30 years of CDs - Page 2

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chawanwit 


Thanks but what if they are downloaded from the web like HD tracks it should still be the same right?

If it's CD format (44.1/16, ie. red book) then you can burn them straight onto CD without alteration. If it's anything higher it'll need to be downsampled to red book if you want it to play on a CD player. A good algorithm will probably do this transparently. Do an ABX to determine for yourself.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clarkmc2 


So it has been said, but I am still not sonically or intellectually convinced. Recording quality - and the quality of what the musicians are doing in the first place - is so much more a factor that 44 vs everything else is not important.
As a practical matter, I have yet to hear anything beat Redbook. My mind is still open as to whether anything equals it so far. Buyer beware. There is a lot of money to be made when a listener pays a lot more for a different format. So far those doing the selling have been more than happy to ignore the Nyquist frequency reality. As has been stated so often here, Bell Labs figured out sound and its reproduction back in the 1920s. The refinements were worked out by the 1940s. Those refinements include how to do digital, long before it was practical to do so.

I totally agree with you on studio recording quality being the most important thing. I also don't think it will make a difference to most people's ears whether a perfectly mastered track is 16/41 or 24/192, but from a technical standpoint it is better.

Digital audio certainly isn't mastered though. It might be as good as it's going to get, but it cannot ever be perfect due to the limitations of digital data.

Limitation of digital data? Like?

I thought everything I'm gonna listen to is well played from a CD?

Quote:

Originally Posted by autumnholy 

Limitation of digital data? Like?

I thought everything I'm gonna listen to is well played from a CD?

Sure it sounds well, but there's only so much you can do with 1's and 0's. The soundwave can never totally smoothed out. Close enough so that there may not be an audible difference, but I still personally think that vinyl has a better sound to it. Might not be due to sound quality, rather sound signature though so iuno.

Think of it this way, to store an exact analogue soundwave digitally, this would be the equivalent of storing a photograph and being able to zoom in an infinite amount without losing any resolution. An infinite amount of data would be needed.

But like I said, it's not like the human ear can  necessarily tell the difference.

I thought analogue was the poorer audio recording compared to CDs? I may be wrong. Just wanna clarify this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by autumnholy 

I thought analogue was the poorer audio recording compared to CDs? I may be wrong. Just wanna clarify this.

I won't say its poorer.

But digital has a lot more advantages, thats all.

Digital playback devices do not suffer from wear and tear. Remember when tape heads needed to be replaced? Mine wouldn't auto-change the cassette tape side, although it was an auto-reverse. And old analog Hi-Fi are purely mechanical devices inside, all levers and springs for the most of the playback part, with tubes/electronics for signal processing.

The medium itself is not subject to wear and tear like tapes and records are.

It makes adding effects and signal processing much easier during production.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot 

The only reason to collect vinyl is to get music that's never been released to CD.

I often agree with a lot of what you say, but c'mon now.  It's also because it's fun and interactive and colored in good ways for some.

Quote:

Originally Posted by autumnholy 

I thought analogue was the poorer audio recording compared to CDs? I may be wrong. Just wanna clarify this.

Analogue is the only kind of sound. By the time you hear a CD, it is converted to analogue. 

Digital is just a means of storing the data... CD's are just a series of pits and landings(1's and 0's), which are then translated into an analogue sound wave.

Vinyl on the other hand are grooves that require no translation.

The debate on which one is a higher sound quality is a harsh one, but in the end I'd say they both have their pro's and cons, and it really depends on your definition of sound quality. I'd agree with bigshot on CD's having the upper hand over all.

But if there were a better way to store analogue sound without having the disadvantages that come from vinyl(for example like how they stored music in water on Metalocalypse), that would be undoubtedly superior, as digitally stored music will always be lossy to some extent. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot 


It's possible to hobble digital audio so it sounds exactly like an LP. Roll off the high end. Add some noise and rumble. Same-same.

Yeah, if the LP sound can be modelled (I'm sure it can) , it can be added in digital effects.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot 


You should spend an afternoon googling "Nyquist theory". Your understanding of how digital audio works is incorrect.

To me it seems like just a standard to follow? Maybe I need to read more into it, but I don't see how that's related to my comment.

For you to be 100% sure that the soundwave is 100% accurate on the way back out, you would need to take an infinite amount of samples in order to cover every single nanosecond and below, no?

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot 


Except for the conversion of mechanical sound into electrical impulses, the conversion from raw line level audio current to the RIAA curve, the conversion from electrical impulses to mechanical cutting heads that create physical groove modulation, the conversion from physical groove modulation back into electrical impulses by means of a stylus and cartridge, the decoding of the RIAA curve and pre amplification, the amplification of the electrical impulses, and the conversion from electrical impulses to vibrations in a transducer...

 

Haha OK no digital to analogue translation. You obviously can't just put your ear up to it and listen to it.

EDIT: OK so I found some better stuff on Nyquist theory, I'll read more into it.