I am very often surprised by the difference between reality and what's in the people imagination about pro gears and studio practices.
Lets take an example. When the Beatles issued Sgt. Pepper's, we all imagined they used the last modern equipment at this time in their competition with the Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" production.
But, despite they were the best sellers of EMI, they were considered as dangerous thugs by the respectable leaders of this old classic company. The Legend says that when they were in the Abbey Road studio, most of the valuable and pricey equipment were locked away to be well protected from them. They were not allowed to use even the last 16 track tape recorder, and were obliged to use an old 4 track with a lot of premix and tape copies !!! In... Mono !
The reason why they decided to go on the roof of the studio to protest during the recording of the "Abbey Road" album.
Well, i had the bad luck to be asked by a friend to mix a demo on the Beatles mixing desk witch finished his life in a little studio of EMI France.
It was a little tube desk, very primitive with just a bass and treble simple corrector, and strange buttons for the levels.
While i protested about the obsolescence of this desk, saying it was impossible to work on such an antiquity, the local technical manager answered: "Oh, man this is the mixing desk on witch the Beatles realized Sgt Pepper."
What could-i answer ?
Now, when we listen to digital stereo remasterisation of Sgt Pepper, and find-it weird, should-we accuse digital ?
Lets take an example. When the Beatles issued Sgt. Pepper's, we all imagined they used the last modern equipment at this time in their competition with the Beach Boys "Pet Sounds" production.
But, despite they were the best sellers of EMI, they were considered as dangerous thugs by the respectable leaders of this old classic company. The Legend says that when they were in the Abbey Road studio, most of the valuable and pricey equipment were locked away to be well protected from them. They were not allowed to use even the last 16 track tape recorder, and were obliged to use an old 4 track with a lot of premix and tape copies !!! In... Mono !
The reason why they decided to go on the roof of the studio to protest during the recording of the "Abbey Road" album.
Well, i had the bad luck to be asked by a friend to mix a demo on the Beatles mixing desk witch finished his life in a little studio of EMI France.
It was a little tube desk, very primitive with just a bass and treble simple corrector, and strange buttons for the levels.
While i protested about the obsolescence of this desk, saying it was impossible to work on such an antiquity, the local technical manager answered: "Oh, man this is the mixing desk on witch the Beatles realized Sgt Pepper."
What could-i answer ?
Now, when we listen to digital stereo remasterisation of Sgt Pepper, and find-it weird, should-we accuse digital ?
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This is not how it works.
If there are type 1 errors, these are corrected perfectly and you still have bit-perfect copies. Google reed-solomon code, for example. Only unrecoverable errors call on the imagination of the designer how to handle this - dropouts, repeats, whatever. This is not standardized.
My point was that you can easily have 1000's of correctable read errors on a typical CD, even new ones, and still have bit-perfect copies.
The discussion was about type 2, uncorrectable, and during my tests I never saw those on CD except for one which was deliberately heavily damaged.
So, yes, in my world bit-perfect copies are the norm of the day.
Jan
PS Just a few days ago I restored a laptop from a trio of system restore DVD's. Multi-gigabit files, all bit-perfectly restored to the hard disk - laptop looks like new
This was my experience as well. I didn't have the means to check recoverable errors, but couldn't find any discs that would play without obvious skipping that had C2 errors. If one is worried about the possibility that there might be one or two interpolated points over several gigabytes of data, there's always EAC.
Jan is correct on the error correction of CD's. I spent 3 days with Sony in the early CD years and we number crunched all this showing how errors could be correctly reconstructed.
Exact Audio Copy... doesn't that go online if an uncorrectable error is found in the hope that it can download the correct version from a data base ? And when you copy something and its OK, that can be added to the data base for others. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick with EAC ?
Exact Audio Copy... doesn't that go online if an uncorrectable error is found in the hope that it can download the correct version from a data base ? And when you copy something and its OK, that can be added to the data base for others. Or have I got the wrong end of the stick with EAC ?
Hm, CD is 44,1 Khz but DAT i think it was 48Khz basically, 32 Khz if desired and StudioDAT was 44,1 Khz for CD-Masters?
Am i wrong here?
Don't spread misinformation, Esperado.
1. There were no 16 track recorders at Abbey Road studios in 1969.
2. "Abbey Road" was recorded on professional eight-track reel to reel tape machines rather than the four-track machines that were used for earlier Beatles albums such as "Sgt Pepper", and was the first Beatles album not to be issued in mono.
Abbey Road - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Yes, sure. Everyone who happens to own some EMI console claims that he owns original Beatles desk. Every Studer C-37 owner also says the same.
I doubt people of EMI lied about their own history.
About Abbey Road record, after a phone call to somebody who knows the history from inside, you are right, they had access to the 8 track machine and recorded this Album on it, like was done the previous "Beatles" Album.
Let-it be, i apologize for the confusion.
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This and interpolation is what i was thinking..... I'll have to buy a newer CD player to get latest error correction technique; My final CD player for legacy CD in house.
Still waiting for the BenchMark ADC.......> ADC/DAC system tests for distortions at various input levels and bit/rates.
THx-RNMarsh
So what is considered the state-of-the-art in error correction today for a cdp? Has there been any real progress or basic changes in the current CD players or have things gone stagnant since the progressively lower sales of CD's or have we made progress? Do we just jump to SSD storage of music and keep the entire chain that we control away from mechanical reproduction through any type of spinning disk?
The EC process is intimately tied to what is written on the disk in terms of redundant and error correction data. This is all specified in the famous Red Book. So, qualitate qua, all EC must be conceptually the same to make sure all CDs can be read on all players.
So, although one player can have a different EC implementation to another (how the logic is implemented, controller type etc) the process must necessarily be identical. So, Dick, no need to buy a new player to judge the EC effectiveness. ;-)
BTW The CD Red Book is open source.
BTW2: Note the terminology: error correction. That's what it is. Terminology can be very helpfull provided the language use is accurate ;;-)
Jan
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This is similar to what I thought happened as well. All checks good (and listens OK) from the outside. Since it is a one pass system and cannot go back and reread it has to fake it and keep on reading and playing. However often this happens -IMO- it doesnt explain the whole sound all the way thru as being improved over CD with higher bits/rate downloads.
THx-RNMarsh
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What do you mean the "latest error correction technique"? CD uses the same Cross Interleave Reed-Solomon Code (CIRC) that it's always used.
Wow.
se
Great. then I misunderstood what was said about somewhere there were additional/enhanced error correction features applied. Now I dont have to buy a newer model.
It is very interesting from anatech and good to know..... but any deeper EC info is way more than I need to know UNLESS it indicated that could be the reason CD dont sound as good as master hiRes 24/96+ files downloaded. THEN,I would look deeper. The EC would have to be occuring a lot of the time for that much change to take place.
THx-RNMarsh
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