My preference is to hear the original sound, but maybe it's because I'm a young person who listens to more recent music, not some old guy that listens to Manovani (sp?) all day and prefers to have it "warmed up". 
Zenmervolt
Elite member
- Oct 22, 2000
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<< My preference is to hear the original sound, but maybe it's because I'm a young person who listens to more recent music, not some old guy that listens to Manovani (sp?) all day and prefers to have it "warmed up".
>>Oh, so it's like that, is it?
For the record, I'm 19, and I listen to true Rock and Roll (Bob Seger, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Boston, Foreigner, RUSH, Styx, Rolling Stones) as well as a lot of other good music (Steely Dan, Dire Straits, Gordon Lightfoot, The Moody Blues). ZV
Ok, I see how it could sound good if you have nice equipment. But what I don't understand is that I know an old guy (not my dad, fortunately) who listens to "mood music" on an average (not high quality like you have) turntable and says it's better than a CD.
And maybe it's just that kind of music, perhaps it sounds that bad on all types of media?
And maybe it's just that kind of music, perhaps it sounds that bad on all types of media?
An LP will sound better than a CD of the same track if you start with a good analog source, AND you do a good job of mastering the LP, AND you have decent playback equipment. It's not that LP's are perfect. They aren't. OTOH, whether you prove it by listening or just doing the math, 44 KHz 16 bit audio is a dreadful storage format for the accurate reproduction of music. The difference is, in the hands of a skilled recordist and mastering engineer, the end product will be more musical because the typical low level errors of an analog system tend to be harmonically complimentary to music, whereas the typical errors in a linear PCM system (i.e. CD's) are NONharmonic and increase as lower levels, which is definitely UNcomplimentary to music.
As I've posted, before, I'm an electronic design engineer. I design studio audio equipment (both solid state and tubes), and I have been a professional musician, so I really do know something about this subject.
As I've posted, before, I'm an electronic design engineer. I design studio audio equipment (both solid state and tubes), and I have been a professional musician, so I really do know something about this subject.
<< An LP will sound better than a CD of the same track if you start with a good analog source, AND you do a good job of mastering the LP, AND you have decent playback equipment. It's not that LP's are perfect. They aren't. OTOH, whether you prove it by listening or just doing the math, 44 KHz 16 bit audio is a dreadful storage format for the accurate reproduction of music. The difference is, in the hands of a skilled recordist and mastering engineer, the end product will be more musical because the typical low level errors of an analog system tend to be harmonically complimentary to music, whereas the typical errors in a linear PCM system (i.e. CD's) are NONharmonic and increase as lower levels, which is definitely UNcomplimentary to music.
As I've posted, before, I'm an electronic design engineer. I design studio audio equipment (both solid state and tubes), and I have been a professional musician, so I really do know something about this subject.
>>Wow, some excellent information you provide there. Just curious, though, since you seem to understand this much better than I do, how much quality would be gained by going from 44 KHz 16 bit audio to 96KHz 24 bit audio? If CDs were recorded at the latter setting with good equipment (and played back with good equipment), would they be as good as a good LP recorded with good equipment by a good recordist and played with good equipment? And where to tapes fit in the picture here?
Zenmervolt
Elite member
- Oct 22, 2000
- 24,514
- 44
- 91
<<Wow, some excellent information you provide there. Just curious, though, since you seem to understand this much better than I do, how much quality would be gained by going from 44 KHz 16 bit audio to 96KHz 24 bit audio? If CDs were recorded at the latter setting with good equipment (and played back with good equipment), would they be as good as a good LP recorded with good equipment by a good recordist and played with good equipment? And where to tapes fit in the picture here?>>
Tape is an analogue source, so it is theoretically better than a CD, but normal consumer tape (Type I) tends to add a lot of "hiss". More expensive tape (Type II, or "metal" tape, or better yet, Type IV) does a much better job of reducing or eliminating hiss. From a purely theoretical standpoint, analogue will always be better than digital since analogue is a continuous function whereas digital is a series of discrete steps. However, because analogue is highly susceptable to transmission "noise", digital is often a better choice for most applications until someone figures out how to reduce the susceptability of analogue to interferance. About my turntable, it's a late 1970's "Dual" brand turntable in a Sony turntable/reciever unit. My dad bought it for a little over $400 at the time, which is about $750 in todays dollars according to the inflation guide in my Macroeconomics textbook. It's not the highest end system all together, however, the Dual (company name) turntable part is high end and that accounts for the better sound. Most turntable that you can buy today at Best Buy or other places are really quite crappy. This reminds me, I really should stock up on some Styli while I can still find Pickering DAT-3 Diamond Styli.
ZV
Tape is an analogue source, so it is theoretically better than a CD, but normal consumer tape (Type I) tends to add a lot of "hiss". More expensive tape (Type II, or "metal" tape, or better yet, Type IV) does a much better job of reducing or eliminating hiss. From a purely theoretical standpoint, analogue will always be better than digital since analogue is a continuous function whereas digital is a series of discrete steps. However, because analogue is highly susceptable to transmission "noise", digital is often a better choice for most applications until someone figures out how to reduce the susceptability of analogue to interferance. About my turntable, it's a late 1970's "Dual" brand turntable in a Sony turntable/reciever unit. My dad bought it for a little over $400 at the time, which is about $750 in todays dollars according to the inflation guide in my Macroeconomics textbook. It's not the highest end system all together, however, the Dual (company name) turntable part is high end and that accounts for the better sound. Most turntable that you can buy today at Best Buy or other places are really quite crappy. This reminds me, I really should stock up on some Styli while I can still find Pickering DAT-3 Diamond Styli.
ZV
<< Cause some people are afraid to use new, improved technology. The same people who are afraid of computers or still ask for Windows 95 (they don't use anything newer just yet) on 160K disks. They'll say old is better, most likely they're just deaf. >>
This marked the beginning of ignorance in this thread. It's over.
jliechty -- I end up posting about this about every six months. I hope you're in the mood for a read.
Anyone who has seen my previous posts knows I think CD's suck compared to original sounds for two reasons -- 16 bits just aren't enough, and the sampling rate (44 KHz) is way too low.
16 Bit Quantization
The encoding scheme is linear PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) which quantizes levels as a linear function (bits per volt) while your ear perceives sound as a log function (decibels = dB). As the signal level gets lower, you have fewer bits to resolve the details of the sonic image, so the distortion rises as the level goes down. Meanwhile, human beings tend to tolerate more distortion at higher levels and to be more sensitive to distortion at lower levels, because that is what happens with both your own ears and most real world sound generators like instruments, speakers and amps. In other words, when it's full bore blowing your own ears into distortion, it's as clean as it's going to get. In a moderately soft passage, where your ears are more sensitive to distortion, CD's are glad to give you lots more distortion.
It's like dot matrix lithography without enough dots per square inch (the equivalent of frequency response) or a good enough grey scale (the equivalent of dynamic range). A young man can get off single handed if the image is up to Playboy centerfold standards, but IMHO, 16 bits x 44 KHz is the equivalent of crude newsprint.
If the system encoded the signal as bits per dB, the distortion would be constant. However, that is a much more difficult system to build. Furthermore, the current system is already in place, and it would still require more bits to achieve acceptable results.
44 KHz Sampling Rate
44 KHz is an inadequate sample rate. This sampling rate was chosen based on Nyquist's theorem, which states that, to recover a given frequency, you must sample the information slightly more than twice the highest frequency. The problem is that Nyquist wasn't a musician. As you get closer to the high end of the audio spectrum, this theorem is only valid for a single, steady state tone. If you change the conditions to allow for a second tone, or to modulate the amplitude (volume) of the sine wave while it is being sampled, you have created a condition where there are literally an infinite number of possible outputs for a given sample.
As a designer of analog gear, when people ask me how many bits I want, I always answer, All of them! No matter how many they have, I have more.
More Problems
Another problem is, the inherant distortion in CD's is non-harmonic. That means, unlike harmonic distortion (THD), the distortion products are out of tune with the music, which, in turn, means that human beings are far more sensitive to this kind of distortion. That is why I said that, to some extent, the inherent distortion of most analog systems is more tolerable than typical distortion found in PCM systems.
As I said, I used to be a professional musician, too. Music (and any art form, for that matter) transcends the medium. It isn't just counting to four and getting the notes in the right place. The subtle undertextures of a musical performance are part of the "magic" that moves your soul. When I turn off the scopes and meters and just kick back to play or listen, CD's don't cut it. I have CDR's in my machines, but I don't own a CD player.
If you want to hear the difference, get ahold of an old LP in good condition of something that was recorded analog, and a CD re-issue of the same thing. Cue them up so they are in sync, and switch between them. LP's win every time. Good examples would be Eagles, James Taylor, older Steely Dan and anything else with good air space in the recording.
It could be worse. MP3's suck even more than CD's. :Q MP3 is an example of a "lossy" system that discards information some machine "thinks" you can't hear. PKZIP is an example of a lossless system. The data storage footprint is compressed, but you get all the data back when it is decompressed. The information lost in lossy compression is usually subtle stuff, but I have participated in experiments that prove you definitely can hear the difference.
There is hope on the horizon. The highest standard for the new audio only DVD is two channels of 24 bit data @ 192 KHz with only lossless compression. At that sampling rate, it will once again matter if the analog electronics I design can do a good job of reproducing the signal.
Don't worry. It's a multi-format standard that is compatible back to current CD's, so you'll still be able to play them. Of course, once you hear the new stuff on a good system, you may not want to, anymore. We may finally be about to come out of the Audio Dark Ages[/b].
Pepsi90919 -- << what do you think about HDCD Harvey ? >>
I know Keith Johnson, one of the inventors of HDCD. He was also one of the early developers of the laser disk when he worked for Phillips. HDCD's are better than conventional CD's for the same reasons I noted, above. More bits is better. So is a higher sampling rate. We can't change the basic nature of the distortions of linear PCM, but with more bits and a higher sampling rate, we can suppress them below the threshold of human perception. That is the same reason the newest color printers are called photo-realistic. The distortions are there, but unless you look at them under a magnifying glass, they are too small to see with the naked eye.
Anyone who has seen my previous posts knows I think CD's suck compared to original sounds for two reasons -- 16 bits just aren't enough, and the sampling rate (44 KHz) is way too low.
16 Bit Quantization
The encoding scheme is linear PCM (Pulse Code Modulation) which quantizes levels as a linear function (bits per volt) while your ear perceives sound as a log function (decibels = dB). As the signal level gets lower, you have fewer bits to resolve the details of the sonic image, so the distortion rises as the level goes down. Meanwhile, human beings tend to tolerate more distortion at higher levels and to be more sensitive to distortion at lower levels, because that is what happens with both your own ears and most real world sound generators like instruments, speakers and amps. In other words, when it's full bore blowing your own ears into distortion, it's as clean as it's going to get. In a moderately soft passage, where your ears are more sensitive to distortion, CD's are glad to give you lots more distortion.
It's like dot matrix lithography without enough dots per square inch (the equivalent of frequency response) or a good enough grey scale (the equivalent of dynamic range). A young man can get off single handed if the image is up to Playboy centerfold standards
, but IMHO, 16 bits x 44 KHz is the equivalent of crude newsprint.If the system encoded the signal as bits per dB, the distortion would be constant. However, that is a much more difficult system to build. Furthermore, the current system is already in place, and it would still require more bits to achieve acceptable results.
44 KHz Sampling Rate
44 KHz is an inadequate sample rate. This sampling rate was chosen based on Nyquist's theorem, which states that, to recover a given frequency, you must sample the information slightly more than twice the highest frequency. The problem is that Nyquist wasn't a musician. As you get closer to the high end of the audio spectrum, this theorem is only valid for a single, steady state tone. If you change the conditions to allow for a second tone, or to modulate the amplitude (volume) of the sine wave while it is being sampled, you have created a condition where there are literally an infinite number of possible outputs for a given sample.
As a designer of analog gear, when people ask me how many bits I want, I always answer, All of them!
No matter how many they have, I have more. More Problems
Another problem is, the inherant distortion in CD's is non-harmonic. That means, unlike harmonic distortion (THD), the distortion products are out of tune with the music, which, in turn, means that human beings are far more sensitive to this kind of distortion. That is why I said that, to some extent, the inherent distortion of most analog systems is more tolerable than typical distortion found in PCM systems.
As I said, I used to be a professional musician, too. Music (and any art form, for that matter) transcends the medium. It isn't just counting to four and getting the notes in the right place. The subtle undertextures of a musical performance are part of the "magic" that moves your soul. When I turn off the scopes and meters and just kick back to play or listen, CD's don't cut it. I have CDR's in my machines, but I don't own a CD player.
If you want to hear the difference, get ahold of an old LP in good condition of something that was recorded analog, and a CD re-issue of the same thing. Cue them up so they are in sync, and switch between them. LP's win every time. Good examples would be Eagles, James Taylor, older Steely Dan and anything else with good air space in the recording.
It could be worse. MP3's suck even more than CD's. :Q MP3 is an example of a "lossy" system that discards information some machine "thinks" you can't hear. PKZIP is an example of a lossless system. The data storage footprint is compressed, but you get all the data back when it is decompressed. The information lost in lossy compression is usually subtle stuff, but I have participated in experiments that prove you definitely can hear the difference.
There is hope on the horizon. The highest standard for the new audio only DVD is two channels of 24 bit data @ 192 KHz with only lossless compression. At that sampling rate, it will once again matter if the analog electronics I design can do a good job of reproducing the signal.
Don't worry. It's a multi-format standard that is compatible back to current CD's, so you'll still be able to play them. Of course, once you hear the new stuff on a good system, you may not want to, anymore. We may finally be about to come out of the Audio Dark Ages[/b].
Pepsi90919 -- << what do you think about HDCD Harvey ? >>
I know Keith Johnson, one of the inventors of HDCD. He was also one of the early developers of the laser disk when he worked for Phillips. HDCD's are better than conventional CD's for the same reasons I noted, above. More bits is better. So is a higher sampling rate. We can't change the basic nature of the distortions of linear PCM, but with more bits and a higher sampling rate, we can suppress them below the threshold of human perception. That is the same reason the newest color printers are called photo-realistic. The distortions are there, but unless you look at them under a magnifying glass, they are too small to see with the naked eye.
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