During the early days of 14/12 bit/50k recordings with Sony F1 tape
recorders, I heard a lot of comments about the possibility of having
anywhere from headaches to setting off epileptic seizures from listening to
digital, and while some of those symptoms may have been noticed during
playback, one has to wonder whether the source of the problem was the
situation presented at the time or something different.

Reportedly most people heard a problem based on the steep cutoff of the
anti-aliasing filter in the early days, and even then, at 22.5 kHz, I'd
question that as the problem they heard. More likely it was the lack of
quality of converters, perhaps introducing subharmonics into the mix that
had no apparent attributes to the music recorded. Certainly today I don't
know of anyone, based on a properly recorded 16 bit/44.1 kHz recording, that
would say they have a problem with the output. Ethan Winer, Arny Kruegar
and I have had numerous discussions on just this subject, and for all
practical purposes, within a live recording environment, I'd have to agree
with Ethan. In much better circumstances, I find somewhat of a larger
picture represented by greater word depth and higher sampling rates, but I
would agree with Dan Lavry (based on our conversation) that probably a 24
bit/50 kHz setup would cover most anything necessary, and my "proof" would
be the reports on the Nyquist converters used in the RADAR (using 24 bit/48
kHz). Having not used such, I've heard enough reports to suggest to me that
probably there's no reason to go anywhere else.

The above doesn't even address the mis-use of the bandwidth by placing all
the information in the last .3 dB of a recording, nor does that address the
reverse quality presented by radio stations with their own levels of
compression that, inadequately applied, have a detrimental effect on what
one hears over the airwaves (another conversation right here on RAP with
Robert Orban, the king of radio compression). This, in itself, is one of
the reasons I don't listen to radio any more. I don't even have a radio in
the house, except as our alarm clock, and every morning the first note of a
song or the over-exaggerated voice of the DJ gets me out of bed like a shot
and as far away from the radio as I can physically get in this house.

But the bad things done to music these days has absolutely nothing on a well
recorded set of songs, presented in the correct way, even if it's 16 bit/
44.1 kHz. Indeed today, it's still a perfectly good solution to recording
in a live environment where -55dB is the normal level of noise, what with
people and air conditioning, etc.

And I invite both Mike Rivers and Scott Dorsey to add to the discussion
since they've both worked with me in live jazz recordings, none of which
have been the best environments. Without trying to tell them what to report
in order to support my experiences, they certainly have more than enough
experience to shoot down my theories.
--


Roger W. Norman
SirMusic Studio

"Mike Caffrey" wrote in message
ps.com...

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Mike Caffrey" wrote in message
oups.com
Doc wrote:
I've read where supposedly those who are accutely sensitive can
hear
deficiencies in 44.1 /16-bit CD's. If so, how do those with
"golden
ears" deal with eternally wallowing in inadequately reproduced
sound?

I believe that Ruper NEve's comment on Fletcher's site adn Dr
Oohashi's research which people have refered to hear are the tip of
the iceberg in proving that digital audio is responsible for the
dismal record sales that we've seen lately.

In fact Oohashi's research is irrelevant to any general presumed
failings of
digital audio because the whole context of the paper is digital
audio.
Basically, the paper is about comparing between one flavor of digital
to
another.

I've read two. One compares the different reactions of the brain
between analog and digital. The other compare the comfortable listening
levels between analog and digital.

As far as Rupert Neve's comments on the Mercenary site goes, how
about a
URL? I just spent 10 minutes fruitlessly going through it.

People listen to music for a reason, and digital audio doesn't
deliver
as completely as analog audio.

Mike, there you are provably wrong. There never was an analog format
with
the bandpass and dynamic range that we can easily obtain digitally.

Apparently you don't know that analog tape has its own brickwall
filter due
to the width of the head gap. Good high speed analog tape has a brick
wall
in the 22-28 KHz range, always did, still does. SACD and DVD-A
transcriptions of the best analog tapes give a clear picture of this
limitation.

(And yes, I use ProTools [through and analog board] becuase I have
no
choice these days)

But you do have the choice to record at 192/24 which gives about 4
times the
bandpass of the best commercial analog tape, not to mention about 20
dB or
more dynamic range. I'm not saying you should do this as a rule, but

perhaps you should stop claiming that digital audio has limitations
that it
clearly doesn't have.

First, the statment that digital doesn't deliver as competely as analog
doesn't necessarily have to do with frequency response, it has to do
with the emotional reation in the listener. Whether one delivers
hypersonic content that the other doesn't or adds a pleaseing
distortion and any other technical difference is irrelevant to the
point I'm trying to make.

The quelty of digital at 192/24 is irrelevant as far as it's effect on
sales are concerned. Two reasons, consumers (where the sales come from)
don't listen at 192/24 and second it's still not the standard for
recording at this point. It's too early to have enough data to compare
the effects of multi track recordings made at 192/24 with either the
various common digital rates and depths or analog multi track
recordings.


As as slight aside, related to dynamic range. I know there's a
mathematical calculation how how bit rate affects dynamic range, but my
understanding and perception ofbit rate is that it's like having a
hirhg resolution frame in a film, or maybe even larger film. Or, to
compare to tape, wider track width. So yes, I value higher bit rates,
but not for dynamic range. I really don't want to listen to a song
change by 120db or even 80db.

Geoff Daking was commenting on compression once and siad that you
should always have a comrpessor on the stereo buss, even during
tracking. He specifically said dynamic range is the enemy. I thought he
was being sarcastic. He said he wasn't and clarified that the reason
track with the streo compressor on the mix was that's what you will be
hearing eventuall and essentailly it a more accurate way to monitor
(similar to the argument for mixing with some stereo comopression
before mastering beucase compression will change the balances). His
point about dynamic range being the enemy, is that the range you have
to have so that you're not adjusting the volut throughout a song it's
actuall pretty small.

I recorded a very long album of acoustig guitar and vocals. This guy
had a massive dynamic range during the performce. Easily changes ove
90dB. It was spell binding. But, when I went to listen at home to enjoy
it inn the context when I usually listen to music, those changes were
horrible. The listening enviorment wasn't as quiet as the studio, so
the range went from below the background noise threshold to way too
loud. This was right before Geoff's comments, so it really hit home.

I think for a live performance, or maybe and audiophile or 5.1
recording - where you can be pretty certain it's someone listening in a
proper enviornement, as opposed to drinve a car, washing the dishes or
at a party - leave the dynamics natural for their emotional impact and
accurac of performance. But for the vast majority of situation, dynamic
range is not that much of an asset.

I can't find the page on the Mercenary site. It was from a web chat
that Fletcher hosted. Here's the relevant section:

Fletcher: There has been some measure of debate about bandwidth
including
frequencies above 20kHz, can we hear them, do they make a difference,
etc.


Rupert: OK, Fletch, pin your ears back...back in 1977, just after I had
sold the company,
George Martin called me to say that Air Studios had taken delivery of a
Neve Console
which did not seem to be giving satisfaction to Geoff Emmerick. In
fact, he said that Geoff
is unhappy.... engineers from the company, bear in mind that at this
point I was not
primarily involved, had visited the studio and reported that nothing
was wrong. They said
that the customer is mad and that the problem will go away if we ignore
it long enough.
Well I visited the studio and after careful listening with Geoff, I
agreed with him that three
panels on this 48 panel console sounded slightly different. We
discovered that there was
a 3 dB peak at 54kHz Geoff's golden ears had perceived that there was a
difference.
We found that 3 transformers had been incorrectly wired and it was a
matter of minutes to
correct this. After which Geoff was happy. And I mean that he relaxed
and there was a
big smile on his face.

As you can imagine a lot of theories were put forward, but even today I
couldn't tell you
how an experienced listener can perceive frequencies of the normal
range of hearing.
And following on from this, I was visiting Japan and was invited to the
laboratories of
Professor Oohashi He had discovered that when filteres were applied to
an audio signal
cutting off frequencies of 20 kHz, the brain started to emit electric
signals which can be
measured and quantified

These signals were at the frequencies and of the pattern which are
associated with
frustration and anger. Clearly we discussed this at some length and I
also would forward
the idea that any frequncies which were not part of the original
music, such as quantisizing
noise produced by compact discs and other digital sources, also
produced similar brain
waves.