Check this out. I first heard about this several years ago when I read an article in the now defunct BAM Magazine where Neil Young said almost the same thing.
The following is an excerpt from an article by Rupert Neve, published in the October 2002 issue of Audio Media in AM Forum.
"I first met SCAD in 1995 in Tokyo when I visited Professor Oohashi at the Japanese Institute for Mass Communication. The equipment I listened to was made for Professor Oohashi by JVC. He had presented papers, claiming that extension of the frequency range beyond audibility was beneficial to sound quality and produced brain electrical activity from the area associated with pleasure. The absence of frequencies above 20 kHz resulted in subliminal frustration and restlessness."
Now of course this is being remedied by higher sample rates but Mr. Neve goes on to say that it is still a problem until you reach rates of 192 or higher. SCAD / DSD of course is beyond all this. Food for thought. Fats
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After all of this thread, I am most curious to why all the digit
After all of this thread, I am most curious to why all the digital problems in sound. I know I run HI-BIT and I get really really great sounding CD's. Of the SACD's I have, none, I repeat, NONE give the overall sound quality of what I routinly do, finaled to 16/44.1K.
I send out CD's to clients and they are blown away. Audiophiles as well as musicians and other studios. Could it be I have found the mastering holy grail...only to be surpassed someday by an emerging technology that will make mastering "idiot proof", ellminate the art (like one conductor can pull out better sound than another from the same orchestra..is how I compare my mastering, damn the format)and deem it all jack in the box?
I consistantly get fantastic results with my ears and equipment whether it is digital, analog, 16 bit 44.1K or any of the others.
Example being, I have thousands of hours in analog and master daily. I revert back to my analog masters. I listen to what happens when you use digital with bandwidth to close to 100K and convert back to 44.1K I make sure what happens in this transfer is modifyed to translate for the transfer. I can hear the difference and I make up for it..as tough as it is, it can be done. No secret..just damn good loudspeakers/amps/experience and daily practice..that's all.
Here are some word and phrases I find, let's say, "interesting"
Here are some word and phrases I find, let's say, "interesting" when used in regard to digital audio:
Decimation
Aliasing
Quantization error
Successive approximation
Noise shaping
All of these things happen to your audio when you put it into a digital recorder resulting in three more "interesting" catch phrases,…
Amplitude-domain problems,
Time-domain problems,
Frequency-domain problems...
I'm sure a lot of you think by now that I am bashing digital audio. By no means! As a matter of fact, much of my best work (IMO) has been done on 16 bit digital ADAT. I don't think what you record on or with is anywhere as important as what you record! Having said that, I do resent being told that PCM or even DSD digital is a panacea of quality. We still haven't found the perfect system of capturing and replaying audio. When manufactures use words like "pristine" and say things like "It records every nuance", it is just so much marketing b/s I can hardly stand it anymore.
I am sure there is a lot of really wonderful work being done with 16 bit digital but here are the specs….
"We can now state the limits of the 16-bit / 44.1 kHz. standard: theoretical S/N ratio of 98.08 dB theoretical upper frequency limit of 22.05 kHz, theoretical time resolution of 22.7 microseconds." Ed Foster
None of these specs live up to what the average listener is capable of hearing and comes nowhere near approaching the capabilities of analog in frequency or time resolution.
In a previous post Bill Roberts said;
"I send out CD's to clients and they are blown away. Audiophiles as well as musicians and other studios. Could it be I have found the mastering Holy Grail?"
I say that's great! I believe you buddy!!!, really!!! But from my own experience I know, if you take an analog source, play it along with a digitized version of the same source, switching back and fourth between the two, I can tell the difference (as per my previously described experiment). It's not that big a deal, great music can be made, shaped and crafted on almost anything. But please don't tell me that carob really tastes just like chocolate!
As far as long term storage, maybe we should make analog safeties time code locked to a hi res PCM and DSD digital copies, so in the future when a more perfect standard comes along we can take the best parts of each and assemble them ……Fats
Originally posted by Cedar Flat Fats: All the masters for the
Originally posted by Cedar Flat Fats:
All the masters for the new Rolling Stones SCAD compilation all played flawlessly. Some after almost 50 years... I have 10 year old DATS that show drop outs and won't play despite my best efforts to store them correctly.......As you stated, there has got to be a better way!
:confused: ....Fats
Well Fats, because of this I went to my studio archive where I keep a number of recordings that are very dear to me.
I took some DAT's from 1988/89 and copied them to CDR without a single dropout!
The DAT's are in a completely dark and cold corner of a normal humidity closet.
Cheers, Han
It seems as if we may have thrown the audio baby out with the an
It seems as if we may have thrown the audio baby out with the analog bath water! To this point in time, I myself have been more concerned about frequency domain and clock stability issues but now this too? Digital doesn't reproduce the frequencies we can hear and now we are beginning to discover that even at the higher rates it is not sampling as fast as our brains either! Analog has imperfections also. Head bump coloration, tape compression and surface noise. Long term storage is at issue but analog has proven to be very stable under the correct conditions. All the masters for the new Rolling Stones SCAD compilation all played flawlessly. Some after almost 50 years... I have 10 year old DATS that show drop outs and won't play despite my best efforts to store them correctly.......As you stated, there has got to be a better way!
:confused: ....Fats