Another reason why music today sounds awful. Loudness War!

[lcampz]

Digital converters (sampling at 44.1kHz) can capture frequencies that move back and forth 44100 times a second.

...Nyquist rate

I think you're really referring to the conversion of .wavs to .mp3s.

Nope. I'm talking about analog to PCM. "Capture" implies wholeness or tracing. This is not what PCM does. There are (because the processing power required to do it is finally, sort of, arriving) people who are working on tracing rather than sampling analog waves. Look into Wave Trace technology.

At a glance, this seems to address some issues that we haven't gone into here, such as truncation distortion, dither, LSB, etc. (Frankly, my brain is too strained to go much farther. )

it's certainly beyond the range of speakers to move that fast

Ever heard of super tweeters for the home hifi enthusiast? I don't own one but they are available and do go beyond 20kHz.

Like how you said DVDs replced VHS,we have to keep going for the higher quality.

I should have clarified. We need to keep going higher in order to catch up to analog. The goal with digital video/photography is to have it look as good or better than film. Video tape in either format never quite measured up and pixelation of digital pics requires ever higher and higher resolution rates. But, it's all an attempt to measure up to analog.

I guess, here's my end statement. Digital (and science in general) is only as good as the limitations of the tools used to measure things in the natural world and the limited understanding of man at that time. All too often, a breakthrough level of achievement is reached (which is great) and counted as having solved the riddle. And, time and time again, as the measurement tools get better, concessions have to be made that in actuality the riddle had not previously been solved, and "the books" have to be rewritten. All the while, individuals who live in, and perceive and respond to stimuli in the natural world, have in themselves sensed/known what took (and is taking) engineers and scientist time to discover - more so, put nomenclature to. I will err on the side of caution and say that by my own hearing and that of so many others, that digital still isn't quite synonymous with analog whether in regard to amp modeling and/or recorded audio.

Ultimately, I agree with you. For most people, good enough is good enough (which at one time was 8-track)!!! Now, it's ring tones!!! Not me! I'm a die hard.

[RAM]

...Nyquist rate

Indeed. But with higher sample rates we could still technically include extraneous higher frequencies which we can't hear. I crossed my meaning a bit, should have mentioned the necessity of doubling the necessary frequency you want to record. My mistake.

At a glance, this seems to address some issues that we haven't gone into here, such as truncation distortion, dither, LSB, etc. (Frankly, my brain is too strained to go much farther. )

I agree. Lets leave these for another day!

Ever heard of super tweeters for the home hifi enthusiast? I don't own one but they are available and do go beyond 20kHz.

Yep, I've heard of them. Though they are currently beyond most peoples hearing range and still pretty much redundant until we shift our alias filter way up when we start using extremely high sample rates. We'll need to wait for some really good mics too.

The goal with digital video/photography is to have it look as good or better than film. Video tape in either format never quite measured up and pixelation of digital pics requires ever higher and higher resolution rates. But, it's all an attempt to measure up to analog.

I don't know. I'd certainly argue that (in film and photography at least) digital is much better than analog. I've asked photograpers and film makers about this before and most of them, ironically, said they only use analog to achieve a certain look. It's undeniable that the visual quality of films has vastly improved using digital. One only has to look at some older films. They still look good: but they also look old. (though maybe in that nice analog way )

I guess, here's my end statement. Digital (and science in general) is only as good as the limitations of the tools used to measure things in the natural world and the limited understanding of man at that time

Beside being alot of other things I'm also a mathematician. I'd argue that mathematics is the one science that doesnt do this at all. Most of the best discoveries in mathematics came as result of scientific curiosity wherein the mathematician never felt it necessary to apply such things to the real world. A mathematician proves an incredible fact using mathematics, then years later some engineer realises how much their discovery counts to the real world when in trying to do something: they find that that mathematics is the most useful.

For example, George Boole wrote a book in 1854 which clarified his thoughts on logic and and described his new algebra of sets, now known as boolean algebra. Years and years later, computer engineers realised that this algebra perfectly described the actions of their complex switching circuits. My point is simply that all science is not simply a study of the world around us, but when such logic is built it apllies to our physical world anyway. I guess in my opinion the best kind of science is based upon logical proof: not real world experiments that simply go with some sort of average result.

Anyway, enough of this scientific mumbo jumbo and back to the tubes....

Rob

[blfrd]

Well this thread certainly went places I didn't expect it to....


Good stuff guys..

[RAM]

Well this thread certainly went places I didn't expect it to....

Yeah sorry about that I think we got a bit carried awat to say the least

Just found an interesting article and I thought I'd share it for those who might be interested. Haven't finished reading it, but some of it is relevant to this previous discussion.

http://www.davidgriesinger.com/intermod.ppt" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

Maybe not for everyone as some of it might be a bit 'heavy' but I'm finding it a very interesting read.

Rob

[blfrd]

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad the thread went were it did. I certainly have little or no experience with this stuff and it sure seems like a couple people here do, so post away.

I find it interesting too, just a little over my head.

thanks for the input everyone.


this forum rocks!

[joshwilson3]

Is this why when listening to records from the early 80's by bands playing Marshall, that it sounds like a Marshall? Like Slayer, Ratt, Metallica (Ride the Lightening), Van Halen amongst other bands.

Listen to Slayer's Diabolus in Musica from 98, played with a Marshall 2203, but it doesn't sound like a Marshall 2203. It has a very modern sound like solid state Marshall valvestate or something. I miss those late 70's early 80's Marshall sounds. You don't hear that sound with todays recordings even if the bands are using the same Marshalls from the 70's-80's.

[zrAC/DC]

I liked that Pin hole in the picture analogy that makes the most sense to me. I am young, but still would rather listen to vinyl over digital recordings. I believe that your the frequencies your conscious doesn't hear and enjoy, your subconscious does and that gets you more into the music.

I found this looking around the internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kR7227_ndqQ" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I have heard that they try to make digtal modeling amps and transistor amps sound like tube amps and why don't they just offer the tube amp instead? The circuit would be a lot simpler to build the tube amp rather than adding all these chips and circuits to it just to get it to sound like the tube amp to begin with.

I've always read they try to make digital "sound" like analog. Why not just use the Analog if that's the sound you want in the first place?

To me it doesn't make sense, but I love reading all of this, I like to learn this.

[blfrd]

Why not just use the Analog if that's the sound you want in the first place?

Because it's easy to mass produce digital amps, it's not easy to mass produce point-to-point soldered tube amps.

It's commerce. They want to make the most money possible.

[zrAC/DC]

Wouldn't it still be harder and take more money to design it to sound like the tube amp to begin with?

[blfrd]

Wouldn't it still be harder and take more money to design it to sound like the tube amp to begin with?

Most of the companies doing this (digital modeling) are spending the money in R&D, rather than the mass production. Anything can be farmed out to China for pennies on the dollar.

With regard to your first question, ..... evidently not. Or rather, they're not spending all their money to get it exactly right. Just close.

Now whether it actually "Sounds" like a tube amp is debatable. I have yet to hear one that does. THere's just no getting around it.

If you notice, Line 6 just came out with an amp that has a Bogner output section....

[Doug H]

You can call clock imperfections jitter, but I beleive the term more typically refers to transmission and hardware issues in the player, maybe even inconsistencies in the initial burn.

I've been told to burn all my audio discs at the slowest speed possible to make them as easy as possible for the player to read.

[RAM]

Actually jitter is due to clock inconsistincies. Essentially it's a phase problem. ie: when sampling at 44.1kHz jitter will occur when the sampling rate changes between each sample and there is no longer 1/44100 of a second between each sample.

This can occur in the player but it will be caused by the cd players D/A.

Burning disks at low speed is done to lower other digital errors that essentially make some 1's become 0's and 0's become 1's.

Rob

[electricskychurch]

it's easy to see how the mastering is a problem now.
when you use a -10 db output consumer cd player with actual cd's and plug it in a mixing desk selecting -10db and put the fader to Zero, the CD player overloads the mixing desk input .
the same thing with 80's and 90's cd's won't overload the mixer (it would be the same with +4dbu output/input).

the most difficult to build in converters ar the analog to digital ones.


when you see the frequency response of actual audio/studio gears that is extended and when you hear it compared to the old 50-70's stuff that was mostly 40Hz to 16000 Hz, one can really wonder if it's a progress ! LOL

i don't say new technologies or new products are never good but a lot of what is sold is junk to feed the market.