Wide bandwidth = necessary?


Hi folks, there is one paradigm that bothers me a bit: many experts and audiophiles are stating that Red Book technology is outdated because of it's bandwidth limited function. I've read the human ear is capable of perception of frequencies beyond the normal human hearing, up to 40kHz. But this is only with live music! When listening to recorded music there is a restricted bandwidth because many microphones can only pick up frequencies up to 20kHz. So why the need for more and more bandwidth with regard to digital sound reproduction technology? What is not present in the recording can't be heard either, even with very wide bandwidth music reproduction gear.
What is also laughable is that many vinyl adepts say that phono playback gear can reproduce tones as high as 40kHz and that is one of the reasons phono playback sounds more "natural" than digital playback. This is a bit of a contradictio in terminis because most LP's are very band limited (30Hz to 16kHz is quite common). Your comments please.

Chris
dazzdax

Showing 4 responses by dazzdax

First of all I would like to thank all of you for the wonderful comments. The reason for this post was to get clarification from you the need for the ability to reproduce frequencies beyond human hearing.
In the past some manufacturers like Pioneer tried to "reconstruct" the signal content above 20kHz by using special filters like the "Legato Link". This was done because the designers believed that the frequencies above the 20kHz (up to 40kHz) were necessary for a natural sound. This is also one of the arguments of the vinyl people. But if the mics are capable only of picking up frequencies up to 20kHz, why the need for gear that can reproduce frequencies above that (if that is already bandlimited in the first place)? In case of vinyl: I truly believe cartridges are capable of reproducing frequencies above 20kHz, but if the vinyl itself contains no frequencies above let's say 16kHz at all, what is the use for such a bandwidth?

Chris
Amazing! Thank you for the references. Still I can't understand the need for such a response (to 40kHz) while during recording the bandwidth is limited.

Chris
Eldartford: that is an interesting phenomenon. Do you think we humans can appreciate more of the sound if the gear is capable of reproducing frequencies above 20kHz even if the recording itself doesn't contain any frequency above 16kHz? With other words: would the music sound more "natural"? If that is the case, then I have to have this super tweeter also --> it will superficially create naturalness (sounds like contradictio in terminis).

Chris