Some People Haven't a Clue
On Saturday, February 9, 2013 11:11:25 PM UTC-5, Audio_Empire wrote:
I was reading the monthly column in a well-known audio magazine by an equ=
ally well known audio
journalist today and realized that this journalist simply hasn't a clue a=
bout digital sound and how it
works.=20
I'm guessin' Fremer. Call it a hunch.
He was discussing a new box-set of stereo LPs of all of the Beatles album=
s. It seems that Apple
records mastered these LPs from the 16-bit/44.1 KHz ADC conversions of th=
e original analog master
tapes, rather than going back to the original masters themselves. The exc=
use given by an Apple
Records spokesperson for why they took this route rather than doing a pro=
per re-mastering from the
edited analog session masters was that Apple didn't want to risk damage t=
o the originals.=20
Probably a wise business decision. The 16/44.1 conversions should be indist=
inguishable from the analog masters, so why risk the masters? A few ignoran=
t purists will complain, but most buyers will either understand that this i=
s a good move, or else won't care. Mostly the latter.
This journalist went on to say that an analog master has an infinite amou=
nt of information on it (!)
and as digital gets better, one can always go back and "mine" those maste=
rs for more and more
detail. He went on to say that the moment one digitizes an analog source,=
something is lost that can
never be retrieved from that digitized result.=20
Definitely Fremer. Instead of measuring jitter to the picosecond, S-pile co=
uld actually perform the far more useful service of testing and reporting o=
n turntables and cartridges, which are certainly popular with its readershi=
p=97and do actually sound different! Instead, they outsource the entire ana=
log realm to a moron. (And he's as much a moron about analog as digital. He=
sounds like he knows what he's talking about, but he just parrots what the=
turntable makers tell him.)
bob
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