Pneumonic;614688 Wrote: > Now, now, Ralph. No need to get your knickers in a knot.
Ah, so that's why I been having trouble sitting comfortably. Pneumonic;614688 Wrote: > But, you'll not be able to convince me that "analog" doesn't introduce > copious amounts of noise/hiss and distortions that prevent the > reproduction of, especially low level details, in recordings and thus > makes it suspect as a true "hi-fi (ie an accurate reproduction of the > signal) medium. In such aspects, analog is, technically, far inferior > to digital, enough that it is a huge reasons for some audiophiles not > to consider analog true "hi-fi" in the strictest sense of the > definition . Heck, the simple inclusion of RIAA filtering ensures this > alone .... nevermind the oodles of other distortion and noise/hiss > issues inherent in analog recording/vinyl playback. Technically it is > very easy to demonstrate that these limitations with analog > recording/playback are not present in their digital counterparts. Many > would therefore argue that is follows that digital has a greater > resolution. > > Back to my point earlier. The very best signal to noise ratio that you > can get from analog tape is about 70dB. Pristine vinyl a tad lower. > Basic, ole redbook runs out of resolution at least 30dB below the noise > floor of the best analog tape/ultimate vinyl. Where digital is fully > resolving low level details in music, analog tape/vinyl is completely > obliterating the signal due to tape hiss/noise. It's gone and those > minute nuances in the recording are lost forever. Not exactly hi-fi now > is it? But, it may sound pleasing to ones ears otherwise .......... The second paragraph above states some useful numbers (70dB, 30dB) whereas the previous paragraph uses terms like "copious amounts" and "oodles", which whether true or not, can not be argued or, for that matter, defended. In addition to all this a high signal to noise ratio does not necessarily a good recording make. There are those who feel that the sampling frequency of digital, be it 48kHz or 192kHz, is in and of itself, the main reason the digital is inferior to analog. Both arguments (signal to noise ratio & sampling frequency) are valid, up to point. Almost all listening environments have low level background noise which can obscure low level signals and high sampling rates can bring digital very close to the resolution of analog. And the issues get even more complex since what we're discussing above are digital versus analog recordings. However what is to be done with all the very fine analog recordings out there or the many early and rather poor digital recordings? Just has the hiss cannot be removed from an analog recording without altering to some degree the high frequencies, the sampling frequency of an older digital recording can not be fundamentally increased. Oh sure one can upsample all one wants but that just adds meaningless data and does not and can not improve the sound. I find that it is more useful to accept the fact that digital is here to stay and instead of ignoring digital's shortcoming one works to minimize or eliminate these shortcoming and continue to improve the sound of digital. And I fairly sure that on this we can all agree. -- ralphpnj Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels -> Snatch -> The Transporter -> Transporter 2 (oops) -> Touch 'Last.fm' (http://www.last.fm/user/jazzfann/) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ralphpnj's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=10827 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=85590 _______________________________________________ audiophiles mailing list audiophiles@lists.slimdevices.com http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/audiophiles
