This is Too Funny Vinyl is Still King

08-13-10: Shadorne
Interesting theories but they did't stand up to technical scrutiny then and they still do not today. I suspect the main reason that analog works well is that you can actually hear below a noise floor (well known that you can hear up to 15 db below a noise floor). It is the higher noise floor (hiss) that allows you to hear or focus on certain nuances

MTV's attempts to explain may have been naive, but they were on the right track. The jagged edges in the digitally-derived waveform are not from the frequency of the sampling rate, but rather from the word length. Word length (e.g., 16 vs 24 bits) determines how large or small the increments of amplitude are. Here is a 'scope shot of a typical 16-bit 1KHz sine wave and here is a shot of a 24-bit 1KHz sine wave. 16-bit provides a theoretical 64K increments of amplitude differentiation. Throw away a bit at the bottom for lower noise floor and a bit at the top for headroom and you're down to a ragged-sounding 16K increments. 24-bit provides 16 MB of increments. Toss away the top and bottom bits and you're still at 4 MB of increments. Analog provides amplitude increments down to near the molecular level. It's far more than "hearing through the noise floor." It's delineating the amplitude subtleties that contribute to musical expression and delineate the basic sequence of sounds that form, bloom, and resolve notes from instruments and voices; that's what Fremer, Gabriel, and Young were talking about and that's what people hear.

As for the slow sampling rate, it severely compromises the last octave of audibility by having so few samples per wave (about two) and requiring a phase relationship-wrecking brick wall filter to keep the digital artifacts out of the analog domain.

DVD-A and SACD have had their chance to take over the high-rez marketplace for over a decade. People vote with their wallets and they have chosen vinyl as the high-rez medium of choice. With 10 years to evaluate and think about it I doubt that it's a noise floor parlor trick or mass hysteria. Most of us *wanted* SACD to succeed at the time, but I'll take my vinyl over SACD by

08-14-10: Unsound
People voting with their wallets, have voted for mediums other than vinyl by a large margin, regardless of "rez".

And that response has absolutely nothing to do with what I posted.

08-14-10: Unsound
I beg to differ.

Beg and differ all you want, but in the context of high-resolution formats--DVD-A, SACD, and wide bandwidth pure analog, vinyl far outsells the other two formats combined. The sales figures are out there. I don't care what the sales of CD or MP3 are; I was posting about high resolution formats and was very clear about it.