On Tue, 05 Dec 2000, you wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 05, 2000 at 02:16:26PM +0000, David Cantrell wrote:
> [...]
> > Now consider that music is *not* just pure tones. A musical note produced
> > on a violin sounds different to the same note on an oboe because the
> > instruments produce different harmonics and mix different quantities of
> > those harmonics together. Nigh-on all of those harmonics are at
> > frequencies way above the frequency of the 'pure' tone.
yes yes .. but again from a reed instrument you get almost no harmonic
content over ~ 10khz .. the audible spectrum is generally accepted to be
around 40Hz to 22KHz and that includes yer harmonics.
> I'd argue that one cannot hear these harmonics and that a 16kHz square wave
> is going to sound the same as a 16kHz sine wave. IIRC, the ear effectively
> splits the sounds into frequency bands much like a FFT, and only has sensors
> across the 20Hz-15kHz range.
indeed, I can hear up to around 18khz which is exceptional ...
however it has been shown that even for people who cannot hear above 15k,
the frequencies between 15~20k add 'colour' to the sound ..
but all this is irrelevant .. a vinyl disk struggles much above 14~15k ..
where as CD is going strong .. so if you are arguing that the
harmonics are important then CD wins hands down ...further .. play a good
test disc on a top of the range transcription turntable[1] .. you should
see what happens to what was originally recorded as a triangle wave ..
the LP manages to get the levels of the harmonics about right .. but the
phase is anybodies guess .. it certaily doesn't look like a triangle
anymore .. far more fun can be had looking at the phase relationship
between left and right .. its pretty good around 3k ~ 8k .. wobbles a bit
above 8k and by the time you get to 15~16k its anybodies guess ...
all in all CD gives you back almost exactly what you put in, certainly at
least an order of magnitude better than vinyl .. now whether you prefer
that to the added 'sound' of vinyl we can argue over .. but not over its
accuracy of reproduction.
[eg EMT ]
--
Robin Szemeti
The box said "requires windows 95 or better"
So I installed Linux!
