old tech
500+ Head-Fier
1. I call BS on the actual instruments part (in fact, laughing my head off) It is only your biased opinion that is certainly not supported by any measurement of fidelity nor by the majority of listeners, particularly classical music lovers who ditched their direct to disk vinyl and never returned as soon as CDs were available. It is also unsupported by the controlled listening tests between CD and analogue recordings of live concerts such as the one below.1. CD has a cleaner sound but it doesn't sound natural. Vinyl has more noise but it sounds more like actual instruments.
2. Science has still along way to go to explain digital sound problematic. The sampling theorem is not sufficient. Applying this theorem does not provide a high level of
audio fidelity.
44.1/16 PCM is far from achieving high fidelity. If you compare it to DSD256, you can hear that DSD sounds much more natural and true. This should make us admit that capturing frequencies above 22 KHz is necessary to achieve high fidelity audio, as DSD256 is at least equivalent to 2000 KHz PCM, in spite of a lower signal to noise ratio in high frequencies.
However, I'm not sure that non acoustic genres, based on electric guitars or synthesizers, require such a level of fidelity
Geringer, J., Dunnigan, P. "Listener Preferences and Perception of Digital versus Analog Live Concert Recordings." Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education. 1 Jul. 2000, Number 145: 1-13.
"Music majors were subjects who listened to CD digital and analogue tape recordings [and analogue tape is superior analogue to vinyl) of the same concert performances, recorded unequalized and unmixed (to control EQ variables and level matched. It was a double blind test and the listeners were able to switch back and forth between the two at will. Overall, the digital version was preferred in all ten scoring areas.
The researchers concluded that music major listeners rated the digital versions of live concert recordings as higher in quality than the corresponding analogue versions. The listeners gave significantly higher ratings to the digital presentations in bass, treble and overall quality, as well as separation of instruments and voices. The ratings were consistent across loudspeaker and headphone listening conditions."
Can you show me a similar controlled study showing the opposite? And remember, the plural of anecdote is anecdotes not data.
2. As Gregorio would say, why would something invented by science be unexplained by science? It may be a mystery to you but not others with a technical understanding.
3. No, to me and every controlled test demonstrates no sound difference between these formats. Our technical understanding and knowledge of human anatomy should make you admit that a difference in a controlled environment is very unlikely (but it won't because you're biased and subscribe to pusedo theories of digital audio).