[Steven Sullivan]

jailhouserock wrote:
On Mar 28, 11:08 am, "Mike Rivers" wrote:
On Mar 28, 10:53 am, "jailhouserock"
wrote:

Darn! You know, you're right. I recorded the Arlington Philharmonic on
Sunday using 44.1 kHz, 16-bits. I listened to the CD in my car on the
way home, and it sounded just like Blood, Sweat and Tears. Then I
realized that I had selected the wrong CD in the changer.

agreed- CD is a great car format

Actually, CD's terrible in the sense that if exploited to full,
music with quiet sections will sound worse in a car than almost any other
medium.

However, the geniuses behind the sliders have found ways to 'fix' that,
by digitally compressing the dynamic range to a fare-thee-well. So
now those CDs sound great in a car! But not so great at home.
Unless you're having a party.


See, I DID say it.


SACD would sound better- unless now, rez doesn't mean much to you ?

Only if I can hear it. I doubt my hearing and listening environments were ever good enough
to need 'resolution' beyond the ~94ish dB available to dithered Redbook. I doubt yours ever
were either. I'm happy that bitdepths 16 are being used in production though, to prevent
nasty rounding artifacts from becoming audible.

Ditto frequency response above 20 kHz.

If it's not 44.1 kHz 16-bit, it's not a CD.

well hells bells, digital has progressed a bit beyond that now, hasn't
it

In some senses, in others, it's just the marketing that has progressed.

16/44.1 is just beyond the the margin of acceptable, where getting something 'wrong' could
produce an audible hit; thus to exploit it flawlessly required excellent engineering (in both
the hardware and software realms). "Higher rez" formats leave a bigger margin for error,
making it in some ways *easier* to achieve the excellent sound CD can offer.




___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason