Just for completion & also of interest - one of JJ's presentation here IEEE Seminar: Mr. James D. Johnston
And people who prefer CDs prefer the distortions they add? It's not so simple.
I've understood that for over 20 years. That's why I gave up on recorded music for about 15 of those years. But I disagree about "always a bad facsimile." Even when I was listening to live acoustic music all day, every day, I did hear a few systems that could do it. Of course I was not A/B testing them with the "real thing", but they were close enough to sound real to my highly trained ear.
Some of what you say about my recent A/B of live vs. miked is true, but a lot is not. Since I was sitting right under a set of organ pipes, most of that was direct sound. And the mics were picking up a lot of ambiance, maybe too much. But once that was "electrified" it just didn't sound the same. This is a constant battle in recording and reproduction and at the heart of the problem, IMO.
I do agree that some of the prices are insane. We can do as well or better with DIY at a small fraction of the price. We can afford to feel smug, we've earned it. 😀
At least a few. (though I know not the actual tool) IIRC, the Beatles remasters are one that was downsampled with high quality tools. But another is a great little set of recording called the Blue Coast Collection Available as 96Khz, 44.1, or DSD. I only have the 44.1 since my main playback system until recently was only 44.1 capable. She records everything on 2" analog master tape, then records the mixes in high-res digital (DSD maybe?). (again, I don't have specifics of the tools used to downsample)
I've also played around personally with a couple of measurement mics and my wife's violin. But of course that's only on the digital side.
Very true!
but also a different issue from the digital comparisons... The mastering can be dictated by the medium, but it should not be entirely so. In theory, something mastered for hi-res digital would not be treated much differently than for 44.1. Though vinyl does have real limitations that force specific mastering. (mostly in dynamic range)
Master could be held constant, though yes, it most often is not. And that's just it, you really can't compare easily. exactly as you point out Pano! Often 2 releases of the same album on vinyl or on CD will have different mastering applied (almost for sure they will from vinyl to CD or from decade to decade). I now have 3 or 4 versions of The White Album. Vinyl (random 90's pressing), CD, and CD remastered. I don't yet have the 24-bit version. (but at lest there the mastering is unchanged from the released CD)
I was fortunate enough to have attended a wonderful live recording session at Blue Coast Studios where we listened live to a local classical guitarist, then to the straight 2" analog tape, then to the quickly "produced" mix version. (only a couple of mics.) and then to the digital. (have a download of the final output somewhere) It was of course very informative. And the producer, Ms Cookie Marenco had some very good insights to impart. The whole point is of course that it is IMPOSSIBLE to ever re-create the live sound as heard in that room. That is gone. But it is possible to capture something that is relatively faithful, and sounds pleasing.
Last edited:
I think they mostly prefer the lack of "bad" distortions, and the convenience. Many that I know have not heard the difference and assume vinyl won't sound as good. I've set a few straight 😀
That said, I still typically "prefer" digital as I'm lazy, and I've found digital done well is good. it can vary though...
yes, 😀 (in the end, I think we agree 😉 )
I think the "bad facsimile" thing may come down to interpretation. Recorded will never be precisely the same as it sounded live. That does not mean it cannot sound good. Or that it cannot faithfully reproduce something very near to what was heard live. It just cannot exactly reproduce it. (in some cases it may improve it) And in the vast majority of cases, the microphones and mic techniques selected to make the recording are as much a part of the artistry as anything else. Good vocal mics are not typically flat accurate 🙄
"Since I was sitting right under a set of organ pipes"
That's a unique situation. Usually everyone in the audience sits some distance away from the source of sound. From maybe 20 to 30 feet to over 100 up in the balcony at the back of a large hall or at the back of a cathedral. Bose reported that just 16 feet from the performing stage at Boston Symphony Hall the reverberant sound, that is the sound due to reflections was 89% and his graph showed that the further back you went, the higher the percentage became. That's where most of the sound is, in the reflections. That's also where the main source of failure of sound reproducing systems designed for music lies IMO.
Cool, I don't have any of the Blue Coast stuff. What do you think of it?
I really think that digital, even Redbook, can be superbly done. It just usually isn't. 🙁
I really think that digital, even Redbook, can be superbly done. It just usually isn't. 🙁
Unusual, yes. But in this church there is a set of pipes in the balcony right were my camera position was. It was fun to hear them and the pipes so far away in the nave. To my ear they shared a smoothness just not found in the electronic version, a version not yet recorded but direct to my headphones. Ditto the choir. Yes, the stuff far away was bathed in a reverberant soup, but that was not what I was listening for, it was more the "texture" of the sound, for lack of a better term.
It's the same thing I hear with almost all acoustic music and voice. The electronic version is so often cold, rough and not pretty compared to the real thing. Why is that?
I agree with you.
Regarding Binaural recordings played through headphones. I've heard a fair number of Binaural recordings and they most certainly do not sound like they originate inside your head. If the person that stated that had ever heard Binaural, he wouldn't have made such a blatantly ignorant statement. I'm sorry, but it's true. Decent Binaural recordings are absolutely the closest it's possible to duplicate actually being there live...period!
Best Regards,
TerryO
It wasn't a deliberate straw man. I really am just missing the point!
In an earlier post you intimated that "bit errors" were not the manufacturing problem that had been alluded to. But in a post above you mention problems with CD "pressing". What, apart from bit errors, could result from a bad pressing?
And are you suggesting that the fundamental problem with CD is poor sample rate conversion?
Surely both of these technical problems can be dealt with straightforwardly without mystery: Sample rate conversion can be accomplished to any arbitrary degree of precision and technical perfection using mathematics. Bad pressings get returned to the shop, and replaced with perfect digits.
If those are not your two main objections to CD, could you state the actual problem in a way where I won't get the wrong end of the stick?!
I would agree 100%, and add that I really think that analog, even LP, can be superbly done. It just usually isn't.
Indeed!
Our priorities include excellent sound quality. That is rarely included in the priorities of most folks I've worked with in audio. That sounds like a bash, but it isn't. They just have a lot of others things to deal with, and "audiophile quality" sound isn't high on the list. To be honest, many don't even know it exists.
That does create a niche market for those who do care.
Our priorities include excellent sound quality. That is rarely included in the priorities of most folks I've worked with in audio. That sounds like a bash, but it isn't. They just have a lot of others things to deal with, and "audiophile quality" sound isn't high on the list. To be honest, many don't even know it exists.
That does create a niche market for those who do care.
"Yes, the stuff far away was bathed in a reverberant soup"
That "soup' is what makes the difference between hearing beautiful music and hearing awful sound. Without that soup, you'd hear what you'd hear outside with no bandshell, no amplification. That is almost as bad a way and place to hear music as if it were performed in an anechoic chamber. That soup when an excellent recipe is prepared is so delicious it's why philanthropists and communities will spend up to 100 milliion dollars to build a concert hall in the hopes that it will sound much better than a far cheaper building such as a high school gymnasium that can hold as many people. That soup is an integral part of music and even affects how the musicians perform, how the music is written by those best skilled at it. And that soup even if you are sitting next to pipes from a pipe organ is still heard. It is inescepable except to electronic recording and playback systems which cannot accurately record it or play it. In fact its true nature is not well understood yet. Nobody cabable of solving that problem has spent the effort it would take. That's why you have only what lesser people have devised. No amount of perfecting it can make up for its gross shortcomings.
OK, fair enough.
I think bit errors or a struggle by the reader to get it right would be the results. At least the results that I've seen. You've probably ripped a few CDs and found that some are slow and difficult to rip. Why? Shouldn't they all be perfect? Or within spec enough not to cause difficulties? But they are not.
Not THE fundamental problem, but A problem. I'm saying it may be a significant part of the problem with CDs produced before the turn of the century, and even more recently.
I would hope so, but doubt it actually is!
I'm not so sure about that. If you want to waste a lot of time, start reading the pro forums about sample rate conversion. It's a big topic. As Werner points out, up until recently it was not done well.
A fine idea, but only those bad enough to actually fail would get returned. Same with vinyl. You remember all the griping about bad vinyl pressings in the 70s-80s, right? But since CDs are supposed to be perfect, then they won't be considered "bad" unless they fail to play. (or have obvious glitches)
I'll try. 😀
For me, a CD is a shiny thing I used to buy at the store, but now order from Amazon. For me, a CD isn't the CD format, but the actual, physical object I can buy and hold in my hands. They have music on them. They are the sum total of the recording, mixing, mastering, pressing, playback and D/A conversion. I hear all of that when I listen to a CD. The only thing I have control over is the playback and D/A conversion.
When I hear a bad CD, it's all of those things in the chain they make me think, "yuck, CDs suck". But of course, the format itself isn't that bad, just the end result. I can get a much more satisfying sound with some care in the D/A section. And not all CDs sound bad to me, quite the contrary. But I do fall into the camp of listeners who find the CD's major fault to be a certain "glare" or unnaturalness. Why do they sound that way? Why does vinyl so often not sound that way? It has it's faults, but that isn't one of them.
So if the medium is capable of sounding really great, why doesn't it always? Part of it is in the playback, but I'm pretty satisfied with my playback now. The other reasons have to lie in how the CDs were produced. We all know about the loudness wars, but we can't really blame the CD for that. But what about the other faults that bother so many people?
There are so many steps along the way from recording to the actual shiny disc that a lot can go wrong. Nothing should go wrong, it's a digital workflow, right? But alas that is not the reality. A lot of manipulation happens along the way. Much of that is for a good purpose, like overall levels and EQ, but there is a lot that can go wrong.
The commercial CD that you bought at the shop is not the simple result of Musician>mic>Mic preamp>ADC>laser>optical disc. There is a lot more to it. And inside that "lot more" lie a lot of things to go wrong.
Thanks Pano.
Why are we interested in knowing which is 'better': CD or TT? Partly, I would say, so that people know whether to pursue the development of one or the other, or to abandon the technology. I don't think it is all that useful to cloud the issue with whether people always store the right signals on either format.
I might go along with your thesis if there were any fundamental impediment to people 'getting it right'. The truly amazing thing is that we all possess the tools to make our own high resolution digital recordings virtually 'for free'. Doing sample rate conversion correctly, or not correctly, is not down to cost, merely to making the right choices, but because we have democratised the recording process to the ultimate degree, there are people out there dabbling with the technology without really understanding it - you don't need to serve an apprenticeship before you are given access to the equipment any more.
In digital audio technology we have a system that aims to take a wiggly line and store it as precisely as possible. It doesn't aim to add 'musicality' or distortion effects that are pleasing to the ear, because those can be added digitally anyway. That there are people who just don't 'get it right' when making a recording is merely down to the ubiquity of the technology and its low cost. With LPs, only time served experts are given the key to the cutting lathe, and the costs are far higher. Obviously more care will be taken in producing a recording, because to end up with a dodgy pressing would be an expensive disaster. But to then take that as a fundamental 'plus' that is used as a stick to beat CD seems wrong to me.
None of it matters in the scheme of things of course, but it's interesting to discuss it.
Why are we interested in knowing which is 'better': CD or TT? Partly, I would say, so that people know whether to pursue the development of one or the other, or to abandon the technology. I don't think it is all that useful to cloud the issue with whether people always store the right signals on either format.
I might go along with your thesis if there were any fundamental impediment to people 'getting it right'. The truly amazing thing is that we all possess the tools to make our own high resolution digital recordings virtually 'for free'. Doing sample rate conversion correctly, or not correctly, is not down to cost, merely to making the right choices, but because we have democratised the recording process to the ultimate degree, there are people out there dabbling with the technology without really understanding it - you don't need to serve an apprenticeship before you are given access to the equipment any more.
In digital audio technology we have a system that aims to take a wiggly line and store it as precisely as possible. It doesn't aim to add 'musicality' or distortion effects that are pleasing to the ear, because those can be added digitally anyway. That there are people who just don't 'get it right' when making a recording is merely down to the ubiquity of the technology and its low cost. With LPs, only time served experts are given the key to the cutting lathe, and the costs are far higher. Obviously more care will be taken in producing a recording, because to end up with a dodgy pressing would be an expensive disaster. But to then take that as a fundamental 'plus' that is used as a stick to beat CD seems wrong to me.
None of it matters in the scheme of things of course, but it's interesting to discuss it.
Not quite yet, IMHO, but the time is getting close, very close.
I have said all along that High Bit Rate, Hi-Rez digital played from some sort of Solid State Hard Drive based music server will probably be the setup that gets us there.
The only thing that is keeping me from copying my vinyl, is that I believe that the gear necessary for a music server will continue to improve and get cheaper. I recently listened to a music server that one of our members (a retired Microsoft Executive) had put together for about $300-400 (parts purchased at Fry's) and it was phenomenal.
BTW: He stated that he thought it was pretty good, but it didn't quite equal vinyl....Yet!
I do believe that soon the debate will evolve into:
How better is a Hi-Rez Music Server compared to a CD
Best Regards,
TerryO
Well it certainly matters to me, and that's where we differ. I am less interested in what a CD can be, than what it actually is. Because I have to buy them as they are - I don't get to choose how they are made.
I long ago discovered that making my own recordings was fun and satisfying. Also discovered long ago that CDs don't have to sound bad.
But your point about pursuing a technology that has no future is well taken. The LP is great, but we can do better. And I think that we finally are doing better. TerryO has already made that point.
Some CDs don't sound bad until you compare them to something else and you realize what you're missing.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.