Digital audio and stress

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#122
Let me ask all you that have this thing against sighted digital being fatiguing, would you ditch your modern hi-res digital TV and go back to the wonderful world of analogue TV...
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I remember that a while back one of the audio rags (TAS? Not sure) had a video offshoot, and for a while it was proclaiming that old picture tube TVs had the more correct color and was therefore superior to newfangled flat-screen displays. Because old stuff has to be better, always.

Otherwise why would old stuff be so rare in modern times, because everyone was snapping it all up off the market....
 
#123
Not to be a douche or nuthin, but some of those early plasma displays were kinda crappy looking for various reasons (poor scaling of lower-res stuff for example), and the LCDs even more so. They got it together in relatively short order, though. Sure wouldn't think of going back now.

These days, what really bugs me with this stuff is the loud-mouths proclaiming the "obvious and not subtle" benefits of expensive HDMI cables. This has been going on for some time, and doesn't seem to be abating much if at all. I had to stop posting to another forum awhile back because of nonsense like that. There's just no educating some people.

-- Jim
 
#124
benb said:
You mean like a slide rule?
(I had a teacher in high school ask a student to say it, the teacher wrote on the board "sly drool" and said "that's what you said.")

The old obsolete ones, with lots of distortion and noise, go for big bucks.

I was going to mention discrete-time (like the title of the renamed Oppenheim-Shafer book) and discrete-amplitude (the belated LM3915 - have all the most fun chips gone obsolete, or have I lived too long?), but why bother.

You mean like an old-fashioned analog CRT TV screen?

My values, in regard to this forum, are to be as technically correct as I reasonably can. I think that most nearly reflects reality, at least the samples of it I post here.

I managed to do analog wrong in college when I could only afford a $10 phono cartridge.

"Analog" LP sales have been increasing in recent years, so much that the remaining vinyl record presses are running 24/7. Admittedly, the vast majority of these are from digital sound files, and even some of the analog recording are suspect because some record cutters use a digital delay to pre-adjust the groove width for modulation volume.

Does anyone have an exact reference for this, like thread name and post #?

OMG! And I thought a 12-step program was hard...

So, one objection to digital is the medium? One of the advantages of digital is it can be copied so you only have to read the CD once.

Though I do recall an old thread on the difference in sound between playing digital files from a FLASH drive vs. a hard drive. You might want to read up on that. Perhaps I shouldn't mention it, I vaguely recall it being ended by a mod locking it.

I thought of making one of those on the Internet, but one thought tells me it's been done already, just translate these new-age words into audiophile words:
Random Deepak Chopra Quote Generator - Wisdom of Chopra

I think the big dependence is on tape speed (coupled with recording head gap size - it's a wavelength issue of max recordable frequency). Tape going at 15IPS as in studio recorders tends to record the bias signal, cassettes going a 1 7/8 IPS tend not to.

Oh, if only the master tapes from the 1970s could have been pre-shedded.

It depends on what "new" is. Before there was a Compact Disc, Telarc made some LPs recorded on a digital tape recorder.
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It was at least 15 years ago. I visited the art center recording equipment and I was very impressed at the quality available to the sound engineers.

With modern fast SSD the digital tape recorders are obsolete.

To answer the thread starter question: I think the stress is higher on records listening because of the higher noise and irritable distortion at the end of records, strident noises and dynamics which are more subdued in a CD medium.

I think the cd is less stressful but less captivating to hear.
 
#125
benb said:
Does anyone have an exact reference for this, like thread name and post #?
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The guy create a very smart system to double-blind test the appreciation of listeners of vinyl vs. digital.

He created a system where listeners could play a record but then, randomly, what they actually heard was either the original sound of the vinyl or a digital rendition of it.

So they played either a record or a CD player, but the actual sound they heard come from either the record or the CD player, with no direct relation to the equipment in use at the time.

There are several interesting findings but the one that struck me was that people preferred the music when they played a record player, even when the sound came from a CD player.

https://linearaudio.net/article-detail/2245

The system he created to pull this off in itself is worth a read.

Jan
 
#128
Remember when tuning the TV frequencies you had to decide between sharpness and saturation. The younger generations won't understand the struggle.

But, while computer VGA was way more accurate than analogue SD TV, the original data source due to the nature of computing is digital, the data fed through a DAC on the graphics card.

LCD's issue was not the interface, but more of the output device. Today VGA cables cannot handle 1080p without noticeable degradation compared to a $5 DVI / HDMI / DP cable.
 
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#129
jan.didden said:
That must be why they called it Never The Same Color....

<snip>

Jan
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Really applies only to the old U.S. analog NTSC color TV standard, PAL solved this issue a few years later. Not sure about SECAM, but it looked OK the few times I looked at TV in France. (not often, better things to do, like look at those cute French girls, ooh la la. Well I was young..)

Early flat screens definitely did not support the same color gamut as the best CRTs of the time. Most still don't support the full color space of most extant standards, but with the advent of LED backlighting amongst other things the situation is much improved. Incredibly confusing on the standards front. Here is a tidbit on UHDTV for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rec._2020
I know very little about the subject, I dare say others have much more to add.
 
#133
Ron E said:
Color rendering was more true on CRT's - people in calibrated color-managed environments (printing, photography) are slow adopters of LCD displays.

https://www.google.com/search?q=color+accuracy+crt+lcd
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These days you can get decent monitors if colour is important, cost more though, my BenQ was about £600, gives me 99% adobe RGB, compared to £270 for a more mundane model (both 2K 27"). And some are amazing but for amateur use outside of my price range....
 
#134
Yes, I was going to say something about that, as Bill W picked a rather bad example. 🙂
Display color being my bread and butter it's something I've followed closely for the past 20 years. But you guys beat me to it.

Until recently LCD displays simply were not very good. I work in fields where color is critically important and the LCD panels just didn't do it. Limited color gamut, wrong color filters, bad contrast, poor black levels, unsmooth gray levels. Many plasma and CRT displays did not have those problems. LCD has gotten much, much better lately.
 
#135
Pano said:
Yes, I was going to say something about that, as Bill W picked a rather bad example. 🙂
Display color being my bread and butter it's something I've followed closely for the past 20 years. But you guys beat me to it.

Until recently LCD displays simply were not very good. I work in fields where color is critically important and the LCD panels just didn't do it. Limited color gamut, wrong color filters, bad contrast, poor black levels, unsmooth gray levels. Many plasma and CRT displays did not have those problems. LCD has gotten much, much better lately.
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Here I catch HDTV with an antenna without any costs

VHS nostalgia, the image was so poor and so good because we where young and healthy with our bright open eyes.
 
#136
You missed the point, Gab. We were talking about the quality of of LCD panels vs the phosphor based displays. Don't get lost in the resolution numbers, it's not the whole story. Just like the limits of frequency response is not the whole story in audio reproduction.

And I don't think you'll find many sane people who claim VHS was high quality. It was awful from day one. 🙂
 
#139
Pano said:
Yes, I was going to say something about that, as Bill W picked a rather bad example. 🙂
Display color being my bread and butter it's something I've followed closely for the past 20 years. But you guys beat me to it.

Until recently LCD displays simply were not very good. I work in fields where color is critically important and the LCD panels just didn't do it. Limited color gamut, wrong color filters, bad contrast, poor black levels, unsmooth gray levels. Many plasma and CRT displays did not have those problems. LCD has gotten much, much better lately.
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The IPS (in plane switching) panels are the ones that are far superior to the old TFT. I remember my first hi res CRT monitor a Swan (cant remember the model), the last one I used was a Sony 24" widescreen CRT. When I first moved to LCD they were terrible and have been for a while, its only this year that I have ditched the large screen plasma for a LCD. The OLED screens look nice but to expensive at the moment.
VHS was quite bad 🙂 I had (and still have) a Sony semi pro 8mm camcorder back I around 94, even that picture quality was better than VHS it was a shame to copy your recordings on an inferior medium...


AllenB, from a quick search LP resolution is around 11 bits equivalent, give or take a bit or so, though confirmation would be nice, I will do more searching when I can be bothered.
Higher noise floor as well etc. This hobby is full of lies (woops sorry myths) personally I would rather know the truth and what really works and what is just belief based...
 
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