[Arny Krueger]

"Kele" wrote in message


Even the best sound reproduction systems I've heard
aren't the same as live.

Agreed.

My memory of hearing live is all I have.

As a live recordist, I very often have the opportunity to experience the
live performance, the feed from the microphone, and a digitized version of
the microphone feed with as little delay as is humanly possible. I get to do
this with a large number of varying musical groups, and in a reasonable
selection of venues.

And I agree that the environment of the live
also influences my memory. If I compare each, digital
and analog sources, against my memory of live... that
answer would be my preferred medium.

The feed from the microphone and the 16/44 digitized version of it are
indistinguishable when time, frequency response, and amplitude are
reasonably close. With a good digital system, only matching amplitudes need
be observed because the rest matches up automatically.

The difference between analog and digital?

There need not be any. 30 years ago this transparent performance in and out
of the digital domain cost serious money. No more.

No, we shouldn't stray away from the true goal, the sound of
Live. [leaving the environment out of this, ok]

If we can't find the sound of live at the outputs of the microphones, it
would seem like finding it further on down the chain would be an elusive
goal.

This is the part that leaves science behind...

Not necesarily.

Which "feels" closest to live?

This would be emotion and/or perception which are now part of the study of
science.

Or, which reminds me most of live.

Also in the domain of science, just not electronics science.

That's all. I don't know if digital discs can
potentially sound better than record albums or not.

From a technical standpoint the answer seems clear.

So far neither sounds like live - really. It's like a
ripple sandwiched between two panes of glass, the ripple
can't fully expand. But which, analog or digital, is the
glass further apart? I say lets remove the glass!

Digital clearly lets the glass separate the furthest, and not really intrude
on the reproduction process. Getting back to the problem of live sound at
the microphone terminals, we see that the *glass* is in the analog domain.

Both digital and analog have their strong and weak points.

Arguably, the worst thing about digital is that right now all audio has to
start and end in the analog domain. The damage is all done in the analog
domain.

Is this topic trying to uncover the weaknesses
(against live)? We know vinyl grooves can=92t be cut to
save all the sound,

We know no such thing. We know for sure that vinyl grooves absolutely and
positively **cannot** be cut to save all of the analog signal that comes out
of the microphone.

and we know that converting to digital involves rounding to the nearest
whole.

The size of the nearest whole can be reduced to be as small as we wish.
Furthermore, the noise in and distortion that is inherent in the analog
domain is effectively larger than that rounding error.

Either way, the information is not all there and that=92s why it
sounds flatter than live.

The signal coming out of the microphone is best preservd by digitizing it as
early in the process as is practical. It is best preserved by leaving it
digital as far down the chain as is practical. We must remember that the
liveness of sound waves of the live performance were far more hihgly amaged
while they were in the analog domain.

I'm guessing analog is the
least processed, and digital is capable of holding more
information.

You guess wrong if you think that electrical signals receive less damage in
the analog domain.

How then can the best of both be combined?


First step is to do less in the analog domain. The second and more difficult
step is to further reduce the damage that is done in the analog, more
specifically the acoustical domain.

Saying it to myself like this, I would say digital has
the potential to be better than analog (vinyl) if only
the processing can be truly out of the way.

That was done over 30 years ago.

Cannot a
laser light track a continuous groove (sound wave)? If
the signal didn' have to be converted to mathematics,
there can be greater chance to approach live.

Wrong. It is easy to show that converting analog signals to and from the
digital domain can be done a number of times, back-to-back, without audible
degradation.


For now, vinyl reminds me more of live, but I think vinyl
has reached its max capability.

Serious development of the vinyl LP pretty well petered out in the
middle-late 1960s. There have been no new technical developments that were
generally accepted since then.