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Sonnova Sonnova is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

I was just watching "Wired Science" on PBS. They just did a "shoot-out"
between digital and analog sound. I'm not going to argue with the result,
because they so screwed-up the way that they explained what they were doing
to the TV audience as to make the entire thing worthless.

First they introduced a recording engineer who's Chicago studio is all
analog. He maintains that analog is better than digital (without defining
WHAT he means by "digital"). Then they interviewed a recording engineer that
thought that digital was better than analog (again without explaining WHAT
kind of digital: 16/44.1, 24/96, DSD, MP3 whatever). Then they thoroughly
confused the issue by interchangeably using the terms MP3 and digital
recording- as if they were one and the same. Then they picked two other
recording engineers and two musicians to listen to a cut from those same
musicians' latest recording. Sometimes they were listening to analog,
sometimes digital, and they held up paddles with the words "digital" and
"analog" written on them, to show whenever they thought they heard a
difference. The cut they played was contiguous with no breaks to indicate
when or if the media had changed (how did they do THAT without editing the
two together onto the same medium??!). In the end, the two musicians chose
correctly 53% of the time, and the two recording engineers chose correctly
55% of the time. In other words, essentially, statistically, no better than
blind chance. The conclusion that the TV show producers came to was that
digital is indistinguishable from analog.

This "test" basically just confuses the issue. They say that they were
testing the widely held belief that analog sounds better than digital. But
what they don't differentiate between is PCM digital CD vs MP3. The
impression that I was left with is that they were saying that an analog
master is statistically indistinguishable from an MP3 digital simply because
they made no effort to differentiate between MP3 and RedBook PCM and never
said what the listening "panel" was actually listening too, or the
circumstances under which the "listening test" was conducted. "Wired
Science"? Bogus science is more like it.
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Mike Mueller Mike Mueller is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

This is rec.audio.high-end? Correct?
Too the average listener, he or she will not be able hear the difference
between analog or digital. And yes they are very happy with that. It's
just a simple fact. Yes, if you play a LP for them, they can hear a few
pops and clicks and tell which was the LP and which was the CD. Play a
analog recording on tape against a CD and you will hear a big
difference. My recording of Oh Brother Where Art Thou sounds completely
different on CD that it does on the LP. And those who have listened at
my house can hear the difference and like the LP better.
However, someone with a better "ear" can distinguish Red book from
Analog. Isn't that what High End Audio is about? If digital was better
than analog, why do studio's still record masters on Analog Tape instead
of DAT. Why do musicians still want wind instruments recorded on analog
tape instead of DAT.
Analog is what the human ear hears. It's natural with all the 3rd and
4th order harmonics the brain senses yet we can not hear.
Thank you
Mike Mueller
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Sonnova Sonnova is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

On Thu, 8 Nov 2007 19:44:43 -0800, mike mueller wrote
(in article ):

This is rec.audio.high-end? Correct?
Too the average listener, he or she will not be able hear the difference
between analog or digital. And yes they are very happy with that. It's
just a simple fact. Yes, if you play a LP for them, they can hear a few
pops and clicks and tell which was the LP and which was the CD. Play a
analog recording on tape against a CD and you will hear a big
difference. My recording of Oh Brother Where Art Thou sounds completely
different on CD that it does on the LP. And those who have listened at
my house can hear the difference and like the LP better.
However, someone with a better "ear" can distinguish Red book from
Analog. Isn't that what High End Audio is about? If digital was better
than analog, why do studio's still record masters on Analog Tape instead
of DAT. Why do musicians still want wind instruments recorded on analog
tape instead of DAT.
Analog is what the human ear hears. It's natural with all the 3rd and
4th order harmonics the brain senses yet we can not hear.
Thank you
Mike Mueller


Interesting, but irrelevant to to the point of my previous post.
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Codifus Codifus is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

mike mueller wrote:
This is rec.audio.high-end? Correct?
Too the average listener, he or she will not be able hear the difference
between analog or digital. And yes they are very happy with that. It's
just a simple fact. Yes, if you play a LP for them, they can hear a few
pops and clicks and tell which was the LP and which was the CD. Play a
analog recording on tape against a CD and you will hear a big
difference. My recording of Oh Brother Where Art Thou sounds completely
different on CD that it does on the LP. And those who have listened at
my house can hear the difference and like the LP better.

That difference is not due to the mediums, though. Take that LP and
record it to digital with a good soundcard. Burn an audio CD. I bet if
you test that CD against the LP, no one will tell the difference. What
does that say?

However, someone with a better "ear" can distinguish Red book from
Analog. Isn't that what High End Audio is about? If digital was better
than analog, why do studio's still record masters on Analog Tape instead
of DAT.

Because, like all things, there's good and bad. There's bad digital
audio and good digital audio. After 20 some odd years digital audio is
reaching its mature stage, if it hasn't already. We've had mediums like
DVDA, SACD, great DA converters like the DAC1 etc. Pretty soon
everything in digital audio will be great. The onboard sound of your
cheap computer will eventually sound every bit as good as a DAC1.

Why do musicians still want wind instruments recorded on analog
tape instead of DAT.

Pleasant euphonics of analog, that's all it is.
Analog is what the human ear hears. It's natural with all the 3rd and
4th order harmonics the brain senses yet we can not hear.
Thank you
Mike Mueller


Master
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Arny Krueger Arny Krueger is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

"Sonnova" wrote in message


I was just watching "Wired Science" on PBS. They just did
a "shoot-out" between digital and analog sound. I'm not
going to argue with the result, because they so
screwed-up the way that they explained what they were
doing to the TV audience as to make the entire thing
worthless.


Ah, the shoe is on the other foot. Do you want to comment on the scientice
behind this article:

Wired Magazine article: http://301url.com/dbk

First they introduced a recording engineer who's Chicago
studio is all analog. He maintains that analog is better
than digital (without defining WHAT he means by
"digital").


No doubt, he didn't explain what he meant by better, either!

Then they interviewed a recording engineer
that thought that digital was better than analog (again
without explaining WHAT kind of digital: 16/44.1, 24/96,
DSD, MP3 whatever).


Probably 16/44.

Then they thoroughly confused the
issue by interchangeably using the terms MP3 and digital
recording- as if they were one and the same.


MP3 is a subset of digital.

Then they
picked two other recording engineers and two musicians to
listen to a cut from those same musicians' latest
recording. Sometimes they were listening to analog,
sometimes digital, and they held up paddles with the
words "digital" and "analog" written on them, to show
whenever they thought they heard a difference. The cut
they played was contiguous with no breaks to indicate
when or if the media had changed (how did they do THAT
without editing the two together onto the same
medium??!).


Good question. Not hard to do in the digital domain, but I've done similar
things with analog, and it takes a lot more skill and work.

In the end, the two musicians chose correctly
53% of the time, and the two recording engineers chose
correctly 55% of the time. In other words, essentially,
statistically, no better than blind chance. The
conclusion that the TV show producers came to was that
digital is indistinguishable from analog.


Good digital and good analog are indistinguishable, so no surprise.

This "test" basically just confuses the issue. They say
that they were testing the widely held belief that analog
sounds better than digital.


It's not a widely held belief.

But what they don't
differentiate between is PCM digital CD vs MP3.


Good MP3 outperforms LP and analog tape.

The impression that I was left with is that they were saying
that an analog master is statistically indistinguishable
from an MP3 digital simply because they made no effort to
differentiate between MP3 and RedBook PCM and never said
what the listening "panel" was actually listening too, or
the circumstances under which the "listening test" was
conducted. "Wired Science"? Bogus science is more like it.


Compared to the article in Wired, it was really pretty good. ;-)



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Steven Sullivan Steven Sullivan is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

Sonnova wrote:
I was just watching "Wired Science" on PBS. They just did a "shoot-out"
between digital and analog sound. I'm not going to argue with the result,
because they so screwed-up the way that they explained what they were doing
to the TV audience as to make the entire thing worthless.


First they introduced a recording engineer who's Chicago studio is all
analog.


Steve Albini.

He maintains that analog is better than digital (without defining
WHAT he means by "digital").


That's implied by his choice of gear, but all he was explicitly quoted as saying
was that LP is going to trounce an mp3 download of uncertain origin.

Then they thoroughly
confused the issue by interchangeably using the terms MP3 and digital
recording- as if they were one and the same. Then they picked two other
recording engineers and two musicians to listen to a cut from those same
musicians' latest recording. Sometimes they were listening to analog,
sometimes digital, and they held up paddles with the words "digital" and
"analog" written on them, to show whenever they thought they heard a
difference. The cut they played was contiguous with no breaks to indicate
when or if the media had changed (how did they do THAT without editing the
two together onto the same medium??!). In the end, the two musicians chose
correctly 53% of the time, and the two recording engineers chose correctly
55% of the time. In other words, essentially, statistically, no better than
blind chance. The conclusion that the TV show producers came to was that
digital is indistinguishable from analog.


This "test" basically just confuses the issue. They say that they were
testing the widely held belief that analog sounds better than digital. But
what they don't differentiate between is PCM digital CD vs MP3. The
impression that I was left with is that they were saying that an analog
master is statistically indistinguishable from an MP3 digital simply because
they made no effort to differentiate between MP3 and RedBook PCM and never
said what the listening "panel" was actually listening too, or the
circumstances under which the "listening test" was conducted. "Wired
Science"? Bogus science is more like it.


Actually, all they said was that the test music was a
recording made on a digital console vs a recording made on an analog console.

Anyway, anyoen with a web browser can watch the segment here and judge for themselves:

http://www.pbs.org/kcet/wiredscience...dio_files.html

The comments at the bottom of the page may also be on interest.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason
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Steven Sullivan Steven Sullivan is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

mike mueller wrote:
This is rec.audio.high-end? Correct?
Too the average listener, he or she will not be able hear the difference
between analog or digital. And yes they are very happy with that.


Two of the subejcts on the TV show were introduced as 'golden ear'
recording engineers. In aggregate they did no better than chance (though
there was no breakdown into individual scores)

It's
just a simple fact. Yes, if you play a LP for them, they can hear a few
pops and clicks and tell which was the LP and which was the CD. Play a
analog recording on tape against a CD and you will hear a big
difference.


Play a CD recording of that analog tape, and you probably won't.

My recording of Oh Brother Where Art Thou sounds completely
different on CD that it does on the LP.


That's due to a combination of different mastering and the inherent colorations
of LP playback.

And those who have listened at
my house can hear the difference and like the LP better.
However, someone with a better "ear" can distinguish Red book from
Analog. Isn't that what High End Audio is about? If digital was better
than analog, why do studio's still record masters on Analog Tape instead
of DAT. Why do musicians still want wind instruments recorded on analog
tape instead of DAT.


DAT? Studios generally record to hard disc these days. And classical producers and musicians
were among the earliest and most fervent adopters of digital recordings.

Analog is what the human ear hears. It's natural with all the 3rd and
4th order harmonics the brain senses yet we can not hear.
Thank you


The audible output of any digital playback system is...analog. And an LP
most certainly does not accurately transmit all the '3 and 4th order harmonics'
of the 20-20kHz range.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason
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[email protected] wrct@club.cc.cmu.edu is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

Years ago a test was done, it as I recall originated on this newsgroup.
A digital recording was made of an lp and the two sources were used in a
listening test. Experienced audio folk could not beyond chance
determine which was which. If one wants to capture an analog source
recording with whatever it adds to the mic feed then a digital recording
will capture it just fine. It also then implies that it will faithfully
capture what was at the mic feed before the analog recording.

As for redbook as source compared to more recent digital formats
consider:

http://theaudiocritic.com/blog/index...Id=41&blogId=1

Read it for more detail, a recording of a SACD was made using redbook.
The two sources could not be distinguished by listening alone.

This is rec.audio.high-end? Correct?
Too the average listener, he or she will not be able hear the difference
between analog or digital. And yes they are very happy with that. It's
just a simple fact. Yes, if you play a LP for them, they can hear a few
pops and clicks and tell which was the LP and which was the CD. Play a
analog recording on tape against a CD and you will hear a big
difference. My recording of Oh Brother Where Art Thou sounds completely
different on CD that it does on the LP. And those who have listened at
my house can hear the difference and like the LP better.
However, someone with a better "ear" can distinguish Red book from
Analog. Isn't that what High End Audio is about? If digital was better
than analog, why do studio's still record masters on Analog Tape instead
of DAT. Why do musicians still want wind instruments recorded on analog
tape instead of DAT.
Analog is what the human ear hears. It's natural with all the 3rd and
4th order harmonics the brain senses yet we can not hear.
Thank you
Mike Mueller

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Sonnova Sonnova is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 15:10:25 -0800, Codifus wrote
(in article ):

mike mueller wrote:
This is rec.audio.high-end? Correct?
Too the average listener, he or she will not be able hear the difference
between analog or digital. And yes they are very happy with that. It's
just a simple fact. Yes, if you play a LP for them, they can hear a few
pops and clicks and tell which was the LP and which was the CD. Play a
analog recording on tape against a CD and you will hear a big
difference. My recording of Oh Brother Where Art Thou sounds completely
different on CD that it does on the LP. And those who have listened at
my house can hear the difference and like the LP better.

That difference is not due to the mediums, though. Take that LP and
record it to digital with a good soundcard. Burn an audio CD. I bet if
you test that CD against the LP, no one will tell the difference. What
does that say?

However, someone with a better "ear" can distinguish Red book from
Analog. Isn't that what High End Audio is about? If digital was better
than analog, why do studio's still record masters on Analog Tape instead
of DAT.

Because, like all things, there's good and bad. There's bad digital
audio and good digital audio. After 20 some odd years digital audio is
reaching its mature stage, if it hasn't already. We've had mediums like
DVDA, SACD, great DA converters like the DAC1 etc. Pretty soon
everything in digital audio will be great. The onboard sound of your
cheap computer will eventually sound every bit as good as a DAC1.

Why do musicians still want wind instruments recorded on analog
tape instead of DAT.

Pleasant euphonics of analog, that's all it is.
Analog is what the human ear hears. It's natural with all the 3rd and
4th order harmonics the brain senses yet we can not hear.
Thank you
Mike Mueller


Master


Although I *believe* that I can hear more "air" around instruments and a
richer, more "lifelike" ambience from a DSD recording than I can from the
same performance recorded in Redbook, it's hardly scientific and I'd hate to
bet the farm on being able to consistently pick which is which. The fact is
that the best of today's Redbook CDs are very good indeed. The old cigarette
commercials had it right (if I might be allowed to paraphrase) Digital's come
a long way, baby. Its not just the recording end that's improved either.
Today's D/A sections are much better than they were a decade ago.
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Sonnova Sonnova is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 15:18:12 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Sonnova" wrote in message


I was just watching "Wired Science" on PBS. They just did
a "shoot-out" between digital and analog sound. I'm not
going to argue with the result, because they so
screwed-up the way that they explained what they were
doing to the TV audience as to make the entire thing
worthless.


Ah, the shoe is on the other foot. Do you want to comment on the scientice
behind this article:

Wired Magazine article: http://301url.com/dbk


So. Vinyl is on the upswing. Lots of people like it. I enjoy a good LP
myself. At their best, they sound damn musical.

First they introduced a recording engineer who's Chicago
studio is all analog. He maintains that analog is better
than digital (without defining WHAT he means by
"digital").


No doubt, he didn't explain what he meant by better, either!

Then they interviewed a recording engineer
that thought that digital was better than analog (again
without explaining WHAT kind of digital: 16/44.1, 24/96,
DSD, MP3 whatever).


Probably 16/44.

Then they thoroughly confused the
issue by interchangeably using the terms MP3 and digital
recording- as if they were one and the same.


MP3 is a subset of digital.


No clue?!! Really? They are not, however one and the same thing. All MP3
might be digital but not all digital is MP3. Not by a long shot. So, what's
your point? Further obfuscation?

Then they
picked two other recording engineers and two musicians to
listen to a cut from those same musicians' latest
recording. Sometimes they were listening to analog,
sometimes digital, and they held up paddles with the
words "digital" and "analog" written on them, to show
whenever they thought they heard a difference. The cut
they played was contiguous with no breaks to indicate
when or if the media had changed (how did they do THAT
without editing the two together onto the same
medium??!).


Good question. Not hard to do in the digital domain, but I've done similar
things with analog, and it takes a lot more skill and work.


That's kinda my point. Either way they are diluting the test to the point of
meaninglessness.

In the end, the two musicians chose correctly
53% of the time, and the two recording engineers chose
correctly 55% of the time. In other words, essentially,
statistically, no better than blind chance. The
conclusion that the TV show producers came to was that
digital is indistinguishable from analog.


Good digital and good analog are indistinguishable, so no surprise.


Again, not the point. The point is that this test, conducted as it was,
proved no point at all. The producers of the show claiming victory for
digital on the basis of this outcome is hollow and less than meaningless.

This "test" basically just confuses the issue. They say
that they were testing the widely held belief that analog
sounds better than digital.


It's not a widely held belief.


Actually, it is. Lots of people believe it, that makes it "widely held". It
doesn't need to be a ubiquitous belief to be a widely held one.

But what they don't
differentiate between is PCM digital CD vs MP3.


Good MP3 outperforms LP and analog tape.


Irrelevant, immaterial, and also mostly untrue. I've never heard an LP or a
good analog tape, for that matter make the kind of distorted mess that MP3s
can make of music. MP3s made at a high data rate can sound OK, but I'd rather
listen to an LP or especially a good recent CD of the same performance.

The impression that I was left with is that they were saying
that an analog master is statistically indistinguishable
from an MP3 digital simply because they made no effort to
differentiate between MP3 and RedBook PCM and never said
what the listening "panel" was actually listening too, or
the circumstances under which the "listening test" was
conducted. "Wired Science"? Bogus science is more like it.


Compared to the article in Wired, it was really pretty good. ;-)


The article was someone's opinion a test is supposed to be unbiased.


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Codifus Codifus is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

Sonnova wrote:
On Fri, 9 Nov 2007 15:10:25 -0800, Codifus wrote
(in article ):


mike mueller wrote:

This is rec.audio.high-end? Correct?
Too the average listener, he or she will not be able hear the difference
between analog or digital. And yes they are very happy with that. It's
just a simple fact. Yes, if you play a LP for them, they can hear a few
pops and clicks and tell which was the LP and which was the CD. Play a
analog recording on tape against a CD and you will hear a big
difference. My recording of Oh Brother Where Art Thou sounds completely
different on CD that it does on the LP. And those who have listened at
my house can hear the difference and like the LP better.


That difference is not due to the mediums, though. Take that LP and
record it to digital with a good soundcard. Burn an audio CD. I bet if
you test that CD against the LP, no one will tell the difference. What
does that say?


However, someone with a better "ear" can distinguish Red book from
Analog. Isn't that what High End Audio is about? If digital was better
than analog, why do studio's still record masters on Analog Tape instead
of DAT.


Because, like all things, there's good and bad. There's bad digital
audio and good digital audio. After 20 some odd years digital audio is
reaching its mature stage, if it hasn't already. We've had mediums like
DVDA, SACD, great DA converters like the DAC1 etc. Pretty soon
everything in digital audio will be great. The onboard sound of your
cheap computer will eventually sound every bit as good as a DAC1.

Why do musicians still want wind instruments recorded on analog

tape instead of DAT.


Pleasant euphonics of analog, that's all it is.

Analog is what the human ear hears. It's natural with all the 3rd and
4th order harmonics the brain senses yet we can not hear.
Thank you
Mike Mueller


Master



Although I *believe* that I can hear more "air" around instruments and a
richer, more "lifelike" ambience from a DSD recording than I can from the
same performance recorded in Redbook, it's hardly scientific and I'd hate to
bet the farm on being able to consistently pick which is which. The fact is
that the best of today's Redbook CDs are very good indeed. The old cigarette
commercials had it right (if I might be allowed to paraphrase) Digital's come
a long way, baby. Its not just the recording end that's improved either.
Today's D/A sections are much better than they were a decade ago.

Even though I've never listened to an SACD or DVD-A, I'm inclined to
beleive you about SACD sounding better than CD. I vaguely recall that
there is scientific evidence which shows that. SACD seems to handle
transients much better than CD and DVD-A, so much so that the DVD-A spec
was corrected with a better reconstruction filter technology I beleive
by Meridian to make it handle transients better. I wonder if that same
technology could be applied to CD, since DVD-A is prety much an
evolution of CD audio. Both are PCM with the difference being that DVD-A
has the larger word length and sampling rate.

CD
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Sonnova wrote:
......
Irrelevant, immaterial, and also mostly untrue. I've never heard an LP or a
good analog tape, for that matter make the kind of distorted mess that MP3s
can make of music. MP3s made at a high data rate can sound OK, but I'd rather
listen to an LP or especially a good recent CD of the same performance.

.....

There are good and bad MP3 encoders out there. The bad ones tend to be
fast, even at 320 kbps. Try hydrogen audio's LAME or even the
Fraunhoffer MP3 encoder inside CoolEdit. Both of these encoders do a
very good job of making MP3s. They take their time to process but the
results are really worth it if you want the best MP3s.

CD
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Steven Sullivan Steven Sullivan is offline
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Codifus wrote:
Even though I've never listened to an SACD or DVD-A, I'm inclined to
beleive you about SACD sounding better than CD. I vaguely recall that
there is scientific evidence which shows that.


There isn't.

SACD seems to handle
transients much better than CD and DVD-A, so much so that the DVD-A spec
was corrected with a better reconstruction filter technology I beleive
by Meridian to make it handle transients better.


Where'd you get this from?

This sounds like the old 'square wave' demo, or Pyramix advertising, both of
which are communly used in flawed arguments.

___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason
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On Nov 11, 7:36 am, Codifus wrote:
Sonnova wrote:

..... Irrelevant, immaterial, and also mostly untrue. I've never heard an LP or a
good analog tape, for that matter make the kind of distorted mess that MP3s
can make of music. MP3s made at a high data rate can sound OK, but I'd rather
listen to an LP or especially a good recent CD of the same performance.


....

There are good and bad MP3 encoders out there. The bad ones tend to be
fast, even at 320 kbps. Try hydrogen audio's LAME or even the
Fraunhoffer MP3 encoder inside CoolEdit. Both of these encoders do a
very good job of making MP3s. They take their time to process but the
results are really worth it if you want the best MP3s.

CD


I am transferring my CD collection to iTunes data base on my PC now. I
have to ways to do that:

- to use internal iTunes codecs and convert my CD's either to MP3 or
AAC,
- to use WinAmp to convert to MP3 and them import it to iTunes.

I guess that they (iTunes and WinAmp) use different codecs because:
(1) WinAmp is about 4 times faster for the same bitrate, (2) WinAmp is
doing better job on faulty hardware. I had an old fashioned DVD-ROM
that caused skips in iTunes codec, at a time when WinAmp was doing
perfect 100% of the time.

So my question to people who know codecs and their internals is:

Do you know what codecs are used in iTunes and WinAmp? What is
preferable? Are there significant audible differences say at 320 kbps
rate?

Again, iTunes is slow as hell in comparison with WinAmp, but it does
better job with labels and art covers. WinAmp does a faster and better
job (no skips) with MP3 track but requires more time for verification
and retyping (sometimes) labels and scanning album cover.

thanks in advance.

vlad
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 07:36:00 -0800, Codifus wrote
(in article ):

Sonnova wrote:
.....
Irrelevant, immaterial, and also mostly untrue. I've never heard an LP or a
good analog tape, for that matter make the kind of distorted mess that MP3s
can make of music. MP3s made at a high data rate can sound OK, but I'd
rather
listen to an LP or especially a good recent CD of the same performance.

....

There are good and bad MP3 encoders out there. The bad ones tend to be
fast, even at 320 kbps. Try hydrogen audio's LAME or even the
Fraunhoffer MP3 encoder inside CoolEdit. Both of these encoders do a
very good job of making MP3s. They take their time to process but the
results are really worth it if you want the best MP3s.

CD


I don't want MP3s at all. I use Apple Lossless Compression (ALC) on my iPod.
Now, if only iPods had better D/A's and analog circuitry in them....


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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

Sonnova wrote:
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 07:36:00 -0800, Codifus wrote
(in article ):


Sonnova wrote:
.....
Irrelevant, immaterial, and also mostly untrue. I've never heard an LP or a
good analog tape, for that matter make the kind of distorted mess that MP3s
can make of music. MP3s made at a high data rate can sound OK, but I'd
rather
listen to an LP or especially a good recent CD of the same performance.

....

There are good and bad MP3 encoders out there. The bad ones tend to be
fast, even at 320 kbps. Try hydrogen audio's LAME or even the
Fraunhoffer MP3 encoder inside CoolEdit. Both of these encoders do a
very good job of making MP3s. They take their time to process but the
results are really worth it if you want the best MP3s.

CD


I don't want MP3s at all. I use Apple Lossless Compression (ALC) on my iPod.
Now, if only iPods had better D/A's and analog circuitry in them....


again, ipods have pretty good DAC and analog circuitry in the, check
out Stereophile's bench tests.

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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

On Nov 11, 4:31 pm, vlad wrote:
On Nov 11, 7:36 am, Codifus wrote:



Sonnova wrote:


..... Irrelevant, immaterial, and also mostly untrue. I've never heard an LP or a
good analog tape, for that matter make the kind of distorted mess that MP3s
can make of music. MP3s made at a high data rate can sound OK, but I'd rather
listen to an LP or especially a good recent CD of the same performance.


....


There are good and bad MP3 encoders out there. The bad ones tend to be
fast, even at 320 kbps. Try hydrogen audio's LAME or even the
Fraunhoffer MP3 encoder inside CoolEdit. Both of these encoders do a
very good job of making MP3s. They take their time to process but the
results are really worth it if you want the best MP3s.


CD


I am transferring my CD collection to iTunes data base on my PC now. I
have to ways to do that:

- to use internal iTunes codecs and convert my CD's either to MP3 or
AAC,
- to use WinAmp to convert to MP3 and them import it to iTunes.

I guess that they (iTunes and WinAmp) use different codecs because:
(1) WinAmp is about 4 times faster for the same bitrate, (2) WinAmp is
doing better job on faulty hardware. I had an old fashioned DVD-ROM
that caused skips in iTunes codec, at a time when WinAmp was doing
perfect 100% of the time.

So my question to people who know codecs and their internals is:

Do you know what codecs are used in iTunes and WinAmp? What is
preferable? Are there significant audible differences say at 320 kbps
rate?

Again, iTunes is slow as hell in comparison with WinAmp, but it does
better job with labels and art covers. WinAmp does a faster and better
job (no skips) with MP3 track but requires more time for verification
and retyping (sometimes) labels and scanning album cover.

thanks in advance.

vlad


The built in MP3 encoder for Itunes is lousy. Avoid it. Use the AAC
instead. I know you have itunes on the PC but if you had iTunes on a
Macintosh, there was offered a LAME MP3 plugin for Itunes. That was
awesome. LAMEd MP3s and AAC are very good. They take their time but
the results are worth it, and with the itunes interface you can easily
setup batch processing and leave the system running/converting
overnight etc.

CD
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

On Nov 11, 4:31 pm, Sonnova wrote:
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 07:36:00 -0800, Codifus wrote
(in article ):



Sonnova wrote:
.....
Irrelevant, immaterial, and also mostly untrue. I've never heard an LP or a
good analog tape, for that matter make the kind of distorted mess that MP3s
can make of music. MP3s made at a high data rate can sound OK, but I'd
rather
listen to an LP or especially a good recent CD of the same performance.

....


There are good and bad MP3 encoders out there. The bad ones tend to be
fast, even at 320 kbps. Try hydrogen audio's LAME or even the
Fraunhoffer MP3 encoder inside CoolEdit. Both of these encoders do a
very good job of making MP3s. They take their time to process but the
results are really worth it if you want the best MP3s.


CD


I don't want MP3s at all. I use Apple Lossless Compression (ALC) on my iPod.
Now, if only iPods had better D/A's and analog circuitry in them....


The D/A's inside the Ipod arent bad at all, at least the 2nd gen or
newer ones. It's the headphones. Try a set of Sennheiser PX100s or
Koss Portapros. Inexpensive, like $40, and they will make your ipod
sing. I had the PX100s, wire got snagged on the subway, then got the
Portapros. If you like bass then the Portapros are the better choice.

CD
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

On Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:51:43 -0800, codifus wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 11, 4:31 pm, Sonnova wrote:
On Sun, 11 Nov 2007 07:36:00 -0800, Codifus wrote
(in article ):



Sonnova wrote:
.....
Irrelevant, immaterial, and also mostly untrue. I've never heard an LP or
a
good analog tape, for that matter make the kind of distorted mess that
MP3s
can make of music. MP3s made at a high data rate can sound OK, but I'd
rather
listen to an LP or especially a good recent CD of the same performance.
....


There are good and bad MP3 encoders out there. The bad ones tend to be
fast, even at 320 kbps. Try hydrogen audio's LAME or even the
Fraunhoffer MP3 encoder inside CoolEdit. Both of these encoders do a
very good job of making MP3s. They take their time to process but the
results are really worth it if you want the best MP3s.


CD


I don't want MP3s at all. I use Apple Lossless Compression (ALC) on my
iPod.
Now, if only iPods had better D/A's and analog circuitry in them....


The D/A's inside the Ipod arent bad at all, at least the 2nd gen or
newer ones. It's the headphones. Try a set of Sennheiser PX100s or
Koss Portapros. Inexpensive, like $40, and they will make your ipod
sing. I had the PX100s, wire got snagged on the subway, then got the
Portapros. If you like bass then the Portapros are the better choice.

CD


I have a pair of Shure SE420's. Believe me they are very good. I think that
the D/A and analog circuitry in my Hi-MD minidisc (playing 16-bit 44KHz PCM)
sounds better than the circuitry in my Gen-3 iPod (using the same source
material and the Shure phones).
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willbill willbill is offline
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

Arny Krueger wrote:

Ah, the shoe is on the other foot. Do you want to comment on the scientice
behind this article:

Wired Magazine article: http://301url.com/dbk


nice ref, thanks.

the title ("Vinyl May Be Final Nail
in CD's Coffin") is also very amusing

and afaik, the end of the 1st paragraph
is also very inaccurate: vinyl is NOT
re-entering the mainstream

i remember when the CD came out

the sound was terrible, but most
were beyond thrilled that ticks
and pops were gone

shows you just how much most people
don't care about quality sound

i can add that current CDs have improved
immensely, and that i hope that they don't
disappear anytime soon

bill


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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

On Nov 11, 4:30 pm, Steven Sullivan wrote:
Codifus wrote:
Even though I've never listened to an SACD or DVD-A, I'm inclined to
beleive you about SACD sounding better than CD. I vaguely recall that
there is scientific evidence which shows that.


There isn't.

SACD seems to handle
transients much better than CD and DVD-A, so much so that the DVD-A spec
was corrected with a better reconstruction filter technology I beleive
by Meridian to make it handle transients better.


Where'd you get this from?

This sounds like the old 'square wave' demo, or Pyramix advertising, both of
which are communly used in flawed arguments.

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


I can't find that particular article, but there are lots of technical
articles to be googled upon showing the superior capability of SACD
and DVD-A. Whether those differences can be appreciated by most
consumers I think is, or was, really the issue. It is apparently not
so given what's happened in the market.

Speaking of square waves, here's an interesting article showing the
differences between the formats on how well they reproduce a square
wave;

http://www.smr-home-theatre.org/surr.../page_07.shtml

By the way, even though the war is pretty much over and CD or MP3
seems to have won, I was always hoping for DVD-A, and even if no one
won, CD is fine. Technologies such as XRCD and players like the
Consonance linear 120 player which does not rely on oversampling at
all, show that CD audio can achieve excellent audio performance with
the very good implementation of digital filtering and the mastering
process in making a CD. DSD, while being better than CD in most
aspects, is actually worse than CD in others, and also seems to be a
way for Sony to keep things proprietary. On every single technical
aspect, though, DVD-A is better than CD. DVD is CD on steroids, based
on the same PCM technology. SACD was better in the transients mainly
due to the format not relying on digital filtering at all, and that
weakness was addressed in DVD-A.

Interestingly, on the really expensive multi-format optical players,
reviews tend to show that the differences between the CD, SACD and
DVD-A are getting smaller which would tend to suggest that the flaws
of a format were mostly in implementation.

Anyway, enough rambling on for me

CD
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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

On Tue, 13 Nov 2007 16:01:16 -0800, willbill wrote
(in article ):

Arny Krueger wrote:

Ah, the shoe is on the other foot. Do you want to comment on the scientice
behind this article:

Wired Magazine article: http://301url.com/dbk


nice ref, thanks.

the title ("Vinyl May Be Final Nail
in CD's Coffin") is also very amusing

and afaik, the end of the 1st paragraph
is also very inaccurate: vinyl is NOT
re-entering the mainstream


No. it is not. But it is still popular enough for places like Music Direct to
still sell it, and in my neck of the woods there is a High-End audio store
dedicated, exclusively to vinyl called "The Analog Room". They do quite
well.

i remember when the CD came out

the sound was terrible, but most
were beyond thrilled that ticks
and pops were gone


Yes. It was portable, did not degrade with each play, remained quiet and
wasn't nearly so fragile as records. These characteristics alone were pretty
much enough to insure its success with most consumers.

shows you just how much most people
don't care about quality sound


I doubt if the mainstream consumer cared anything more about sound quality
then than they do now. And given the popularity of MP3, I'd say that interest
is pretty close to zero.

i can add that current CDs have improved
immensely, and that i hope that they don't
disappear anytime soon


I don't think that they are much danger of going away anytime soon. People
like to browse for music, read liner notes, and collect things. All of these
are things that internet-provided music doesn't allow for as easily or as
well as does the CD. And I agree that CD has improved immensely. If anything
ever kills SACD it would be that even hardened "golden-eared audiophiles"
begin to find it more and more difficult to tell a well made Redbook CD from
an SACD.

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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

codifus wrote:
On Nov 11, 4:30 pm, Steven Sullivan wrote:
Codifus wrote:
Even though I've never listened to an SACD or DVD-A, I'm inclined to
beleive you about SACD sounding better than CD. I vaguely recall that
there is scientific evidence which shows that.


There isn't.

SACD seems to handle
transients much better than CD and DVD-A, so much so that the DVD-A spec
was corrected with a better reconstruction filter technology I beleive
by Meridian to make it handle transients better.


Where'd you get this from?

This sounds like the old 'square wave' demo, or Pyramix advertising, both of
which are communly used in flawed arguments.

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


I can't find that particular article, but there are lots of technical
articles to be googled upon showing the superior capability of SACD
and DVD-A. Whether those differences can be appreciated by most
consumers I think is, or was, really the issue. It is apparently not
so given what's happened in the market.


What superior capability in the audible spectrum , does DVD-A and SACD
have over Redbook?

Speaking of square waves, here's an interesting article showing the
differences between the formats on how well they reproduce a square
wave;


http://www.smr-home-theatre.org/surr.../page_07.shtml


Yeah, that's one of the old standards. But what relationship does it have
to hearing? Let's consider what a square wave 'looks like' to the human ear.
Hint: not square. The ear is a filter too, you see.

By the way, even though the war is pretty much over and CD or MP3
seems to have won, I was always hoping for DVD-A, and even if no one
won, CD is fine. Technologies such as XRCD and players like the
Consonance linear 120 player which does not rely on oversampling at
all, show that CD audio can achieve excellent audio performance with
the very good implementation of digital filtering and the mastering
process in making a CD.


PLayers that do not rely on oversampling must have excellent engineering
at filtering stages....if not, they're basically bad CD players.

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

willbill wrote:

i remember when the CD came out
the sound was terrible


Many were bad but a few were excellent. The bad ones were due to
mastering and not the system itself. I have a CD of Rossini overtures
(from 1983) that still sounds as good as anything released today.

---MIKE---
In the White Mountains of New Hampshire
(44° 15' N - Elevation 1580')


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On Wed, 14 Nov 2007 19:23:33 -0800, MIKE--- wrote
(in article ):

willbill wrote:

i remember when the CD came out
the sound was terrible


Many were bad but a few were excellent. The bad ones were due to
mastering and not the system itself. I have a CD of Rossini overtures
(from 1983) that still sounds as good as anything released today.

---MIKE---
In the White Mountains of New Hampshire
(44° 15' N - Elevation 1580')



The early Sony processors like the 1620, and1630 which were meant to be used
in conjunction with 3/4 inch U-Matic recorders for mastering CDs sounded REAL
nasty and were probably the main reason that many early CDs sounded so bad
(some of the early players were nothing to write home about either). The Sony
D/As were filled with first generation 709/741 - quality operational
amplifiers and had electrolytic capacitors in the signal path. Almost any CD
mastered using this equipment is harsh, strident and distorted - especially
on the top-end. CDs using other equipment such as Dr. Thomas Stockham's
Soundstream equipment used by Bob Woods at Telarc, and by Delos and others
fared better, but the bit-stream needed to be converted to Redbook in order
to make a CD (Soundstream was 16-bit, 50KHz sampling rate). Bob told me once
that the conversion hardware introduced a lot a of jitter and so it degraded
the Soundstream masters considerably.



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Default Analog vs Digital- Again

"---MIKE---" wrote: ...
willbill wrote:
i remember when the CD came out
the sound was terrible


Many were bad but a few were excellent. The bad ones were due to
mastering and not the system itself. I have a CD of Rossini overtures
(from 1983) that still sounds as good as anything released today.



ADD or AAD vs. DDD, or uniformly? I think more has a chance to go wrong in
the digitizing of analog material than when the recording is straight
digital. Take for example most or even all of the early DDD Telarcs, Delos,
Columbia, (maybe even most of the Denon). I believe that many were excellent
and few were bad, at least in my collection.

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