Memory

[Steve Thackery]

I agree. Unless Rob can hear above 20kHz, then CD doesn't take anything out. Vinyl takes out the very low frequencies and adds noise plus distortion.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Oh SURE

YOU try plating an electric guitar through a hifi amp and speakers.

thin lifeless and uninspiring.

NOW add a bit of distortion a weird frequency response and some cardboard speaker cones in a wooden box and you have what an acoustic guitar has naturally. LOTS of resonance and distortions and all sorts of stuff.

No there doesn't.

And add 'prejudice' to that list.

[Tim Streater]

Yerss, something not dissimilar happened to me. I left the Meccano in my bro's loft. When his wife ran away and his house got awarded to her, by that Butler-Sloss woman (cursed be her name forever), some years later when she was selling the place she called me and asked whether there was anything I needed out of the loft. Sadly I'd forgotten all about it by then, and she ended up giving it all to Oxfam. Oxfam, FFS!

[Tim Streater]

How does it compare to FM?

[Steve Thackery]

Hang on! That is two quite separate things. More lifelike (i.e. more like the original live sound signal)? No, of course not, how could it? Preferable? Why yes, of course, if you like listening to distortion, wonky gain curves and noise. And I'm not being sarcy: people (including me) often seem to prefer "sweet" treble and "warm" bass, and even-harmonic distortion can be pleasing, too.

You aren't serious, are you? Firstly, they are just as human as you and me, and therefore may prefer the sound of analogue-all-the-way, regardless of it being less accurate, more noisy and more distorted than CD. Secondly, like all humans, they are prone to irrational thinking (that's why so many arty types buy Apple products), so they will readily believe the nonsense claims that analogue-all-the-way is somehow "better".

The fact that this "better" can never be measured or confirmed in any audio laboratory makes them feel even more smug and special, because they then believe they can perceive something too subtle for any scientific instrumentation.

So no, there doesn't have to be a reason. At least, not a good reason. :-)

[The Natural Philosopher]

For once I can agree with you.

heavy 2nd harmonic distortion can make an instrument like a an electric guitar sound like a reed instrument.

string instruments are nearly all odd harmonics, do to the symmetrical nature of strings. reeds and brass are asymmetrical and have lots of even harmonics. I think that the human voice does too. flutes and recorders and (some voices of) organs are more more odd harmonic and very low. at that. A flute can look pretty much like a sine wave if played steadily.

intermodulation between harmonically related notes can create notes that were never there, too.

Which the heavy metal boys use to create a 'full orchestra out of 'power chords'

Exactly., Again the test for me was when I could no longer hear the hifi, only the recording.

I am listening to radio 2 on my computer speakers. Its vile. Everything has a thick cardboardy sound and a pronounced bass resonance about

200hz. That's the speakers of course.

But if you are used to it anything else sounds 'wrong'

[Steve Thackery]

Do you mean actual wave clipping, with the subsequent array of odd harmonics? If so, I can't say I've heard that on any of my CDs. It seems hard to believe they'd do it - it's such a trivial thing to identify any potential clipping before generating the digital audio stream for the CD that it must surely be utterly routine, or even automated, to avoid it.

If you mean over-compressed so the dynamic range is limited, I can accept what you mean. Pop/rock often seems to have virtually the same volume level for the "quiet" and "loud" bits regardless.

I think that is very well put. To be honest, though, I would have thought they'd be more likely to compress the dynamic range on vinyl than on CD, because vinyl has such a limited dynamic range and SNR.

[Jim Lesurf]

Its certainly possible that an LP and a CD of the 'same recording' will sound different. However the problem is that there are many ways this can happen that *don't* actually need to arise for any 'inherent' reason. But are differences caused by those producing the LPs and CDs from the master recording.

Alas, musicians aren't always a good judge of this. For example, some violinists who tend to keep asking for their solo to be louder or more bright relative to the orchestra. The reason being that when working they have to have the violin almost against their ear. And are used to hearing all the music at higher levels than is normal with domestic replay. if you've sat in an orchestra as it plays, you'll know what I mean. Its not a good place to judge what the audience are hearing unless you know the hall very well. Which is even harder when the sound in a normal domestic room is the end-point.

And wrt 'engineers' I think the reality is that most pro audio engineers are quite happy with digital in my experience. Don't judge the bulk of, say, AES members by what appears in consumer audio mags.

That said, I guess the actors, etc, in 'Jamaca Inn' also thought the'd got the sound right... :-)

Jim

[dennis]

I rip them to wma lossless. My daughter now does the same having bought a player that plays them. MP3 is bad enough when on TV programs, its useless on music.

[Jeremy Nicoll - news posts]

Assuming there's nothing wrong with the ADC processing used to create the CD, or the DAC for the listener.

[tony sayer]

In article , NY scribeth thus

Well over time I've had the change to wander from a radio studio to the control room (BBC Maida Vale studios) and its quite amazing sometimes how good the reproduced sound could be, but I'd suspect given a decent recorder system they'd not be a lot of deterioration on that.

However once it gets out it may well have the living daylights thrashed out of it by too much adverse audio processing and the unspeakable bit rates of UK crap DAB!...

[RJH]

Something wrong in the architecture, perhaps. Or insufficient resolution.

But I'm also thinking there could be methodological issues with ADA conversion.

[RJH]

I hear what you say :-)

I'd just add/finish by saying that I wouldn't say 'better'. Just for me, preferable in some circumstances.

[Dave Plowman (News)]

You'd have thought so, wouldn't you?

I remember when cassettes were used for commercial pop demos. Usually peaked to maximum and then some - I suppose in the hope someone might think it sounded 'better' on a ghetto blaster or car system.

Then along came DAT. Exactly the same over-mods. On a system which had inaudible noise and a dynamic range many times that of cassette.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Fair point but ADCs are pretty well understood and you only need ONE and DACS - well the oversampling lets play sillybuggers with statistics and add random jitter have got them as good as it gets.

have a look and weep..if you used to design audio.

THD+noise is >90db and is still >30dB at -60dB signal

At 60dB down on a vinyl pickup you'd be lucky to have 10dB margin on the noise.

And 60dB is 0.1% give or take.

And this is a cheap 3 quid chip you can stick in any CD player.

I've got a cartridge and deck that cost over £500 here that cant begin to match what a £30 CD player can do..

One day I'll get all my old albums into .wav or FLAC and sell it..

[The Natural Philosopher]

Think away, but someone has always been there before you.

IN the end that's why I got out of audio design,. It had, by and large, all been done.

When I stared, the norm was 50-15khz, 1% distortion 50dB S/N and hot valves hum and microphony. FM lucky to work at 1mV (mono).

When I left we were pushing 0-100Khz, at 0.001% distortion and 90dB SNR with CDS, and FM worked OK down to a microvolt. And had decent stereo. Thats the one bit I could have seen get better.

Short of going into chip designs there was nothing left to do - except repackage someone else's chips and write bullshit.

Loudspeakers were and are as dire as they ever were..heard em all,. Quad ELS, electrovoice and tannoy, JBL.. BIG JBL rigs remain my favourite for PA/disco work. But again, repackage em. No design left.

I probably did the definitive work on making transistor guitar amps sound like valve amps. Everybody copied it, its now standard stuff. NO design left to do there either.

So I changed careers to software.

And started listening to music again, instead of hifi and PA equipment..

Some of my better ideas are in today's chips and amps, some are not.

But those were adaptations in many ways of stuff I ripped off from other places. in the end there are only so many ways to solder transistors together to make amps.

Content now that practically anything I buy is better than I could now design, and its all in a chip...

Half fancied doing a guitar amp in software - A to D, a processor and RAM D to A and a bog standard 'fake valve' output..Vox are there already..

[Bill Wright]

Vanity and fashion are two of the main drivers of human behaviour. Their presence is enough to explain almost any bizarre behaviour.

Bill

[tony sayer]

For Distortion read coloration;!...

[tony sayer]

Thats a problem with modern music or recordings . Try some going back a few years and the dynamic range is better. All before using broadcast type processors came to be fashionable in production studios;(...

Yep..

Well it can do more than say 3-5 dB but thats lost on the producers;! ...

[tony sayer]

Natural sounding male voice is an excellent test as well....