Cool, we understand each other. :-)
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9 years ago
Memory
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9 years ago
Far better test. Although it's getting more difficult to find a well recorded one.
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9 years ago
Indeed it was. Any relation?
Chris
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9 years ago
[snip]
formatting link
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9 years ago
Yes. If you look at my website you can find examples taken from some audio CDs.
More complex than that as we're not talking about a test sinewave but music with complicated varying spectra.
It arises for two main reasons, each founded on the failings of those producing the CD from the master recording.
Firstly, because many pop/rock CDs have been multiband level compressed up to the max sample values. Alas, this means that players or DACs then have to generate intersample peaks *above* 0dBFS. which some don't do very well.
Secondly because at times they also do indeed let the signals clip. On some CDs you can find bursts of max-level samples due to this. Again. some examples on my website.
I've also found examples where the CD sample stats - and the sound - indicate that the CD was at some point HDCD processed, but the data has no HDCD tags. Either as an 'effect' or because someone else later down the line tweaked the data *again* and in the process scrambled the tags.
Yes, they do that as well.
They may well compress for vinyl as well. But in that case it doesn't lead to the hard clipping you can get with LPCM due to reaching the max sample values. Instead it becomes a challenge for the cutter and the replay stylus/cartridge. So tends to mean high distortion on peaks rather than their being cut flat.
I agree that the irony is that CD has a dynamic range of, say, 90dB, yet the makers of pop/rock discs often crush the range down to about 3 - 5 dB, yet *still* decide to crush this flat against clipping. The reason is simply an ingrained "LOUDER SELLS MORE" mindset. Various 'gurus' who made theirselves an income as being 'magicians' who could make the CD sound LOUDER by allowing the red lights to come on all the time. Search for 'loudness war' on the web....
Fortunately for me, much of classical and jazz has avoided this madness. One reason why classical and jaz fans have been better served in quality terms by CD than pop/rock fans.
Jim
Jim
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9 years ago
Alas, earlier CDs tended to be made using poorer ADCs. But yes, crazy as it may seem, some early CD releases sound can better than later ones of the same source material. This even shows up on Hendrix releases!
In parallel with your comments on braodcasting practice the best CD versions I've found for some Hendrix is a box set made in the USA for FM stations to transmit. Comes with its own announcements and documentary commentary in between the songs. That's a pest. But the actual songs are far less compressed, and not clipped at all, compared with most of the later CD re-releases!
No doubt the makers assumed the FM stations would apply their own optimod, so didn't add it.
Crazy, isn't it! To have CDs where *more* compression and clipping is added to even Jimi Hendrix!
Jim
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9 years ago
Niece - Uncle
Jim
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9 years ago
I was interested in following some work in psychoacoustics, and in fairness did actually do a course in psychology a couple of years back. None the wiser, though ;-) It's too much for me to take on, what with the day job and all.
All I would say is that I wouldn't be in the least surprised if there was something within digital recording that, as it were, left something out that's been missed. But then I wouldn't be surprised if a monolith was found on the moon ;-)
I've heard some big and not so big JBL stacks at gigs - well impressed.
Impressive. Do you happen to know if any of the ideas found their way into domestic hifi?
Well, if there's a market for it :-) I would be interested in listening to/playing with domestic hifi variants.
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9 years ago
What a small world it is.
I have lost count of the number of times I have done a dance she wrote - Joe Taylor's Hornpipe.
To remain vaguely on-topic, Ashley never seemed to have his singers very forward in the mix, yet whenever he was calling for dances, you could hear every word, so it wasn't really a limitation of the kit.
Chris
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9 years ago
Very informative response: thank you.
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9 years ago
That chimes with a saying I often used to use 30 years ago whenever someone had the temerity to ask why I ever bothered with an IBM PC clone. It went like this:
"If I wanted to _pay_ for my software, I wouldn't have a bought a PC now, would I?".
I suppose I could have just as easily rephrased that sentiment as:
"If God had meant us to pay for our software, he wouldn't have given us the IBM PC." :-)
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9 years ago
you really wouldn't want them there..
Guitar amp = the greatest distance from the original sound...
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9 years ago
Actually given the disc size and laser frequency it's pretty well limited to what they had. That's why no-one has really squeezed more than 80 minutes in - the squashed tracks give errors.
It's carefully designed so that the first diffraction fringe of the laser falls in the gap between the adjacent track and the one after.
Andy
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9 years ago
Which is the sound that the "closest approach" tries to keep that way:)...
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9 years ago
Once you get into amplified instruments, it makes a total mockery of 'hi fi'
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9 years ago
In article , Dave Plowman (News) scribeth thus
Was setting up the new studio for Cambridge 105 the other week and we had someone in the studio next door chatting away for testing the studio input to the main desk, sounded that good as if he was in the same room.
One person answered him, thought he -was- in the room;!...
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9 years ago
Processing or multiband compression is a necessary evil for a lot of broadcast radio seeing the very few for most all of the working day will be far from decent listening environments and thats the way that is..
However that notion has now filtered thru to record producers who think the radio sound is how it ought be. I doubt that many of them would know thats done with a specialised broadcast processor to make it sound the way it is....
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9 years ago
I'd ask then why they chose that size? No reason not to make it bigger if a longer time was needed/possible. Remember it was a completely fresh concept.
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9 years ago
In message , NY writes
Ouch. Sadly, I think most of us would have lost our favourite toys or hobbies in similar circumstances. It was normal for anything we were deemed to have grown out of to go to younger children of friends or relatives. Failing that, there were always jumble sales for some good cause. Whatever happened to my Dinky Toys?
One result, though. A year or two ago, I opened a parcel from my brother, only to find lots of plastic soldiers he had found in our Mum's loft; not the little Airfix ones, but larger by Britains, Timpo etc. Some were free with Kellog's Cornflakes. Some I had been given by Father Christmas at Gamages, the same year my Dad had made me a wooden fort for Christmas. Probably 1956 or 57.
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9 years ago
It meant the drive was the same size as the then-standard half-height 5
1/4 inch hard discs and floppies.I know of no other reason for the disc size.Incidentally one of the reasons why 5 1/4 floppies held as much as 8 inch was that one limit is the way the disc changes size with humidity!
Andy