Ok how much data is stored on 30 inches of 1/4" tape in ONE SECOND? In the digital domain? I’m waiting?
Tap Tap Tap.. That is my foot tapping... Arms are crossed. Tooth pick is flying all over. First to the left and then to the right.. Now I’m pointing with my tooth pick.. that’s a bad sign... :-)
Come on you smart guys...HOW MUCH... What if the tape was 1/2" wide or 1" or 2"... No there is a LOT more information there than you think...
Think BIGGER.... Think Analog!! MUCH BIGGER...
So there... I’m right your all wrong.... Besides this is no fun...
One is better...NO its not Vinyl...No it’s not digital....
Geez.. rookies...it’s IT’S Reel to Reel... NO SHI@ rookies...
LOL oh LOL, I’ll drink another.... Pass this please... I can brag on too.... Geez, makes my head hurt.
WE are listing to reel to reel. YES... much better than BOTH...
Timbre that! Are you guys musicians by chance? Aught to be, to hear you talk... As I play my violin, mouth harp, snap symbol and BASS at the same time playing "Stairway to Heaven"
BTW can’t read a note.. I hear it, I can hum it, I can play it... BRAG BRAG BRAG... sure get old...
Happy new years... |
Digital recording and playback systems create a more accurate analog waveform at playback than analog recording and playback systems. On paper yes theoretically...By Fourier transform...But the real event for the ears take place in a concrete recording room and after that in a concrete specific listening room... These 2 concrete rooms are different and only the human ears can decide in which format with many choices of embeddings controls in each room he will prefer for his recognition of the timbre event...The theory of signals cannot decide if my electronics components and their embeddings are right or wrong to recreate the experience of timbre perception...It is also the ears who chose where to put the mic... Then it is of no avail to condemn all analog systems versus digital system... Too many variables to condemn all people sticking to their analog system.... By the way i concede that your post was not adressed to me....i take it too personally... 😊😁😊 |
If you didn't write the quote, why do you assume it is about you?
And you are still assigning special properties to timbre within the framework of music playback and this "analog only" or "digital only" statement makes no sense. Digital recording and playback systems create a more accurate analog waveform at playback than analog recording and playback systems.
|
That you think digital discards things, while analog recordings do not just shows more lack of understanding. Attacking me for holes in your knowledge is not a good look. I seem to know exactly what timbre is, I just don’t feel a need to attach special qualities to it beyond what it is. You caricature your opponent before attacking their so called argument after putting it in their mouth...(oups I never said that only digital discard things, analog too discard things, or better said each has his limitations for the perception of timbre.... The ears/brain is not an analog only or digital only device... And what a ridiculous thing to say that you know what timbre is but dont attach to it special qualities among other sound characteristics... This only disqualify your point.... Timbre is the basic phenomena in acoustic....Not only that the timbre experience is the means by which musician chose their instrument, or their audio system listening to them ....Not by the act of faith in Nyquist theorem.... My point is only that timbre recognition is perhaps not perfect for many analog and many digital system...There is no Sirius ideal perspective to judge timbre perception...Except real listening in specific and varied conditions...Imposing digital absolutely make no sense...Because timbre recognition before being a digital or analog translation in a new, different room from the recorded event is always a brain/ears phenomenon and not an equation in theory of signals transformation .... Sorry.... |
Timbre perception implied "timing" of bundle of micro events, that are simultaneous and successive at the same time or synchronized in a 4 dimension of a concrete acoustical-neurological space and it is a phenomena perceived and interpreted only for human ears... Something is lost then in the reductive 2 dimensions of signals theory...Timbre is not first an information set, it is first a dynamical event....
This is why many human ears vouch for analog... Their timbre learning recognition process is their witness...
Myself i own digital and in the beginning was very distress by his limitations... But for the last 2 years my embeddings controls devices and my choice of dac( Nos +minimalistic design ) make me smile again...
I dont pretend that my system now is better than any turntables but on par with many of them.... The parameters in plays are way too complex to speaking in the absolute sprouting some dogma...
|
It appears simple if you have a simplistic understanding of how things work. There is nothing "infinite" about analog recordings. Not even remotely. That you assign an infinite to them shows lack of understanding. That you think digital discards things, while analog recordings do not just shows more lack of understanding. Attacking me for holes in your knowledge is not a good look. I seem to know exactly what timbre is, I just don't feel a need to attach special qualities to it beyond what it is. Analog instruments don't sample...analog/infinite - very simple concept;
granted within the bounds of manufacturing and human hearing but
nothing is "discarded" or "sampled' like in digital. |
Without noise reduction best you will ever get out of tape is about 90db, with 80db more realistic. I will give you 90 for interests sake. Bandwidth at full SNR is likely about 20KHz, but I will give you 30KHz. Can't use noise reduction or any other emphasis-de-emphasis for this calc. Bits in stereo max about 1.25 megabits/second equivalent data. I do agree, there appear to be two races going on. One of us though is moving forward, and one just appears to be going in circles. This little diddy pretty much illustrates that: Seven: Nyquist theorem is about coding and decoding signals and also the
implicit limitations and not only the power to do so.... This theorem
has nothing to do directly with TIMBRE, which is the cornerstone of
musical perception but more than that the cornerstone for evaluation of
audio system in their acoustical controlled or uncontrolled
embeddings... At some point perhaps the links will be made that all audio is stored as simple 2 dimensional signals, time and value, whether done in the analog domain or digital domain, and that that eventually gets out to the speakers, and then your ear perceives a complex set of frequencies and intermixed timings as something described as timbre (but is still just a set of frequencies and timing), and hence how accurately it is possible to recreate the original "timbre" of the instrument comes down to how accurately one can recreate those frequencies and timings. One can reproduce them very accurately. One cannot. One can do everything the other one can do. The other cannot. This has nothing to do with what you like better, it is just a simple factual discussion. Want to hear exactly what the microphone picked up, use digital. Want to hear a euphonic presentation that you (and others) may or may not prefer? Use analog. Want the option? Use digital and explore the plug-ins available to add colorations and distortions and noise. Some people want the world to be full of magic. Others simple roll up their sleeves and get things done. |
@audio2design doesn't believe in timbre nor the difference between analog/infinity vs discrete/digital! Analog instruments don't sample...analog/infinite - very simple concept; granted within the bounds of manufacturing and human hearing but nothing is "discarded" or "sampled' like in digital.
I wish my more expensive digital system could sound like the less expensive vinyl setup, even using regular pressings, but it just doesn't - while mind you my DAC is one of the 10 best on the planet... I guess you can't contribute anything to explain this from your digital biased perspective so don't really care what you have to say anymore. In the face of numerous A vs D comparisons, I can't get the digital to compete...at twice the cost; maybe with DSD512... These are my explanations to understand why. |
I have a question, on a 1/4" tape moving at 15 or 30 inches per SECOND, how much information is stored? If we were to translate ALL the noise on the tape, how many GIGs, (more like TERABYTES) do you think it would digitally be converted to? in ONE SECOND? I can answer part of this... As much as the software was programmed to look for, SO there is a programming issue too... Is it a problem? YES....
I've had to patch a LOT of peoples messed up programming... These guys/girls were suppose to be the BEST...
You have to have an understanding of music, it is NOT.. 0 and 1s. or on and offs... IT'S MUSIC....
IS the guy/gal writing the code, JO SMO at the local University of WHATEVER? or Working with Carlos Santana to understand, HOW to write the code because he/she is a musician at HEART, but writes code for a living.... BIG difference... Just like below...
Don’t let a language barrier, be the undoing of understanding..
I see EXACTLY that, here... I understand both positions, yet one cannot understand the other... Simple, need to work in the real world where the language of RESPECT is always universal... I’ve worked on job sites with 5 different languages, and 10 different dialects, were spoken. NEVER any misunderstandings.. EVER... the problem here, we can’t use hand signals...
Gentleman RESTART your engines... Your talking about two different things...
Regards... |
At the end of the day, you can record an album on digital, and play it back on digital (carefully choosing the equipment), and not be able to tell the two apart. That should tell you that vinyl is nothing but a bunch of colorations and distortions that can be replicated in digital. I never contested that digital can sound on par with vinyl and even better in SOME case...Assimilating my posts to those who said otherwise is bad faith... Your post illustrate your total contempt for anyone who express an other position than your false alternative: analog OR digital...Evil or good... Simplistic indeed... I am not so simple mind sorry. there is other position illustrated by my explanations in my post : Analog and digital are DIFFERENT way for me to access timbre... I dont know which one, analog or digital, is the better in the absolute because perception of timbre naturalness is an acoustical concrete event implying room acoustic and ears/ brain...I myself vouch for digital by the way and all along my posts ... Then you interpret falsely my arguments distorting them because i refuse your childish fixation of an absolute alternative...I refuse to condemn turntable people accusing them of a collective illusion...It is not so simple.... You said that "vinyl is nothing except a bunch of colorations and distortions that can be replicated in digital" then if you were less preoccupied by your ego you would have understood that these colorations pertain to the OBJECTIVE definition of TIMBRE and to his SUBJECTIVE evaluation by the ears/brain...This is acoustical basic science and my thesis all along against your war against turntables and with your fake alternative pretending to be science.... Digital can mimic analog yes, but it does not means that one is superior to the other, in ALL embeddings room/house, with ANY electronic components... There is too much variable to cut this problem once and for all except like Alexander the Gordian Knot... timbre perception is the crux of the matter and that means EARS differences between people...That means also that some powerful embeddings controls in the 3 audio dimension, mechanical,electrical, and acoustical can decrease or increase for the better or the worst the right perception of timbre.... Reading my posts adequately then you would have understood that the difference between you and me is this fundamental fact of acoustic science: timbre is a phenomena captured and evaluated by the ears only.... the Nyquist theorem is only there to throw off your show of dust to dismiss anything out of the alternative you force people in : Analog OR digital... Reality is more complex than your simple mind alternative between good and evil.... Sorry... And by the way constantly menacing to end the conversation because your opponent is an alleged " idiot" is not an argument except if you take it seriously and mute yourself....It is a sure sign of your own insecurities like all people throw menaces in between or in place of arguments... I am here to discuss with arguments not with a repeated slogan like: colored tone of analog system are a bunch of distortions and vinyl fads are ignorant...Or Nyquist theorem said so.... Timbre perception is more fundamental in acoustic than any theorem of the theory of signals, the reason is simple, it is the basic problem that is linked not only to acoustic in general but through liguistic to the survival and evolution of the human species... The learning process by which we perceive timbre speech make human master of the earth... When someone knows what is timbre perception in music and acoustic then he knows that only human ears can decide and judge this perception...Modelling the descriptors of timbre perception with their neurological and acoustical correlates dynamics and their working in vector spaces and phase space goes mathematically way beyond your theorem.... Audio is the art to create AND perceive sound, analog AND digital here has their own reasons, their own way, and people with turntables are not all idiots unable to understand your engineering use of Fourier series with Nyquist theorem... But being myself an "idiot", if you are right, you are not supposed to read my post anymore now, then i will not answer to ghost chanting mantras anymore myself.... Happy new year.... |
Thanks mahgister and audio2design I felt like saying "Start you engines", lets get ready to race... BUT there were two different races going on at the same time... One going Clockwise around the track, the other going Counter Clockwise. :-) Great, post. My (late) stocking stuffer... :-) Was there a winner? LOL, I’m an "on the fence guy" for most of the this stuff... BUT no name callin’ goes a long ways... You guys will turn me into a gentleman yet. Keep trying... I’ll keep reading. I'm playin' "Girls just want to have fun", I don't know about "GIRLS", but I DO.. LOL HAPPY NEW YEAR... Regards |
@mijostyn, I think this sums up well what you said: https://i.redd.it/vbc5fvgr04901.pngmijostyn3,305 posts12-31-2020 7:20amaudio2design, it is like running into a brick wall. I suspect that most of these people have very little experience with digital equipment and obviously have no idea how powerful it is. They will keep coming up with baseless explanations for digital sounding awful or why vinyl "sounds better." I suspect most of their opinions are based on the very early CD players that had bad filters and did sound pretty bad. I do not even read mahgister’s posts any more. They make me dizzy. |
bukanona, not sure if it a second language thing, but honestly not sure the point you are trying to make. It is more than sampling and resolution, timing is also about jitter and channel to channel matching. Digital maintains far better timing accuracy than any analog system. W.R.T. methodology, can you explicitly say WHY not being able to tell a direct vinyl playback from a digitally captured and recreated one is a wrong methodology? bukanona133 posts12-31-2020 12:51pmTiming
matters, if you will calculate it in ms and will found in anatomy
manual how ears are made you can go to sampling and resolution
calculation and compare it with Nyquist figures - it's physics and waves
+ math -- no engineering at all.
And to say that you can't
decide which is which in blind test are due to wrong methodology. I am
listening to music for pleasure and it's long term discrimination. If
you are getting tired from source you are changing it. |
In these two posts you illustrated you don't understand signal processing, digital audio, spectrum, etc. Not much point in continuing. At the end of the day, you can record an album on digital, and play it back on digital (carefully choosing the equipment), and not be able to tell the two apart. That should tell you that vinyl is nothing but a bunch of colorations and distortions that can be replicated in digital. It should tell you that. If it tells you something else ..... Seven: Nyquist theorem is about coding and decoding signals and also the
implicit limitations and not only the power to do so.... This theorem
has nothing to do directly with TIMBRE, which is the cornerstone of
musical perception but more than that the cornerstone for evaluation of
audio system in their acoustical controlled or uncontrolled
embeddings...
My
main point in one word is ANY evaluation of analog versus digital
cannot be based on Nyquist theorem only, except for those who ignore
acoustic and the fundamental PERCEIVED timbre phenomena and the powerful
transformation of an audio system with the rightful embeddings
controls...(This last point is my own experience for 2 years
experiments) |
Timing matters, if you will calculate it in ms and will found in anatomy manual how ears are made you can go to sampling and resolution calculation and compare it with Nyquist figures - it’s physics and waves + math -- no engineering at all. Exactly one part of my argument....Timbre is a complex bundles of "timing" events in a specific room discriminated by a learning process in the ears/brain....This applied to music, acoustic, and linguistic.... Only real listenings experiments with ears can decide and evaluate timbre experience....Somebody who said he dont need his own ears but Nyquist Theorem to judge timbre experience walk next to his shoes.... Or sell dac...😊 But i already own a good one myself at low cost.....😎 Thanks for your 2 wise posts... Happy new Year... «I use maths like a clever dog playing tricks but you know i never understand them at the end, reflex conditioning is not piano playing»- Harpo Marx «You need to add real phenomena to numbers, not numbers to numbers brother»-Groucho Marx |
Timing matters, if you will calculate it in ms and will found in anatomy manual how ears are made you can go to sampling and resolution calculation and compare it with Nyquist figures - it's physics and waves + math -- no engineering at all.
And to say that you can't decide which is which in blind test are due to wrong methodology. I am listening to music for pleasure and it's long term discrimination. If you are getting tired from source you are changing it. |
audio2design, it is like running into a brick wall. I suspect that most of these people have very little experience with digital equipment and obviously have no idea how powerful it is. They will keep coming up with baseless explanations for digital sounding awful or why vinyl "sounds better." I suspect most of their opinions are based on the very early CD players that had bad filters and did sound pretty bad. First: i own many dacs, they were not so good at first but at the end i stumble on a very good one.... I dont regret turntables one second for too many reasons anyone can guess, sound quality included... Second: All these remarks in your post about turntable afficionados with a negative tone about me at the end of this rant, including indiscrimately all analog people in one bag with me is only that: what someone else call "Gibberish"...I never said that turntable are superior to dac.... I use only dac myself.... Third: Insulting people dont count for an argument.... if you would have read my posts about what is TIMBRE, a bundle of real " timing" events in room acoustic coupled to human ears, you would know that my critics of those who put analog on the side of the road, with a contempt for those "ignorant people" who stick to it, was based not on comparison analog/versus digital only, but on the difficulty to seize the complex event of timbre with ANY audio system analog or digital...And you would know that audiodesign call the colored tone dynamic, namely timbre, an only subjective phenomena that is secondary... Which is totally false because timbre is like a rainbow phenomena, at the interface of objective and subjective events..... Audiodesign affirmed digital coding being primary and supreme in audio and call ALL analog people ignorant crowds for their ears evaluation... Fourth: you will know that myself i affirm that indeed digital is different than analog but able to emulate it, ESPECIALLY if the dac chosen is good BUT mainly rightfully embedded mechanically, electrically and acoustically with the audio system itself....And this point is my original contribution here to the discussion because no one speak about that ever except me... Five: You must read about TIMBRE perception before saying that you know what is is.... If someone understand timbre that means that he understand the absolute necessity of ears evaluation for this complex phenomenon implying timing of bundle of concrete events in a phase space of his own...Timbre identification is a complex LEARNING process at the foundation of language not a digital artefact or only a musical event... Six: denigrating someone dont count for an argument, if you read my post you will see that i NEVER insulted audiodesign, i even recognize his competence.... BUT no one knows it all... Seven: Nyquist theorem is about coding and decoding signals and also the implicit limitations and not only the power to do so.... This theorem has nothing to do directly with TIMBRE, which is the cornerstone of musical perception but more than that the cornerstone for evaluation of audio system in their acoustical controlled or uncontrolled embeddings... I have written these 7 points and no one can accuse this post to be like your last post and the post of audio design accusation of ignorance against all analog people...I clearly set my point and i remind you that i believe myself in the power of digital system to compete with analog then spare me the insult.... My main point in one word is ANY evaluation of analog versus digital cannot be based on Nyquist theorem only, except for those who ignore acoustic and the fundamental PERCEIVED timbre phenomena and the powerful transformation of an audio system with the rightful embeddings controls...(This last point is my own experience for 2 years experiments) To my knbowledge EARS has not been replaced and would not be replaced in acoustic studies by only ONE theorem...It seems engineers are not all acousticians...And it seems that experimenting with our own ears is not a good recommendation for many here....😁 Happy new YEAR 😊 May God give you the best health ever and may the only doctor you encounter this year be yourself in a mirror....... |
Physics is not a field where strength in Nyquist theory is strong on the curriculum, especially at the diploma level. "digital/Nyquist is perfect" ... what does that even mean? Nyquist simply puts a limit on what digital can do, but also explains why digital can (within the technical implementation limits) capture the waveform very accurately. Even with redbook, over sampling on recording and upsampling on playback pretty much removed in band filtering effects. This is likely what, as that high end label showed, well done red-book was not distinguishable from high-res with their discerning customer base. I do have friend who had diploma in physics and who worked in
university. So he can speak about Nyquist
an hour as he now in retirement so he had a time to get into it up to
human ear construction. But in general if somebody says that digital /
Nyquist is perfect - no. Nowadays digital changed as it has less space
limitations so hi-res is better and we can leave Nyquist in the dust of
history. |
bukanona, I think that is a given that very little in this life is perfect. The other problem is that "sounds better" is a purely subjective issue with psycho-social ramifications. If you just look at the waveform as it comes out of the microphones or console a digital process up to the vinyl is beyond belief more accurate than an analog one, but this says nothing about "sounding better." "Sounding better" is a whole other issue which is tied to evaluation by humans. Now you get into a whole mess as you see here. |
I do have friend who had diploma in physics and who worked in university. So he can speak about Nyquist
an hour as he now in retirement so he had a time to get into it up to human ear construction. But in general if somebody says that digital / Nyquist is perfect - no. Nowadays digital changed as it has less space limitations so hi-res is better and we can leave Nyquist in the dust of history.
But if to speak about DAC there is 2 sides of it - digital and analog. And implementation can't be perfect. So we don't hear what was recorded anyway.
With analog rig it's more complicated. Much more. It's not perfect either. No medium can be perfect.
With digital everything is more easier especially recording process... and software allows to do a lot of tricks. But at the very end it's not perfect as we do have perfect recording engineer who knows everything except ... |
audio2design, it is like running into a brick wall. I suspect that most of these people have very little experience with digital equipment and obviously have no idea how powerful it is. They will keep coming up with baseless explanations for digital sounding awful or why vinyl "sounds better." I suspect most of their opinions are based on the very early CD players that had bad filters and did sound pretty bad. I do not even read mahgister's posts any more. They make me dizzy.
Folks, if I make a 24/96 recording of any vinyl album and play both the recording and the album back synchronized none of you would ever be able to tell the difference between the two and that is a fact. (it has been done.) I suggest you get some experience. Buy the program Pure Vinyl and download a few hi res digital files. Use Pure Vinyl to record some albums to your computer. Have fun and learn. Notice I have not said a thing about better sound and the capability of your hearing. One format will sound better than another when it comes to a specific album depending entirely on the mastering. But, there are many instances when the digital version sounds definitively better. I wish I could demonstrate this to you online but it is impossible. |
And this is technically inaccurate gibberish. Which is worse? There is nothing "infinite" wrt a microphone or our ears for that matter. Microphones have bandwidth and noise limitations and ultimately sensitivity limitations. So do our ears. Maybe some understanding about Nyquist and SNR before posting? acmaier314 posts12-31-2020 12:31amHere’s another point worth considering
microphones
and instruments are analog (infinite in that sense). Sampling no matter
how good is not infinite (if you don’t get the 3/4D aspect).
There’s no instrument but the human ear for this (yet). |
@mahgister I know full well what timbre is since music theory in college First my post about timbre was not directed to you, but to the "specialist" which with i was discussing...Then no need to be insulted by some information you already know...By the way timbre is not only a musical fact, but also an acoustical fact, and also a neurological and linguistic fact, and even other things...Then some information was necessary....You are not alone here...Dont be too reactive to some post like a teen.... 😁 Your mansplaining or copying out of a book is irrelevant and adolescent. Here spare me your gratuitous insult please, i cited 5 lines of wiki, calling back a complex description of Timbre for a non specialist in 5 points and the post was not directed to you....I use this clear 5 points to illustrate my own point...I am not a specialist and i cannot reinvent the wheel.... My other citation is 2 lines about the fact that timbre is not an abstract digital signal but an acoustical event...The writer said it better than i said it already in my posts.... Another time i cannot reinvent the wheel... I am not a genius nor an engineer nor an acoustician...and my discourse was aiming to a "specialist" here, then i used this citation for his clarity in the context... By the way if you think my citation was irrelevant, i think you are of bad faith, the wiki 5 lines are TOTALLY relevant to the course of the discussion.... Perhaps it is your attack of my post that is irrelevant and adolescent... Others will judge... Most of what you talk about is rambling gibberish suitable for an abnormal psych textbook but not here, though we appreciate the enthusiasm! I will not take this one for an insult because i think that you assimilate and confound the content of my explanation with my bad use of the syntax and rhetorical english... English is not my first language and i never use it except for reading.... I apologize for that....But my explanation is perhaps cumbersome but understandable.... I know that timbre is not an illusory purely subjective elusive phenomenon it is a real timing bundles of events for the ears/brain and i was not sure that my interlocutor knows it.... My opinion about audio digital format versus analog format was clearly expressed tough...Contrary to my interlocutor i dont accuse vinyl afficionados of illusion or pure fetichism because they like the sound of their turntable and cannot support bad digital dac or recording or prefer simply vinyl...Fetichism for the cardboard pocket containing the vinyl perhaps refreshing their nostalgia but it is an another matter.... Then i will deduce from your remark about my posts that certainly they were not ABSOLUTE gibberish even for you if you have appreciated my enthusiasm, and i will attribute to your own excessive enthusiasm the fact that you have not been cautious enough and you have not precised clearly that your words about my " rambling" was more inspired by my heavy writing than by my content and argument about timbre....I suppose that you are enough intelligent to be able to read through my bad writing.... Adding the fact that i am in no way a specialist... Then i thank you for your underlining of my enthusiasm... If i had a little representation of what timbre is like you have it seems, admit simply with me that many here dont....And that explain all..... My main point for all audiophiles was clear also, the mechanical, electrical and acoustical embeddings of the system/house/room make a powerful impact on the perception of timbre in audio experience, even more perhaps than the choice of a turntable or a dac... That is my experience after 2 years of experiments by the way with my own devices.... Happy new year... |
FYI
That’s $4300 vinyl setup trouncing an $8000 digital
IMAGO get some $1k Kimber XLR for the phono preamp out to square up the competition... another story! |
Tonight’s comparison
Wilco’s “Star Wars”
Qobuz FLAC 44.1kHz/24b > DirectStream+B2 > Kimber KCAG XLR
vs
vinyl on pro-ject RPM3 >gold note ph-10/ps-10 > blue Jean xlr
both into Schiit Freya+ (Tubes off and on, fully balanced on both signals) > Parasound A23 mono > SF Sonetto 8 > my ears
Vinyl wins hands down. Not really a very close comparison. Clarity. Detail. Truer high end.
Here’s to cheap cables? Nah
here’s to vinyl |
@mahgister I know full well what timbre is since music theory in college
Your mansplaining or copying out of a book is irrelevant and adolescent.
Most of what you talk about is rambling gibberish suitable for an abnormal psych textbook but not here, though we appreciate the enthusiasm! |
Here’s another point worth considering
microphones and instruments are analog (infinite in that sense). Sampling no matter how good is not infinite (if you don’t get the 3/4D aspect).
There’s no instrument but the human ear for this (yet).
BTW the comparison with digital photography is poor
our hearing detail far exceeds our visual acuity |
@audio2design you literally said timbre doesn’t exist... that’s severely discrediting
my musical and sound system engineering includes quite a bit actually such as concerts and installations
Analog is actually 4 dimensional while volume reproduction in digital creates loss bc there is no amplitude
It’s not natively sampled in 3/4D while analog is. Was. Pure modern digital can maybe keep up but we can’t tell bc few record on analog anymore.
What IS nearly definitive is that older recordings, even when remastered digitally, are better in analog delivery.
I’m not arguing this point so much as to explain why so many believe digital sounds inferior (perhaps to those preferring a live performance sound granted). |
So much so for the non existent qualities or "ethereal" one i speak about speaking of timbre, it seems they exist : «In short, timbre lives not in the audio signal or in a musical score but in the mind of the listener.» P.20 of this book....lower in the post... I will precise in the specific ears/ specific brain/ specific room of the "learning" listeners to be understood here by some.... Then to digitalize something so analoglike than timbre we must first recognize the phenomenon and define it with many descriptors.... The scientific theory of these mathematical descriptors is in progress say this first book about all aspects of the concept of timbre....I guess the digitalization modelization of timbre will progress also compared to the actual state indeed.... But it seems that it is possible that actual dac engineering being able to mimic analog turntable are not necessarily superior on all counts, all times, with any dac, in any room against any audio system....Too much factors.... Anyway it is each times our ears that decide if the timbre reproduction is natural or not, not an engineer on audiogon for us all, once for all, it seems.... Each/brain/ears/room are different, without speaking about the different dac, and different audio systems possible.... In one word: TIMBRE is not an "object" that engineers modelized easily once for all thanks to the Nyquist Theorem , it is first and last a learning complex process in variable acoustic environments for human ears....It is then human ears that decide if the timbre is rightly perceived or not ( it is also an objective/subjective interface problem)....The theorem is only about the relations of coding and sampling analog signals...Timbre is not simple signals sampling it is a bundles of acoustical phenomena in relation to an hearing system.... https://www.amazon.com/Timbre-Acoustics-Perception-Cognition-Springer/dp/3030148319 |
Timbre exists, or accurately the relationship between the various harmonics and their attack and decay. However, the properties that mahgister attempts to assign don’t exist. His failure to understand the underlying mathematical composition of signals and hence why digital is able to capture anything that can be called "timbre" in far greater accuracy than any current analog equipment, causes him to assign "ethereal" properties, that do not exist. I NEVER affirm in this thread that analog can do something superior to digital, only different...I never affirm also that digital cannot do what analog do for the timbre perception... Then dont put in my mouth what others speak about but not me... And the adjective analog or digital must be associated with many things that will intermix digital and analog qualities for example a vinyl digitalized read by a dac that will retranslate it, but also the vinyl that will play digitally masters vinyl, or digital cd playing a tube only audio system, the list is way greater of all possibilities etc... In my first point in my discussion with you i only put the fact that the perception of timbre is acoustically conditioned BY THE ROOM where timbre is evaluated, be it by analog or digital audio.... And the electrical and mechanical embeddings of the digital or analog audio system and the acoustical embeddings of the system in the room will have more impact on the timbre perception than the choice of a format digital or vinyl whatever... And no need of doctorate to know that the mathematical description of timbre by many mathematical descriptors is one of the most complex problem in acoustic linked to music, linguistics,neurology etc, then the engineering problem of the digitalization of any analog sources and the decoding of these digits to made them analog anew is ANOTHER problem tough linked to the first for sure.... My second point was only that digital cannot supersede analog phenomena completely, they are 2 linked faces of the sound phenomena in audio electronic, in the room and in the brain.... Like atoms which are particule and waves at the same time, sound is modulo Fourier analysis of time domain and frequencies particule like and wave like.... The " ethereal" properties you accuse me of associating with timbre perception are this subtle properties modified by an environment that constitute the fabric of instrumental music, and the fabric of phonology and phonetic complexities in all human languages... Assessing mathematically these subtle perceived properties with mathematical models are not a fad, but pretending like you that all these problems are answered once and for all, thanks to the mathematics of digital coding /decoding and filters, is simply confusing many problems and reducing them to one.... By the way these "ethereal" properties associated to the timbre perception are so real, that it will take neural networks and deep learning A.I. to appropriate them for recognizing purpose....Not only the Fourier analysis coding and decoding of digital tech.....The reason is simple: humans LEARN to perceive timbre....This learning process cannot be replace by digital codes only, the learning being associated with an acoustical environment.... Each format digital or analog has his advantages in audio perceived by some and not by others....Myself i think that digital is able to be on par with analog or vice versa with right choice of dac or turntable, but MOSTLY by a rightful triple embeddings of the system.... By the way when you speak of signal noise ratio dont forget that this concept and fact are not limited to electronical digital or audio component.... The signal noise ratio is also increased or decreased by the mechanical, electrical and acoustical embeddings of the audio system in a specific noisy electrical grid in a specific acoustically qualified room....The ears are also a measuring apparatus of signals/noise ratio.... This is WHY embeddings methods produce a greater impact on the listener than only the change of a turntable to a dac or vice versa.... Then my opinion being more subtle than what you caricature describe, i will be grateful to read it adequately put in your post.... By the way i dont doubt that you are more competent than me in audio, but that dont justify your rejection by the back of your hand of any other human experience because being illusory.... Audio it is my experience is more complex than we think....And some limited mathematics dont explain all sorry.... I just put my hand on this book : They dont say that rigorous description of timbre by digital coding exhaust the subject matter at all...On the contrary ...They dont say either that only the microphones locations is enough to capture the butterfly of timbre in the net of digitalization engineering....😊 They seems to speak about this "ethereal" properties that the ears/brain of humans must learn to survive... https://www.amazon.com/Timbre-Acoustics-Perception-Cognition-Springer/dp/3030148319 |
My inner voice is telling me to say what I really think about this statement, but in the interest of being nice, I will just say this is really silly and shows a considerable lack of understanding of what a "signal" is. I can take your favorite record Miller, recording it, and play it back to you on a digital playback system. As long as I have a turntable running in that room, you will assume that you are listening to the record. You will not know it is digital. Digital can capture everything that can come off a record. The opposite is not true. p.s. When they film on location, odds are very heavy they will be using digital cameras. The number of movies shot on film drops every single year, and today, technically, there is little reason to use film. Want a film effect (grain/noise), add it digitally. When we play a record we don't know it is the real deal, we know for sure it is fake (i.e. a recording).
If digital is so wonderful then why do you think it is that all the best
movie directors and actors try so hard to film on location, to actually
perform their stunts? Its because the brain is uncannily good at
figuring out what is fake, what is fraud, and what is real. When we play
a record, whatever it was and however good or bad it sounds, at least
we know its the real deal
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Playing a record is like looking through a window. You're not really there. You're on the other side of a wall, looking through glass. Layers and layers of glass. Some of them clear, some colored, some optically perfect, some wavy as hell. The scene is bent and blurred and colored and far from perfect. But its perfectly clear to your brain. To your brain this is no different than looking at a fish in the stream. Yes the water is wavy, murky, muddy, maybe even. But for all that there is no doubt in your mind, not the slightest shred of doubt, that there is a nice tasty trout in the stream.
When we push play on a CD we get a video on a screen. And the picture we see, it went through all the exact same layers of distortions as the record. Only now in addition to and on top of all that its been converted to video. No matter how sharp the contrast, how vivid the colors, there is never a doubt in the mind, not the slightest shred of a doubt, that we are looking at a video monitor. There is no trout. Maybe never was. Could be really good AI. Who knows?
If digital is so wonderful then why do you think it is that all the best movie directors and actors try so hard to film on location, to actually perform their stunts? Its because the brain is uncannily good at figuring out what is fake, what is fraud, and what is real. When we play a record, whatever it was and however good or bad it sounds, at least we know its the real deal
@millercarbon this is really good actually. Some things are hard to explain. A verbal explanation of the sound of analogue records is probably better left to a poet. The adamant engineer types and the music production professionals want to reduce the discussion to the limits of their empirical understanding, which, it seems to me, is often lacking in emotional depth (present company excluded of course). |
@acmaier3, I’ve spent almost 30 years either developing, optimizing, working with, or doing basic and applied research on studio equipment, audio, recording, and processing and have spent countless hours listening to music as its played and what gets recorded and played back. How about you? Timbre exists, or accurately the relationship between the various harmonics and their attack and decay. However, the properties that mahgister attempts to assign don’t exist. His failure to understand the underlying mathematical composition of signals and hence why digital is able to capture anything that can be called "timbre" in far greater accuracy than any current analog equipment, causes him to assign "ethereal" properties, that do not exist. acmaier39 posts12-30-2020 3:37pmTimbre definitely exists... it’s why one guitar sounds different than another. Why nylon strings sound different than steel.
Audio2design is a fool arguing with facts like a homeless person yelling at a street sign. |
Alas! unbeknownst to most, embeddings methods are more powerful than using vinyl or digital format in the S.Q. increase and more powerful than most partial or even in many cases than a complete upgrade...
I am flabbergasted that in all this audio forums i am the only one to tell this tale...
«Nobody throwing rocks at you, you cannot be a prophet, only a deluded dude»-Groucho Marx speaking to me from his tombstone 😕🙃
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Acmaier, the interaction between instruments is the same with either format and you are right some studio recordings are lifeless but that is the fault of the recording engineer not the format.
Audio2 design is absolutely right. People's concept of digital is purely intuitive and in this case intuition is way out to lunch. Quantization error creates noise 96 dB down at 16/44.1 That is inconsequential and far less noise than the analog format produces not to mention that every step in the analog process adds distortion. This is not true for digital. Once the signal is in numbers it is impervious to distortion until it is returned to analog. Remember what analog cell phones were like? A real mess. Nothing even remotely like todays digital cell phones which are quiet and clear. 99% of modern music is digitized. If I play a vinyl copy of digitized music it will sound like every other vinyl album. I made that mistake once bragging about the recording quality of The Trinity Sessions which turns out to be a digital recording! Great sounding record. I love her rendition of Sweet Jane. This would make an interesting study, why so many of us have this obsession with vinyl. Many of us think it sounds more realistic or enjoyable. I certainly am amazed at how good this ancient technology can sound but digital files can also sound amazing and I do have digital copies of old analog albums that sound better to me than the original vinyl and this is in direct AB comparison. As many of us have mentioned, it depend on how the material was handled. I do not thin there is a generalization you can make as to which format is more preferable that will hold water and I'm not sure why we get into this discussion over and over again. It is not going to change. I will certainly be happy if analog formats survive. I certainly know digital will. |
Using the exact same mastering with MODERN digital SAMPLING, over several comparisons keeping my room and equipment static strongly favors the analog even though my digital setup is significantly more expensive and even “better” according to most. My conclusion is digital SAMPLING misses the instrument timbres and overtone interactions. Congratulations for your deep dedication to music... My experience DOES NOT contradict your experience.... It is only a different one... My modest but genially minimalistic designed NOS dac gives to me the instrument timbre and his overtones.... But not in the beginning....Why? My dac was enhanced greatly and all the other electronic components with it by being mechanically, electrically and acoustically rightfully embedded in my house/room... My experience is that MOST audio systems are not well embedded at all or at best not optimally embedded... Most dac also are not good one, being too harsh and unnatural like, thin sounding or overdetailed and lacking flowing life then they are not good in reproducing the subtle timbre dynamics........ My experience is the embeddings is more powerful than most electronic parts upgrade and sometimes rival the entire audio system upgrading, dac included.... Most people dont know that at all because they never experience it.... Even pro in audio underestimate that... I know that because in the last 2 years of listening experiments i transform totally my audio system without upgrading any part... To answer your post i must say, that in a minimally rightly embedded or not embedded audio system, with one of the many hyped- dac on the market that are not so good, the perception of timbre cannot be good... Thin, harsh, unnatural.... It is not suprizing than many people prefer the more robust vinyl format which is more resistant to the very vulnerable timbre rendition from a recording in analog or digital format....Analog being more robust for timbre perception sustenance in a bad acoustical room... But digital can rival vinyl nowadays and vinyl is not obsolete either but way impractical.... Happy new year and i wish you the best health prayers can buy for you.... |
Using the exact same mastering with MODERN digital SAMPLING, over several comparisons keeping my room and equipment static strongly favors the analog even though my digital setup is significantly more expensive and even “better” according to most. My conclusion is digital SAMPLING misses the instrument timbres and overtone interactions.
I think some people have emotional reactions favoring digital bc they don’t have the time, patience, and history of collecting vinyl. Digital is easy, cheap, and has fewer needs to maintain stuff. Lazy like their opinions. |
The problem in assessing the alleged superiority of analog over digital or the contrary is simple to formulate:
Human hearings evaluation of an analog or digital format, in a specific room and in a specific electrical grid, is more impacted, unbeknownst to most, by the embeddings of the audio system, than by the analog or digital format itself most of the times...
The more important clue of a good S.Q. is the evalution of the naturalness of instrumental timbre...
But the experience of timbre in listening is influenced and conditioned by the mechanical, electrical and mainly acoustical embeddings of the audio system at least on par with the particular format to be evaluated...( without speaking of the specific hearing apparatus of any subject)
Then all those who pledge for an absolute superioriy of the vinyl over digital in ALL cases are going too far, over estimating their experience, which would be different in different embeddings or with different electronic components...
All those who pledge for an absolute superiority of digital over analog in all cases are similarly going too far for the same reasons...
The perception of timbre is one of the most complex matter in all acoustic pertaining to too many sciences to enumerate them...Linguistic, music, neurology and physics, mathematics and engineering being only the main one...
The complete description of the factors playing a role in the perception of timbre cannot be reduced to only digitalization method... The humain brain and his direct relation to the acoustic settings of his environment ask and solicit at the same times analog and digital functions, receptors and motors functions...
Then no single experience can establish the absolute superiority of a format....
The perception of a tone and his colored variation in time, timing with other colored tones or timbres, in a specific room, is a subjective phenomenon also; pretending in the absolute to reduce it to digitalization is only collapsing all the sciences and human experience implicated here in a engineering absolute pretense which at the end is only that: a pretense ignoring all that contradict it....
Pretending that vinyl is always and will be always superior, pertain to an illusion also, but a different one...One cannot extrapolate one experience to all other possible experience.....
Happy New Year.... |
Timbre definitely exists... it’s why one guitar sounds different than another. Why nylon strings sound different than steel.
Audio2design is a fool arguing with facts like a homeless person yelling at a street sign. |
You are right. There is no electronic tool to measure something that does not exist. There is no electronic tool for measuring this. |
For me to compare vynil vs digital it will never end, But with a train good ears and who knows music for the most part they will prefer vynil.The soul of music of vynil it’s hard to accomplish on digital. Again I love both format , that’s why I have both. |
The reason vinyl sounds better is the instrument timbre and the interaction of them. There is no electronic tool for measuring this. Regardless of the format, albums recorded with instruments played separately have a similar problem - lacking vitality and authenticity bc those of us used to live performance miss these musical interactions. Modern digital sampling helps (often with better mastering and mixing) a lot but compared to old digital sampling vinyl is astounding - there is zero contest.
Direct stream w/ SB2 vs RPM3 with EVO III through a gold note PH-10 > my DAC is theoretically better than the phono including better cables. |
That was fun (the slices of bread analogy). I should qualify it as being an explanation given to me back in the mid-late 80's. My first digital player was of the single laser type. The sound was horrible. In addition, early CDs were digitized copies of LPs. I still have some where the jewel box art was a picture of an album cover, complete with ringwear! You could even hear a few pops and clicks from the vinyl they were copied from. We've come a long way baby. If the instrument isn't live in your ear, all reproduced sounds differ in some way from the original source. I'm going back to my sourdough toast now, "different strokes for different folks" (Sly Stone). AB |
in my experience, digital was the best thing that could happen to us working-class types that previously could only barely afford crappy entry-level analog whose welter of blatant distortions both ruins the software [records] as well as irritates the ears of all listeners within earshot. cheap digital sounds glarey and borderline harsh but at least there is no inner groove distortion, mistracking on challenging passages, poor pressings with molded-in distortion, crackle and hiss and groove roar and rumble. |
If you are going to make stuff up to suit your view of the world, When i said that they are on par, i was not speaking about the technological possiblities, but of their different qualities contributing to the perceived phenomenon... You also make stuff up to suit your technological view of the world... I only say from the beginning that analog is not superior to digital in audio design, but i oppose the affirmation that all there is in sound is captured only and completely by digital cooking recipe....The brain is NOT a digital computer and the ears are not an analog mechanical engine.... |
If you are going to make stuff up to suit your view of the world, I don't see how we can have an intelligent discussion on this topic.
And no they are not on par. A digitizing and playback system can capture the output of a vinyl playback system and recreate it such that you cannot tell which is directly coming from vinyl, and which is the digital system. There is no current analog system in audio which can accomplish the same with digital.
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The original phenomenon is not a signal, or if it is one, it is a complex one with digital and analog aspect link to acoustic of room and ears relation...
The acoustical timing of many events in the room constituting the "timbre" instrument for the brain analog and digital "computer" to speak metaphorically, cannot be reduced totally to only "digital timing" signals , the digital signals are also a timing approximation...They create a kind of noise of their own...
Digital and analog are necessary at the same time to understand the phenomenon.... It is the reason why digital or analog are on par and able to give each one something the other one cannot give...
You can call the analog way a "colored" taste, completely useless but it is not so simple....Ears are not replaceable by computers... It will be someday in some way, but it is not the actual matter of the thread to discuss the limits of this replacement...
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What is truly funny is you don’t understand Nyquist theory. If you did, you would understand that within the framework of audio and the SNR of the recording, and the sample rate that digital can capture in full detail all waveforms within 1/2 the sampling rate (minus filtering of course). sin(x)/x is purely a linear multiplication function and easily corrected, and if you understood signal processing, you would know it does not in practice result in rounding errors even on Redbook playback, but of course, since virtually all audio is also sampled well beyond audio rates these days (and bit depths), it does not come much into play .... which is why in any review of a DAC, you will see nearly perfectly flat response across the audio band and SNR, THD, etc. pretty much flat as well with good quality DACs. Maybe you should read science based audio information instead of parroting people who know as little as you do? dover1,306 posts12-29-2020 10:32pmThe analog signal will mash up timing, frequency information, timbre, anything at all you want to use to describe said signal. Digital does not.
Thats the funniest thing I’ve ever seen on this forum.
If you understood nyquist theory and how d/a converters work, you would know that digital is a little bit out all of the time - rounding errors from the sine x/x in red book CD, endemic in every calculation, are just the tip of the problem. |
An analog RECORDING is not the original signal. A polygon with a million faces is a better approximation of a circle than one drawn with a shaky hand ... or any hand for that matter. This is as sill asy that bread analogy. This silly concept that an analog RECORDING is somehow "continuous". It is not. It has noise. It has timing flaws from the mechanical nature. It has data loss. dover1,306 posts12-29-2020 10:47pm« A polygon with an infinite number of faces never equal a circle» Nicholas Of Cusa Precisely, digital is an approximation of an analogue signal. |
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