What is this phenomenon in music recordings

[pail]

lol, am i seeing here analog aversion or am i wrong or just dreaming?...

 

[castleofargh]

It your shift key broken or what? I am not insane. You are confused and unable think this issue.

Low and high resolutions are for digital formats. Analog is just analog. It is good or it is bad. Star Wars was recorded with a good analog system and hence the sound quality was pretty good for its time.

Shawn Murphy avoiding digital doesn't tell anything but his preferences. I don't know WHY he prefers analog. Maybe he is used to that or likes the distortions it creates or whatever. It is similar thing to say Steven Spielberg using film instead of digital movie cameras. Artistic choice!

You don't understand the technical and artistic aspects of analog vs. digital.

I haven’t met anyone facing a digital revolution in their craft who was both skilled with the new tools and yet dedicated to the old one. Which is kind of logical, if you already think the old stuff is best, you probably won’t put in the effort to learn and master the new methods. While people who did invest a lot of time, money and efforts into the new tools and methods, will, one way or another, want the return on investment that made them start it all.
And of course, some people just aren’t able to adapt. They get scared by the unknown, or they try but just don't see themselves reaching the same level of expertise. Sometimes it might be as simple as losing their signature style that's tied to some old process. There are all ages and sorts and people out there.

But the argument wasn’t only “by that standard”, it was also by the standard of recording and master tapes/files (specifically of the Abbey Road album and Dark Side of the Moon) because not only was tape relatively limited by it’s noise floor but by the fact that both these albums (and many others) were highly “produced”, which required relatively complex submixes/“bounce downs” and each “bounce” resulted in roughly doubling the noise floor. So as far as recording, mixing and mastering were concerned, noise floor was by far the most relevant issue and where most of the development occurred within the recording industry.

A break-through occurred around the time of the two mentioned albums, the introduction of Dolby A noise reduction on multi-track studio recorders but was not available at all for the Abbey Road album and wasn’t available for the recording of DSotM but was used for the bounce downs. Developments in the 1980’s addressed the noise floor issue further, Dolby SR for example. Even with digital recording, the development emphasis was still regarding noise floor, with 20bit introduced at the beginning of the 1990’s and then 24bit at the end of the 1990’s, only then did high sample rates start to become a “thing”. All of this was purely about the recording industry, it had nothing directly to do with consumers or consumer formats, until Sony released SACD along with a bunch of marketing BS, but now we’re talking roughly 30 years after the release of both the discussed albums.

G

Of course, I agree with what you've said here and before. I was simply trying to consider what could realistically be used to define hires. With Sony's shinny gold logo standard, fidelity, noise floor, bit depth are all irrelevant. Does it support 48kHz? If so, it's hires... It's silly, but that standard does exist, so it's one way to look at things for those who want to.

Yes so it seems to be Pre-echo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-echo, pretty interesting, for the debate about HR, the Flac files in question are marked HR in my Sony cell phone because the conversion process was made with the sufficient sampling rate and word length to be mentioned as HR files in the cell phone but yes i understand it is not a 100% digital recording scheme.

That I believe would be extremely close in time to the actual signal, as in, so close it's usually barely noticeable. You did say less than a second, so I guess it's a matter of how small of a delay you're getting. Out of curiosity, if you know how, could you cut a short passage of the track(to avoid legal troubles) that contains this phenomenon, and share it with us?

 

[gregorio]

lol, am i seeing here analog aversion or am i wrong or just dreaming?...

You’re sort of right. There are practical problems with analogue, you need to spend a lot of time and money to get it right and even when you do get it right, it still has artefacts and lower fidelity than digital, and on top of that, you also have the issue of deterioration over time.

However, enjoying listening to music reproduction is not solely a function of fidelity but also of course of the composition and performance. So therefore even though the fidelity is lower, (although only marginally audibly lower with the best analogue recordings), they can still be enjoyable and even “great”. I personally am still able to enjoy Caruso recordings, even though the fidelity is very poor, because he was such a great performer. I would love to have both Caruso and fidelity but that’s just not possible of course.

G

 

[redrol]

Analog tape is higher resolution than digital
Magnetic tapes with a coating of magnetic powder measuring tens of nanometers is applied to the top of the film. Then the tape is hundreds of feet long.

 

[castleofargh]

Analog tape is higher resolution than digital
Magnetic tapes with a coating of magnetic powder measuring tens of nanometers is applied to the top of the film. Then the tape is hundreds of feet long.

Care to back that up with data about actual resolution?

 

[gregorio]

Analog tape is higher resolution than digital
Magnetic tapes with a coating of magnetic powder measuring tens of nanometers is applied to the top of the film.

No it’s not because analogue tape is constrained by the limitations of analogue media whereas digital tape isn’t, tape saturation, tape noise, etc., does not affect the digital data. However, digital tape for recording started dying out 25 years ago, as it was replaced by hard-disk recording.

G

 

[redrol]

I don't have proof, but just looking at some docs magnetic tape has around 65,000,000 magnetic particles per second of recording a quarter inch format at 15 inches per second. Digital is 10x lower in terms of bits per second. It's certainly not a 1:1 thing but, its higher resolution.
Quarter inch, two track ATR Master Tape running at 15 inches per second has approx 80,000,000 particles per second.

 

[gregorio]

But then digital does not have to record the entire analogue waveform to perfectly reproduce it, only discrete points in the waveform.

G

 

[redrol]

Yes approximating the analog signal isn't as good as the real thing, analog to analog. Note, im not saying it has higher fidelity since there are other metrics in play here.

 

[WoodyLuvr]

Analog tape is higher resolution than digital
Magnetic tapes with a coating of magnetic powder measuring tens of nanometers is applied to the top of the film. Then the tape is hundreds of feet long.

@redrol Totally get your point but the manner in which you originally posted it you are simply encouraging the trolls. Not like it was giving them more rope to hang themselves with but rather bolstering their already ludicrous assertions and positions regarding hires being synonymous with analog tape! The simple fact that Dolby noise reduction systems were even created (and very much so needed) should clearly enlighten.

I don't have proof, but just looking at some docs magnetic tape has around 65,000,000 magnetic particles per second of recording a quarter inch format at 15 inches per second. Digital is 10x lower in terms of bits per second. It's certainly not a 1:1 thing but, its higher resolution.
Quarter inch, two track ATR Master Tape running at 15 inches per second has approx 80,000,000 particles per second.

Yes approximating the analog signal isn't as good as the real thing, analog to analog. Note, im not saying it has higher fidelity since there are other metrics in play here.

Thoughtful and interesting; your second and third posts should have been your first !

 

[redrol]

Thank you sir. I honestly figured most people knew this around here. If there are trolls I don't really notice it. oops haha

 

[gregorio]

Yes approximating the analog signal isn't as good as the real thing, analog to analog.

Sounds like a good marketing line but is completely backwards!

Digital does not approximate an analogue signal, it accurately encodes it. Analogue recording IS an approximation however! Not only is recording an analogue signal with an analogue recorder an approximation but it’s a cumulatively poorer approximation with each generation/“bounce”! The “real thing” is captured and reproduced by digital!

How, after all this time posting here, do you still not understand even the basics of digital audio or why it was invented and keep just contradicting the proven facts with nothing but marketing BS?

G

 

[redrol]

Thats a troll. I said what I think. Either give me some data to show otherwise or I'll just ignore it.

 

[gregorio]

Either give me some data to show otherwise or I'll just ignore it.

You can start with Nyquist/Shannon Sampling Theorem, here. However, your demand is hypocritical, you’ve made assertions without any relevant data/evidence, so now it’s your turn.

G

 

[gregorio]

Thats a troll.

No, a troll in this subforum is repeatedly contradicting the actual/scientific facts with nothing but personal assumption/opinion/ignorance and marketing BS!

G