Well, actually, the majority of your post was pretty accurate, especially
regarding "warmth", but this section is not. While _in_theory_ the highest
frequency the can be recorded by a digital system (the Nyquist frequency)
is half of the sampling rate (so for CDs it SHOULD be 22.05 kHz), some
practical considerations reduce that figure to 0.4 times the sampling
rate. Thus, to reproduce the AUDIBLE frequency spectrum for humans, a
sampling rate of about 50kHz would be the minimum (The Redbook standard is
44.1 kHz because when CDs first came out, that was about as high a
sampling rate as was practical financially). I say MINIMUM because while
humans can generally not HEAR frequencies above 20k, we can PERCEIVE them.
they help with tuning and location cues in particular( yes, I realize that
psychoacustics are not a necessary subject for this list, but I figured
you kids would rather have the whole story than half-truths).
In conclusion, CDs as a form of digital audio are not up to par with the
really high-end analog equipment. By the way, yes, I can hear the
difference between 44.1kHz and 48kHz(many DAT machines are capable of
this. DVDs are capable of up to 192kHz, which, if coupled with a decent
bit depth (24 bits is good enough) should produce the most "accurate"
audio signal.
But digital audio will still sound thinner the more you dump it in and out
of digital audio software like Pro Tools.
-B.
>>>>If you want a closer approximation of live sound you have to use
digital record
ing. Digital can handle all freqs within the audible spectrum: 20 to
20KHz. I
n fact digital records freqs outside our range of hearing so that
harmonics are
not augmented at a lower range. As to the sample rate. Who can
differentiate
the samples at a sample rate or 44.1Khz (one sample every .000022675
seconds)?
I can't. And you don't hear people saying film is nothing like real
life...
there's only 24 frames per second in film. The only real problem with
digital
sound is that there's too much high freqs.
