such conversion is possible, is...?

[Arny Krueger]

"Les Cargill" <lcarg...@comcast.com> wrote in message
news:jg8p1q$gev$1...@dont-email.me...

People are still doing technical measurements of LP playback gear, Miller
Audio Research for one. Their tests don't show much improvement over how
things were 30 years ago.

> But reading you say this - I realize I had been exposed to something
> like propaganda for digital media since the mid '70s. And now the
> propaganda seems like they* wish they could put the genie back in the
> bottle.

????????????????

> *it's rather a different "they" now.

>> Any number of alternative technologies were tried, including several
>> flavors
>> of FM coding, but none were adequate. Analog media and media
>> contact-based
>> playback had to go.
>>
>> By the time the CD came out, its key technologies had already been proven
>> over several years in the form of the Laserdisc.

> And they still got it wrong in cases...

IME, the first completely foolproof technology is still being developed...
;-)

[Scott Dorsey]

Probably not, but remember that by the time the CD came out, there had been
a century's worth of development in getting that bouncing rock to work right.
That's a very hard thing to do also. Electromechanical transducers always
are.

All things considered, digital stuff has come a long way since the eighties.
A lot of work has gone into making it sound good, probably even more than went
into the century's worth of record development.

[Scott Dorsey]

In article <q5rfi75k3ge0svjiq...@4ax.com>,

Right. But in the eighties we were having trouble just getting a 100 Hz
square wave through the system without massive overshoot. Things are better
now.

[Arkansan Raider]

Oh, I'm sure. I said "one" because that was the only one of his in my
collection.

My bad.

---Jeff

[Frank Stearns]

klu...@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) writes:

>All things considered, digital stuff has come a long way since the eighties.
>A lot of work has gone into making it sound good, probably even more than went
>into the century's worth of record development.

Very true.

And I'd include in that the human factor. It took a while for some of us (many of
us?) to really get a full sense of what we had with the new digital medium.

Gone were the HF abberations of the LP that established a pleasant sense of faux
dimension; gone was tape hiss that gave us stocastic resonances that could
contribute various things (and mask others); and suddenly we lost the often useful
LF roll-off of tape (and many other sometimes useful distortions).

Not that tape and vinyl automatically give you a good recording, but by limiting
choices they did give a certain starting point.

with modern, higher-quality digital, you can't rely on the medium to help hide the
inherent flaws in the system (microphones and speakers and their locations in space,
primarily).

Whether you want it or not, with digital everything is there (or at least a lot
more). It's up to us to find new ways -- often developed over time in our
engineering subsconcious -- to define and maintain the illusion that is recording.

Frank
Mobile Audio

--
.

[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

> Precisely. It's possible to transmit digital information "perfectly", but
> that has nothing whatever to do with whether the conversion was itself
> perfect.

What is important to retain is that, in the digital realm, one cannot tweak
things forever. Once a conversion is optimal, no improvement is possible, and
no further tweaking makes any difference.

This is in sharp contrast to the analog world, where one can tweak and tweak
and always approach perfection a little more closely.

The irony is that analog systems can be perfect in theory, but never in
practice, whereas digital systems can never be perfect, even in theory, but
they often make it possible to approach perfection more closely than analog
systems do because analog portions of a system are vulnerable to physical
constraints, whereas digital components are not.

[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

> But you claimed that digital conversion is or can be perfect.

Seen from the digital side, that's true. Seen from the analog side, it's never
true (not even in theory).

A given waveform has one optimal digital representation, which is "perfect,"
because it cannot be improved upon in the digital realm. That representation
will never be perfect from an analog standpoint, because you cannot represent
an infinite number of points on a curve with a finite series of numbers.

What this boils down to is that, once you've developed an ADC that produces
the optimal digital representation of a waveform, any further development of
the ADC is a waste of time, because the digital representation can never get
better.

So if you have a $50 ADC that produces this optimal digital representation,
building a $5000 ADC accomplishes nothing.

Which in turn means that it's entirely possible that some modern ADCs are now
"perfect" from a digital standpoint, because they produce optimal digital
representations of their input waveforms. Which means that arguing further
about conversions serves no purpose--they are as good as they will ever be.

If you want to go further, you need a more detailed digital representation
(more samples with greater bit depth), and then you can build a fancier ADC to
create the necessary numbers.

I don't know if perfect ADCs for 16 bits and 44,100 Hz exist, but it's
certainly quite plausible to think that they do. In which case, there's
nothing more to be done for CD-quality sound.

[Mxsmanic]

Scott Dorsey writes:

> Right. But in the eighties we were having trouble just getting a 100 Hz
> square wave through the system without massive overshoot. Things are better
> now.

So are they better, or perfect? Are there ADCs now that can produce an optimal
digitization of a majority of waveforms actually encountered in real-world
audio recording?

If not, then there's more work to be done on the analog side of the ADCs. If
so, then the only future improvement would be in increasing sample rates and
bit depths, and the current digital representations are as good as they will
ever get.

[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

> And your proof that such conversion is possible, is...?

I consider it self-evident. A digital data stream is an approximation of the
waveform it represents. There will always be one--and only one--optimal
digital representation of that waveform. Once this representation is obtained,
nothing more can be improved.

That is the nature of digital systems, and it's one of the characteristics
that I notice that people with analog backgrouns have trouble with. My
background is digital, so I know the digital limitations very well, whereas
I'm much weaker with the ramifications of analog representations.

[Scott Dorsey]

Mxsmanic <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote:
>Scott Dorsey writes:
>
>> Right. But in the eighties we were having trouble just getting a 100 Hz
>> square wave through the system without massive overshoot. Things are better
>> now.
>
>So are they better, or perfect? Are there ADCs now that can produce an optimal
>digitization of a majority of waveforms actually encountered in real-world
>audio recording?

This is the hard question to answer, indeed.

But... the Weiss converters sound a little different than the Prism converters
which definitely sound different than the Grimm. So... if one of them is
indeed perfect, the question is which one.

[William Sommerwerck]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:h2fgi7ds7sbh95d8v...@4ax.com...

> William Sommerwerck writes:

>> And your proof that such conversion is possible, is...?

> I consider it self-evident. A digital data stream is an approximation of
the
> waveform it represents. There will always be one--and only one--optimal
> digital representation of that waveform. Once this representation is
obtained,
> nothing more can be improved.

You are looking at this from an extremely narrow point of view.

[Mxsmanic]

Scott Dorsey writes:

> This is the hard question to answer, indeed.

Yes, but it's a fascinating question.

> But... the Weiss converters sound a little different than the Prism converters
> which definitely sound different than the Grimm. So... if one of them is
> indeed perfect, the question is which one.

Yes. Or perhaps none of them is yet able to do a perfect conversion. I don't
know.

I suppose you could examine the results by hand and calculate whether or not
the numbers coming out are indeed the best representation of the signal going
in. But is that really worth it?

[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

> You are looking at this from an extremely narrow point of view.

No, I'm looking at it from the point of view of someone who understands and
has used digital systems all his life.

Most people in the audio and video worlds know analog, not digital, since
analog preceded digital and is still the most important part of any system
that interfaces with the physical world. But sometimes their misunderstanding
of the digital domain can work against them.

[William Sommerwerck]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:8tmgi7pp511a5u8ob...@4ax.com...

All right... Explain the difference between digital and analog. I've asked
the members of this group to do this several times, and none has ever gotten
it correct.

[Arkansan Raider]

William Sommerwerck wrote:

> All right... Explain the difference between digital and analog. I've asked
> the members of this group to do this several times, and none has ever gotten
> it correct.
>
>

Rut roh, Raggy.

Yes. Yes, you have.

Mxsmanic, you need to pack a lunch--we could be here a while.

I'm filling the popcorn popper right now... ;^)


---Jeff

[William Sommerwerck]

"Arkansan Raider" <yom...@yomama.com> wrote in message

news:jg9og8$l5c$1...@dont-email.me...

I am not going to get into a discussion. I simply want to see whether or not
he understands. Nothing more.

[Arkansan Raider]

Oh man, you mean I gotta' put the popcorn away?

No, William, I was just giving you a hard time. No worries. *grin*

---Jeff

[rrus...@hotmail.com]

On Jan 31, 6:18 am, "Arny Krueger" <ar...@cocmast.net> wrote:
> "Trevor" <tre...@home.net> wrote in message
>
> news:jg7ofe$da7$1...@speranza.aioe.org...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> > "Scott Dorsey" <klu...@panix.com> wrote in message
> >news:jg7209$87g$1...@panix2.panix.com...
> >>>In the digital domain, practical perfection is extremely easy to achieve.
> >>>Once
> >>>everything is converted to numbers, you are no longer subject to the
> >>>tolerances and unpredictability of imperfect analog circuits. If the
> >>>conversion to digital is clean, perfection is trivial from that point on.
> >>>It's
> >>>all ones and zeroes, and whether the ones and zeroes are blurry or sharp
> >>>is
> >>>irrelevant, since perfection is the result either way. That's the whole
> >>>advantage of digital.
>

> >> Right.  The problem is that conversion step.  That turns out to be really
> >> pretty hard.

> > Only if you actually bothered to specify the problem conversion step being
> > the sonic/mechanical/electrical one, rather than the electrical A-D/D-A
> > one. The latter is pretty easy these days.
>
> And that is the point. The best minds in the industry decided in the 60s and
> 70s that vinyl LP technology was pretty much at its zenith, and could not be
> materially improved at any cost.
>

> Any number of alternative technologies were tried, including several flavors
> of FM coding, but none were adequate.  Analog media and media contact-based
> playback had to go.
>
> By the time the CD came out, its key technologies had already been proven
> over several years in the form of the Laserdisc.

Which is horseshit, because RCA came out with SelectaVision showing
that video could be stored on what amounted to a much higher density
vinyl pressed format. Further, the best mag tape was and remains
better than vinyl as an analog storage medium.

Digital unquestionably could be made cheaper in the long run-at the
cost of opening the Pandora's box that has resulted in the substantial
attenuation of the music industry through downloading and ripping CDs.

It came down to money.

[rrus...@hotmail.com]

On Jan 31, 8:05 am, "Arny Krueger" <ar...@cocmast.net> wrote:
> "Les Cargill" <lcargil...@comcast.com> wrote in message

Good vinyl playback is better understood today than when it was a
mainstream technology. lacking volume, getting it implemented can be
troublesome.

[Trevor]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:k9egi7d9l6o0evs8d...@4ax.com...

> What is important to retain is that, in the digital realm, one cannot
> tweak
> things forever. Once a conversion is optimal, no improvement is possible,
> and
> no further tweaking makes any difference.

No, you can use a higher data rate if you want an improvement within the
contraints of the physical universe.

> This is in sharp contrast to the analog world, where one can tweak and
> tweak
> and always approach perfection a little more closely.

Right, simply because you are still not anywhere near the level of "optimal
digital".

> The irony is that analog systems can be perfect in theory, but never in
> practice, whereas digital systems can never be perfect, even in theory,
> but
> they often make it possible to approach perfection more closely than
> analog
> systems do because analog portions of a system are vulnerable to physical
> constraints, whereas digital components are not.

They're both vulnerable to physical constraints, digital just far less so.

Trevor.

[Trevor]

"Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:kkegi7h4e2qm35rr8...@4ax.com...

*Exactly*, and renders everything else you wrote irrelevent because you
place no constraints on your theoretical analog system. A higher precision,
higher data rate digital system will always cost more, just as a better
analog one will. Fortunately for the same level of performance, digital ones
now cost far less than analog.

Trevor.

[Trevor]

"William Sommerwerck" <grizzle...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:jg8s9s$2qp$1...@dont-email.me...

>> For any waveform, no matter how complex, there is a single, optimal
> conversion
>> to a given implementation of the digital domain. Once you achieve that
> optimal
>> conversion, no further improvement in the conversion is necessary or
> possible.
>
> And your proof that such conversion is possible, is...?

16 bit converters with DNR at the theoretical maximum (or VERY close to it),
less than 0.001% THD and IMD, less than 0.01dB frequency deviation in the
audio band (or well beyond it depending on sample rate) etc.

OK not perfect, but already closer than any human will ever need. Time to
worry about where the real problems remain, transducer performance, and
especially room acoustics!

Trevor.

[Trevor]

"William Sommerwerck" <grizzle...@comcast.net> wrote in message

news:jg9npn$l37$1...@dont-email.me...

> All right... Explain the difference between digital and analog. I've asked
> the members of this group to do this several times, and none has ever
> gotten
> it correct.

Assuming they could be bothered wasting their time, how would YOU know?
:-)

Trevor.

[Mxsmanic]

William Sommerwerck writes:

> All right... Explain the difference between digital and analog. I've asked
> the members of this group to do this several times, and none has ever gotten
> it correct.

There are several ways of looking at the difference.

An analog representation of a tree is a drawing. A digital representation of a
tree is the word "tree."

The analog representation of a tree has the advantage of being simple, and
since it is a direct physical model of a tree, it can be interpreted correctly
even by someone who has never seen a tree.

The digital representation is more complex, because it uses symbols that have
no intrinsic meaning. For correct interpretation, the person seeing the word
"tree" must know English and be able to read, and he must have already seen a
tree.

If a drawing of a tree (an analog representation) is copied, the copy will not
be identical to the original drawing. Each additional generation of copying
will produce a drawing that looks less and less like the original. Eventually,
the drawing will be uselessly unrecognizable. A similar problem occurs when
the drawing is transmitted somewhere, as by fax, for example. At the other end
of the transmission, the drawing isn't identical to the original. Eventually,
in both cases, noise and distortion destroy the original "signal" completely.

The word "tree" (a digital representation) can be copied and transmitted
indefinitely, and there will be no loss of information as long as the letters
T-R-E-E are still recognizable. It's easy to "regenerate the signal" and
maintain the information forever, so the digital representation can be copied
and transmitted with zero loss.

Digital ultimately works by setting an arbitrary threshold between what is
considered signal and what is considered noise. Anything in the channel below
the threshold is treated as noise and ignored. Anything in the channel above
the threshold is treated as signal. As long as the actual noise in the channel
is below the threshold, the digital data can be copied and transmitted forever
without loss. Thus, as long as the letters of the word "tree" are undistorted
enough to be recognizable as letters, the signal is above the threshold and
there is no loss. If the noise level rises so much that it distorts the
letters beyond recognition, there is a sudden, total loss of information.

Analog makes no distinction between signal and noise. Any noise in the channel
is treated as part of the signal, and since noise-free channels don't exist in
the real world, this means that any copying or transmission of an analog
signal introduces errors that cannot be detected, removed, or corrected. The
signal inevitably degrades. However, analog does have the advantage of being
able to use all the available bandwidth, whereas digital sacrifices some
bandwidth with its arbitrary threshold. Thus, in a low-noise channel, analog
can perform better than digital when digital has its threshold set way above
the actual noise.

A noise-free analog channel can carry an infinite amount of information at
infinite speed. A noise-free digital channel cannot, because the arbitrary
noise threshold sets an upper limit on information-carrying capacity. However,
since all channels are noisy in the real world, it turns out that analog
actually tends to perform worse than digital over the long term.

Digital transmission also requires encoding and decoding, whereas analog does
not. A drawing of a tree is recognizable even to someone who has never seen a
tree. The very analog representation itself provides much of the information
needed for interpretation. But digital data streams are nothing more than
symbols. In order to understand a digital data stream, both sender and
receiver must agree in advance on an encoding scheme that assigns a constant
meaning to the symbols used in the stream.

For example, an extraterrestrial looking at an LP might reason that the wavy
grooves on the LP are an analog of varying pressure waves in an atmosphere.
But an ET looking at a CD just sees a string of binary digits, and without
some key to the encoding of information in those digits, he has no way of
figuring out what they represent.

That's why we can understand cave drawings done thousands of years ago (analog
representations), but we can't always decipher written languages once the
speakers of those languages are dead (digital representations).

Another example of analog vs. digital is paintings vs. books. We have very few
usable images from the distant past because drawings and paintings are analog
representations that cannot be copied or transmitted without deterioration.
Over time, all images crumble into dust. But we have the written word (e.g.,
the Bible) that has survived for thousands of years because it is a digital
representation, and can be copied or transmitted without error. So we don't
have any decent pictures of ordinary ancient Romans, but we still have what
they wrote.

These are a few illustrations of the differences between digital and analog
(although they are really different sides of the same coin). In my experience,
most people have difficulty grasping these concepts, particularly those of the
digital domain.

[Dave C]

"Arny Krueger" <ar...@cocmast.net> wrote in message
news:1-GdnYuVEbClCLvS...@giganews.com...

>
> "Mxsmanic" <mxsm...@gmail.com> wrote in message

> news:p1c4i71pq0pge21id...@4ax.com...
>
<snip>

> There were good all-digital recordings from the onset. Does anybody
> remember Telarc?
>

Agree with your whole post Arny. The 1979 Telarc recordings I have still
sound spectacular today. Telarc produced consistently excellent recordings
from the beginning of compact discs.

Dave


--- Posted via news://freenews.netfront.net/ - Complaints to ne...@netfront.net ---

[anahata]

On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 22:22:41 +0100, Mxsmanic wrote:

> I suppose you could examine the results by hand and calculate whether or
> not the numbers coming out are indeed the best representation of the
> signal going in. But is that really worth it?

How do you measure the signal going in for comparison purposes?
(digitising it is not an option, obviously)

The permanent limitation with digital is the fact that it's a sampled
system, which means it's only perfect for a signal with strictly limited
bandwidth. To enforce that bandwidth limitation needs filters that are
hard to design (they aren't even easy to specify, it's all tradeoffs),
and much of the difference between converters has to do with the way that
filtering is done.

--
Anahata
ana...@treewind.co.uk --/-- http://www.treewind.co.uk
+44 (0)1638 720444

[anahata]

On Tue, 31 Jan 2012 20:07:08 +0100, Mxsmanic wrote:

> A given waveform has one optimal digital representation, which is
> "perfect," because it cannot be improved upon in the digital realm.

Actually, it has an infinite number of equally correct digital
representations, depending on the sample timing relative to changes in
the input.

On top of that, the choice of optimal antialiasing filter is a judgement
call - there is no one perfect design as you have to trade sharpness of
cutoff againt length of impulse response.

[geoff]

So how does the same square wave go on playback from vinyl ? If you could
get it onto vinyl in the first place (as an audio signal).


geoff

[William Sommerwerck]

"Trevor" <tre...@home.net> wrote in message

news:jgah02$lm6$1...@speranza.aioe.org...

> "William Sommerwerck" <grizzle...@comcast.net> wrote in message
> news:jg8s9s$2qp$1...@dont-email.me...

>>> For any waveform, no matter how complex, there is a single, optimal
>>> conversion to a given implementation of the digital domain. Once you
>>> achieve that optimal conversion, no further improvement in the
conversion
>>> is necessary or possible.

>> And your proof that such conversion is possible, is...?

> 16 bit converters with DNR at the theoretical maximum (or VERY close to
it),
> less than 0.001% THD and IMD, less than 0.01dB frequency deviation in the
> audio band (or well beyond it depending on sample rate) etc.

> OK, not perfect, but already closer than any human will ever need.

How do you KNOW? How do you know that "small" numbers translate to
subjectively perfect performance?

[William Sommerwerck]

"Trevor" <tre...@home.net> wrote in message

news:jgah3g$lsr$1...@speranza.aioe.org...

Because I've thought it through, rather than blindly believing what's
written in books. For example... Many books say (or imply) that simply
sampling the signal converts it to digital. (Shall I name one?)

"I answered one question, and that is enough." I do not want to get into
another tsimmes over this.

[William Sommerwerck]

The answer to my question can be stated in two brief sentences. What
Mxsmanic has little to do with the "correct" answer.

I don't believe written language can be considered "digital". I've thought
about this for a long time, but have never come to a conclusion.

> A noise-free analog channel can carry an infinite amount
> of information at infinite speed.

Not at all true. Read a book on information theory.

[William Sommerwerck]

>> By the time the CD came out, its key technologies had already
>> been proven over several years in the form of the Laserdisc.

> Which is horseshit, because RCA came out with SelectaVision
> showing that video could be stored on what amounted to a much
> higher density vinyl pressed format.

Laserdisc (LV) predates SelectaVision (CED). The higher density of the CED
could have been used to record multi-channel sound as an FM signal. JVC had
such a system, Audio High Density (AHD), the audio-only version of Video
High Density (VHD). AHD was never commerciaized.

> Further, the best mag tape was and remains better than vinyl as an
> analog storage medium.

Actually, it's a much better playback medium.