Analogue Through Rose Tints

[Silk]

Now that analogue TV is finally coming to an end, I'm surprised to see people commenting on what a great loss it is and how superior it is/was to digital.

Let's look at the evidence:

Anaglogue: 4:3 aspect ratio only; Very annoying and obvious PAL artifacts; Susceptble to noise and ghosting in all but perfect signal areas; inefficient use of bandwidth; etc.

Digital: Widescreen; HD; immunity from ghosting, noise and PAL artifacts; far superior spectral efficiency; etc.

Whilst I can agree that the implimentation can sometimes mean digital falls short in certain areas, only a complete moron could honestly say analogue is superior.

I expect, when all analogue is switched off and along with it the evidence of its "superiority", we'll be bored sensless by those who will still insist it was better in the "good old days".

Do people really think the picture quality of the old BBC1 on analogue was superiour to BBC1HD or, for that mattter, BBC1SD on digital? Should they have gone to Specsavers?

Digital is better; get over it.

[R. Mark Clayton]

Indeed - most of the nostalgic silliness is from ignorant audiophiles, who think that noisy, fluctuating and often worn vinyl played through a noisy poor frequency response valve amplifier is better than a high S/N CD played through a low noise solid state hi-fi amplifier. My amp is so quiet it is easy to forget to switch it off. Even just about the cheapest CD and AV amp set up ($200 perhaps) will hugely outperform the most expensive (and hey they pay thousands of dollars and buy silver cables) vinyl and valve system.

A standard PAL picture was quite good (SECAM was slightly better, NTSC significantly worse) and comparable with a current SD, although with PAL the colours were smeared (so in snooker the red balls looked brown when zoomed out). D-MAC and D2-MAC would produce quite good [analogue] component video into an analogue CRT as would digital receivers. However a normal bandwidth SD picture is better than that (and a more comfortable aspect ration), once you get to full HD the difference is massive.

There has been a huge cost reduction as well - a big (at the time) top end CRT set cost ~£1k ($1k6) 15 years ago.

Currently a good 42" digital flat screen set with nearly double the viewable area costs about half that in absolute terms and a third in real terms.

[tony sayer]

Ah!, What you are missing is the -sound- of Vinyl and for that matter Shellac.

You won't believe The discussion I had the other week with these gents from the shellac collective.

Digital can't get the same sound no matter how hard you try, it just can't be done!.

Apparently its too accurate;!!..

Depends on who's HD of course theres HD and well err, BBC HD;!

And then theres German HD:)...

PAL on a decent equipped decoder was good providing that the signal and TX feed was good. SD is very varied and to some extent depends on what your TV does with it. However the Sony Bravia we have does make a good job of that given to it..

Umm .. it wasn't that long ago that large screen LCD's were that money;!.

[davidrobinson]

I'd forgotten you were near Cambridge. You mean _the_ shellac collective?

I love them, especially... Digital can't get the same sound no matter how hard you try, it just > can't be done!.

Well, that's true. You can make a perfect copy of one playback of a

78rpm disc digitally, but you can't easily make a modern recording sound like it was recorded on a 78. Even if you match the frequency response, noise and clicks (which will get you pretty close), the distortion and non-linear effects in vintage microphones, cutting heads etc just aren't there.

Personally, I think that's an _advantage_ of digital, but I know several shellac heads who can't listen to music that was recorded in the last 50 years, never mind the last 20. "Too cold and clinical" they say. Shows how much humans can train themselves into believing specific things are "normal". Shows how adaptable our senses are.

Cheers, David.

[tony sayer]

Give them their due thy do take the 78 medium very seriously, right EQ and stylus and cartridge etc etc..

It was agreed that to get the authentic sound of shellac you needed to have a high precision microphone on axis to the -speaker-* in the open air;!...

• Considered all part of the chain;!

[Graham.]

Like electric guitar amps.

Is that still modern recording practice? I mean is it unacceptable to wire a guitar pickup directly into a mixer?

[tony sayer]

Don't know but what we do know is a sad event;-(..

The passing of a legend;!...