Analog vs. digital segment on PBS

Edo,

Thanks I missed it by ten minutes on TV last night. So I am glad you posted that link.

This was very well done.

=> Analog and Digital can both sound excellent!!!

In this case it seems they were indistinguishable in a short listening test...although they used headphones which increases the chance of hearing a difference)

The Wired Science findings only confirm what we know already (but some people still pretend that Analog is somehow inherently superior - it certainly has nostalgic appeal and may reflect most accurately the way historical music actually sounded when it was first issued).

In fact the main advantages of each format are well presented in the discussion. Glad to see they did not attack either format, as both have their merits.

No one mentions that Pro Tools (the digital company) set up the test for PBS.

Interesting. Perhaps the whole thing was faked and the band who claimed they could not tell were all paid to do so (or more likely the music was all from the good sounding analog).

PBS relies very heavily on sponsorship....so you never know!

Sure, digital can sound great at "master" level, I've been fortunate enough to hear direct digital masters against the same release on CD.

Another good point. CD's are often a lot worse than studio masters due to the mastering process where they are compressed horribly to sound "hot" or "loud" (no dynamics left after this process and very prevalent with pop music).

Eldatford,

Actually the mastering engineer will compress (squash) the hell out of music first and then boost the average signal to usually within as little as 3 db of the maximum that a CD can digitally represent with 16 bits. This means the CD will sound loud as the dynamic range is now squashed to be contained within the top 10 db or less of the entire CD dynamic range format....i.e. the 96 db overall dynamic range is completely wasted at least 10 bits or more are all the same 1's practically throughout the entire CD!

This is great for a noisy car environment but in a quiet environment with a good system the music just sounds like what it is...squashed crap like you stepped in something...only good thing is it doesn't smell!!!

Eldartford,

If you are listening to classical then it sounds like they are simply making the music fit on the CD as loud as possible without clipping the signal. The peak being close to the max 16 bits. That is normal procedure. There is nothing wrong with that.