Young kids can wreck anything given enough time. Cartridges and vinyl records are easy prey.
I always rip CD's to FLAC using EAC. It's a free program, easy to use and if it does increase accuracy, why not use it?
I agree, good post Gnobuddy. I'd add that nature abhors a vacuum and in terms of human knowledge we create myth and superstition to fill the voids. Science does not seem as able to fill the void that is left when religious faith and superstition is removed. Humans love magic and mystery but only when set within a pre-established framework/belief system.
I always rip CD's to FLAC using EAC. It's a free program, easy to use and if it does increase accuracy, why not use it?
I agree, good post Gnobuddy. I'd add that nature abhors a vacuum and in terms of human knowledge we create myth and superstition to fill the voids. Science does not seem as able to fill the void that is left when religious faith and superstition is removed. Humans love magic and mystery but only when set within a pre-established framework/belief system.
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Nature does not play sine waves but more or less ringing impulses. Impulse response matters, and here the CD falls short of Vinyl. And why should one sample and bin amplitudes? Granted, if one makes it fine enuf, it may sound perfect. But all that data will need a case and a reader, which will be very advanced. Then, why not just find a good-enuf analogy for amplitudes and be content with it? Earth is not just over-populated, it is over-technicised, too. DIY is not about a Google of people depending on one another, it is about doing it ourselves.gnobuddy said:
They just swallow the USB sticks instead.
Same problem here, my old 3 series has an auto changer and it's not easy to fit another stereo. I get well sick of the same 6 CD's before i finally get around to changing them.
What do you think Grasso? should i install a turntable
my conclusion in this matter after countless discusssions (on and offline) is that listening is subjective. I don't hear like you and you not like the others.
Pure objective is (high end) digital more precise and has a bigger frequency and dynamic range than analog audio can store. But i also prefer the bloated sound of vinyl and taperecorders (when well done). That's because it's subjective. Yes the harmonics are distorted, the bass is not precise and the frequency range is less (30hz-17kHz for vinyl), but i still like it.
It's just like i like lowfi music as much as perfect sounding albums. This is a reggae classic from 1985 made with the very cheap and bloated Casio MT40 synth in a rather lowfi ghetto studio somewhere in a dangerous neighbourhood where you don't want to be (Waterhouse) in Kingston Jamaica. But it sounds perfect to me and many many more, it's actually one of the biggest reggae classics ever despite the cheap synth and lofi recording... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p_xEZWAtow
Pure objective is (high end) digital more precise and has a bigger frequency and dynamic range than analog audio can store. But i also prefer the bloated sound of vinyl and taperecorders (when well done). That's because it's subjective. Yes the harmonics are distorted, the bass is not precise and the frequency range is less (30hz-17kHz for vinyl), but i still like it.
It's just like i like lowfi music as much as perfect sounding albums. This is a reggae classic from 1985 made with the very cheap and bloated Casio MT40 synth in a rather lowfi ghetto studio somewhere in a dangerous neighbourhood where you don't want to be (Waterhouse) in Kingston Jamaica. But it sounds perfect to me and many many more, it's actually one of the biggest reggae classics ever despite the cheap synth and lofi recording... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2p_xEZWAtow
Thanks! I would quite agree with those people - the scientific method is indeed unnatural. And thank goodness for that, because what is "natural" to us humans is xenophobia, tribal wars, absolute dictatorships, superstition, ritual killings, belief in witchcraft, and a whole lot of other extremely unpleasant and extremely silly behaviour!
The scientific method hasn't completely cured us of any of those foibles. But, given our tragically limited brains, it's the best we've got; at least most of us have stopped sacrificing virgins every time a bridge collapses somewhere.
In the wonderful little book "The battery", the author discusses the invention of the Leyden jar. With the newfound ability to store electric charge, experimenters set out to find out if electric shocks were felt equally strongly by orphans, nuns, and eunuchs, compared to members of the general population.
That was a wake-up moment for me. Those experimenters were using the scientific method, in so far as they were actually testing their hypothesis (different types of people feel electric shocks differently.) But they were using pure superstition to formulate their initial hypothesis, in so far as they were expecting that orphans or nuns would react differently to the flow of electricity through their bodies!
How different are we today, a mere couple of centuries later? Are we still using superstition to set up our hypothesis?
Maybe not to the same degree, but I would argue the evidence says the answer is still "yes". We look at the more expensive car and immediately hypothesize that it is better; we look at the bigger loudspeaker and immediately assume it will produce more bass; all this, before we take that test drive, or pull out the microphone and test equipment.
I agree. I think it takes astonishing genius for an individual to step out of the limitations of her/his entire species, and see them for what they are. It's only happened a handful of times in human history, because the normal situation is for us to be blind to our own limitations.
Simple case in point, the blind-spot ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_spot_(vision) ) that is built into each human eye. Since this is a result of our anatomy (the retina is "blind" at the exit point of the optic nerve), all vertebrates possess it. So we can be quite sure this defect goes back through the entire history of our species, over 100,000 years, and maybe 200,000.
But nobody noticed! For 100,000 years, maybe 200,000 years, quite literally, all of us humans walked around with a whopping big blind spot in each eye - and we didn't notice!
(Apparently, it wasn't till 1660 that the existence of the blind spot was documented for the first time that we know of.)
-Gnobuddy
One has to understand the mathematics of Fourier Transforms to know why sine waves are so useful: because all "ringing impulses" can be accurately described as a sum of several sine waves, and sine waves are easy to study mathematically. So, by deconstructing more complex waveforms into sine waves, we end up knowing more about them, not less.
There are no straight lines in nature, either. But that doesn't mean the architect who designed your house was a fool for using straight lines to outline your doors, windows, and walls, does it?
Not even remotely true. Vinyl requires a mass on a stick mounted on a spring (stylus, cartridge) to play back. Mass and springiness together always leads to mechanical resonance; and mechanical resonance always equals poor impulse response.
In the case of the vinyl and stylus playback system, there are a minimum of two resonances, one at the bass end, where the mass of the entire pickup arm resonates with the compliance of the stylus, and one at the treble end, where the tip-mass of the cantilever resonates with the springiness of the vinyl itself. In poorly designed cartridges, there may be many other resonances in between.
There are also other many other mechanical resonances in the vinyl record audio chain: the microphone that picked up the sounds, and the cutting lathe that made the master record, in particular.
The digital audio chain eliminates both the cutting lathe resonances, and the playback system resonances. Laser beams have no mass, for practical purposes. That elimination of multiple mechanical resonances in itself is a huge improvement in favour of the CD (and other digital audio systems.)
Yes, it is much more complex, and locks us amateurs out. Very true. And it can be frustrating, certainly.
As a teenager, I built my own record player from scratch, using one of my mom's discarded plastic plates for the turntable, a windshield-wiper motor from a transit bus to belt-drive it, a tone-arm I built from wood, et cetera. It was fun, and I ended up with a record player, which, at the time, I could not afford to buy.
But I cannot hope to build my own CD player from scratch.
Well, good-enough means different things to different people, you know. In the 1980s I was hugely frustrated by the poor quality of cassette-tape audio, but none of my friends were bothered by the same limitations.
Records were sometimes better than tapes - but there were ticks, pops, audible wow and rumble, severe high frequency harmonic distortion near the centre of the record where recorded wavelengths are shortest, and so on.
You have a point, but I think that ship has sailed long ago. I can't even make an old-fashioned incandescent light-bulb from scratch, can you?
Here you can find an account of a creative man who decided to try to make an electric toaster by himself, from scratch, to find out just how complex a task it was: https://www.ted.com/talks/thomas_thwaites_how_i_built_a_toaster_from_scratch?language=en
-Gnobuddy
Good day,
Ya, i mean no. Still, Vinyl has better impulse response than CD. See below.
In the beginning of the digital aera, these lowpass filters were done analogue. They are electrically ringing, with somewhat the same result as a mechanical filter of the same amplitude response. Put in a step, get out a step with a rounded and ringing out saddle, like a drum hit with a hard stick. As time went by, they were now done digital, say oversampling, with same amplitude but different, flat phase response. Now output builds up ringing from nowhere like a bottle head blown with raising volume even before the step starts. The saddle still rings, too, and complete ringing time stays the same, but ringing has become time-symmetrical, centered on step. I mean, that in nature post- is still more common than pre-ringing. But oversampling is built much cheaper than analogue filters, once one has managed to integrate transistors some more. If last man will be connected to a matrix, which synthesizes ringing from birth to death, well, that may be it.
Uli
Ya, i mean no. Still, Vinyl has better impulse response than CD. See below.
Let us just compare amplitude versus frequency plots of a CD and a Vinyl recording über-alles, i mean from record in- to playback output. The one of CD drops down 196 dB from 20 to 22 KHz. It must, for else the CD recorder were prone to aliasing, and the CD player would produce noise above 22 KHz. This lowpass is much steeper than the lowpasses found in Vinyl recorders and players. The steeper the filtering, the worse impulse response, no matter if digital or analogue.
In the beginning of the digital aera, these lowpass filters were done analogue. They are electrically ringing, with somewhat the same result as a mechanical filter of the same amplitude response. Put in a step, get out a step with a rounded and ringing out saddle, like a drum hit with a hard stick. As time went by, they were now done digital, say oversampling, with same amplitude but different, flat phase response. Now output builds up ringing from nowhere like a bottle head blown with raising volume even before the step starts. The saddle still rings, too, and complete ringing time stays the same, but ringing has become time-symmetrical, centered on step. I mean, that in nature post- is still more common than pre-ringing. But oversampling is built much cheaper than analogue filters, once one has managed to integrate transistors some more. If last man will be connected to a matrix, which synthesizes ringing from birth to death, well, that may be it.
I have similar experiences.
Exactly. These days i have calmed down and know, that everything works within its frame of possibilities. Some cases are hopeless, some are not, no big deal anyway. Just women seem to be able to blow up anything.
Or take a rope. Ropes are necessary for civilization. Yet the plant, which is best suited for rope-making, for you know hemp, is a red blanket to people. Take history. Certainly important for the mind, yet we must not speak easy about it. Sex, certainly important for the soul, yet we must not do it.
Uli
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There's so much nonsense in this, it isn't even wrong. Any bandlimited impulse consists of a bunch of sinewaves and the CD system is much, much more able to reconstruct it.
Advanced reader? You mean a 30 bucks CD player running rings around a 10 kilobuck mechanical contraption meant to just rotate a piece of vinyl?
And you missed the bit that two samples in a 20kHz signal are enough to perfectly reproduce the original signal. So it doesn't need to be 'fine enough', that a basic misunderstanding you're displaying here.
You really crack me up.
Jan
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