Memory

[Ian Jackson]

Gramdeck. I once had one. The tape speed was 7ips (at 78rpm). It used a permanent magnet erase. The quality was actually pretty good.

et al.

[Andrew Gabriel]

I bought my first cassette recorder from Shoppertunities! ISTR the make was Monotone ;-)

[Bill Wright]

Oh I remember that. Mine was far superior to that though.

Bill

[John Williamson]

Do the same experiment that I did with some colleagues.

Record a band they know well. (I used a band from Stoke called Halcyon Dayz, most of whose members worked at the same place we did.)

Mix the close mic'd multitrack recording to your taste.

Play back the stereo mix at 16 bit, 44.1kHz sample rate.

Repeat using a 320kHz bitrate mo3 file using the same playback system.

Repeat using "FM radio" quality settings of 128kHz bitrate.

Almost anyone will note a deterioration in sound quality the further down the chain you go.

Repeat using a decent choir and a crossed cardioid mic setup. Play to the choirmaster.

Find exactly the same results.

I use a lot of mp3 files to play background music while I'm driving, as I can't justify the storage cost for CD quality .wav files with many horsepower of diesel engine drowning out the distortion and noise floor.

[tony sayer]

Yes, remember that thing. Made by a firm somewhere in the midlands Gramdeck I think it was called, absolute abortion it was too!...

[tony sayer]

In article , R. Mark Clayton scribeth thus

Quite suitable for personal audio players and the like but needs to be getting on for 320 K/bits for good audio;)..

Yes don't we just DABbing well know it;!..

[Vir Campestris]

That I can understand. Let's assume you have crap speakers! (I have a decent set of headphones - because I used to work on audio, and couldn't hear the defects. They let me keep them when I left)

What I can't understand is them thinking a download is better.

Andy

[John Williamson]

128k is about equivalent to compact cassette, IME.

*Samples* per second, not bits per second. 44k *bits* per second is low fidelity mp3 or any other lossy compression well down into distorted telephone quality speech territory. 44k *samples* per second at 16 bits per sample is CD quality.

Shouldn't have let the accountants determine the quality.

[John Williamson]

It's what teemagers are used to. They also seem to like listening on the squeaker built in to their phone, or share the audio on earbuds, getting a channel each.

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

But that's just one channel. For stereo you have:

44.1k x 16 bits per sample * 2 channels = 1411200 bits per second... ie about 1.34 Mbps

[gremlin_95]

I guess I'm easily pleased. I used to commute by bus which took up around 3 hours of my day. I was very content with my Sennheiser HD205s and my iPod, I also use Sennheiser headphones when I am working at home but I play the music from my laptop. I'm 19 ;)

[Andrew Gabriel]

I can listen to music on almost anything. Once I've heard it (or played it) and know it, when I'm listening it's just gently jogging my brain to replay the high quality version it stored in the learning process.

One thing I do recall from the days of LP's - you would occasionally get a scratch or just a pip on a track. When I listened to another recording or even a real concert, it always came as a surprise when that scratch or pip I was anticipating was missing!

Similarly on tapes, there were a few recordings I had where the tape was a few bars short of the end of the piece and I couldn't be bothered to rerecord or didn't have a spare tape. I got used to that piece of music finishing mid-note, and again it was a surprise to listen on the radio and for it not to stop where it usually did!

[John Rumm]

I find it really depends on the bit rate of the MP3 and the quality of the encoder. 128kbps MP3s clearly sound inferior to CDs to me. 360kpbs however is very much closer.

(I rip all my discs to flac just to be on the safe side ;-)

16 bits each and twice for stereo - so a CD is about 1.3Mbps uncompressed.

[John Rumm]

Modern PC sound systems are pretty decent in general these days - give then decent material to play, and stick it through a decent amp and speakers and the results are on par with a good many CD players IME. (the noise floor can be a bit higher on some, depending on the quality of the sound card output stage)

My workshop audio is via a PC as a source and its more than adequate (although note its competing with dust extraction and machine tools some of the time!)

[John Rumm]

Rather like when you get used to album tracks in a particular order, and then someone plays the "greatest hits" version and it completely throws your anticipation at the end of each track ;-)

[Mike Barnes]

I've ripped all my CDs to lossless as well (WMA as it happens), because I'm not in the habit of throwing potentially useful information away.

[RJH]

On 28/04/2014 14:19, The Natural Philosopher wrote: snip

Pre-digital (1980ish?) audio recordings were all 'awful'?

Can't say I agree.

[Andy Burns]

Amazed that chap hasn't burned his attic down yet!

[charles]

Cassette tape, yes, properly maintained 15ips or even 30ips - no.

Where do you think the masters for CDs came from?

[tony sayer]

Do you know some of the worst audio quality seems to be acceptable to some classical musicians I've met with over time;!(..

Having said that some years ago I used just that simple crossed mic setup and sometimes an ORTF pair to record same and the results were superb:)..

Thats why DAB was invented then;!..