The Return of Vinyl

Maybe there's a point of diminishing returns where it's not useful to further increase the sampling rate, and this is determined either by conventional tolerances or your ear. In my experience, an informed ear that has spent a lot of time playing or listening to live music (played by instruments) can hear a "processed," produced rather than natural quality to digital music. This is why I prefer good analog, but I know there are plenty of people who either can't tell the difference, don't care, or have the opposite preference.

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Even noted digital designer Bob Stuart believes that 44.1khz is not a high enough sampling rate at 16 bit word length. Anyone who has A/B a source of 16/44 and that of the same mastering 24/96 has heard the benefit of higher resolution music.

The umpteenth installment of this argument would be more fun to follow were it in English and not audiogeek.

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

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Even noted digital designer Bob Stuart believes that 44.1khz is not a high enough sampling rate at 16 bit word length.
But Bob Stuart & Meridian's opinion is of course that CD is better than vinyl though..

Anyone who has A/B a source of 16/44 and that of the same mastering 24/96 has heard the benefit of higher resolution music.

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That's quite a bombastic statement seeing as most people can't tell a difference between mp3/aac and CD..

Originally Posted by poly800rock

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analog in general will never go away. On the recording front or the listener front. The two inch reel to reel is still industry standard. Vinyl is/has always been the elitest way of listening to music.

Sort of like:

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

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I have an audiophile EE friend who designs chips for Freescale. He believes that the Nyquist Theorem is not proven on non-continuous waveforms which is a good part of the musical signal in terms of transients.

I too know lots of people who say crazy things. If what your friend says is true, it is easy to prove: just provide one example that violates the theorem.

Originally Posted by Philosoph

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But this doesn't sound quite right to me. I think you're right that a higher bandwidth requires a higher sampling rate to get the same level of fidelity as on a lower bandwidth, but no digital signal can ever truly simulate an analog one. As you increase the sampling rate to infinity, the difference between the digital and analog signals will become infinitely small.

I agree that the sampling theorem is not intuitive, which is why people who are interested in it or want to make claims about it ought to learn more about it and the math behind it before making those claims.

At this point I will just be throwing the same assertions at you, which is where we are already, so I'm not sure the discussion can move forward.

This is why I prefer good analog, but I know there are plenty of people who either can't tell the difference, don't care, or have the opposite preference.

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A popular misconception is that analog is somehow less processed or more natural than digital, but that could not be further from the truth. Analog, like digital, is a human-created representation of nature. Nature is neither analog nor digital --- analog and digital are tools that humans created so we can have a better grasp on reality.

--Andre

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

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Even noted digital designer Bob Stuart believes that 44.1khz is not a high enough sampling rate at 16 bit word length. Anyone who has A/B a source of 16/44 and that of the same mastering 24/96 has heard the benefit of higher resolution music.

You are confusing two issues: we are talking about how analog and digital can accurately represent signals. Stuart is talking about how much the human ear can hear.

It's the difference between discussing how a weighing scale works vs. how much a particular object weighs. Apples and oranges.

--Andre

Originally Posted by Andre Yew

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It's the difference between discussing how a weighing scale works vs. how much a particular object weighs. Apples and oranges.
I think apples sound better than oranges.

Originally Posted by RJman

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I think apples sound better than oranges.
Depends how thick the skull is at which you throw them.

Originally Posted by Babar

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That's quite a bombastic statement seeing as most people can't tell a difference between mp3/aac and CD..

Well most people don't take the time to develop critical listening skills but that does not mean much about the inherent capabilities of the formats.

I introduced the hirez digital differences as an example of how there are limitations of the redbook CD standard.

Labelking has the right idea. Much like Leica has a well-executed analog purity, LPs retain the musical signal in an analog state with no digital conversion back and forth. An LP's tiny grooves carry a surprising amount of detail about a recording session. When I worked on a recording session in 1991 we recorded a jazz group in both state of the art 16/44 at the time (the very best converters, etc.) and an analog master tape. The tape had a closeness to the original performance that the resulting CD could not match. When the SACD was put out a few years ago, the mastering engineer used the analog tape and did a "pure DSD" transfer (no hirez PCM intermediaries) for the SACD. It was very close to the master tapes. I was very happy how it turned out. We could hear the room tone finally and the instrument tonality was dead on.

Audio is a strange thing. LPs can measure somewhat poorly along some dimensions like wow, flutter and the like compared to CDs but I hear something closer to the event that I hear on CD. One thing I learned working on recordings part-time is that it is very hard to measure all aspects of an audio event.

If what your friend says is true, it is easy to prove: just provide one example that violates the theorem.

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My friend believes the transient notes are not fully explained by the theorem. It is, after all, based on continuous signals.

If Nyquist is the last word on bandwidth to the limits of human hearing, why does Super Audio or DVD Audio sound so much better than 16/44.1 CD? Clearly something is missing.

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

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An LP's tiny grooves carry a surprising amount of detail about a recording session. When I worked on a recording session in 1991 we recorded a jazz group in both state of the art 16/44 at the time (the very best converters, etc.) and an analog master tape.

Do you like it, the non sequitur? What the heck do LP's tiny grooves have to do with analog master tape?

Originally Posted by Artisan Fan

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My friend believes the transient notes are not fully explained by the theorem. It is, after all, based on continuous signals.

Your friend is free to believe what he wants. I'll give you your discontinuous transients the day you show me analog has infinite bandwidth and you find me a real-life signal with zero rise time.

Analog isn't that hot either: generational loss with each copy, noise, bandwidth limitations, and non-linearity dependent on a zillion factors that are hard to control, and can't do justice to transients either.

If Nyquist is the last word on bandwidth to the limits of human hearing, why does Super Audio or DVD Audio sound so much better than 16/44.1 CD? Clearly something is missing.

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First of all, sounding better doesn't mean more accurate. LP proves that.

Second, please see above post about apples and oranges, because you're doing it here again.

--Andre

Originally Posted by iammatt

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Depends how thick the skull is at which you throw them.

And if the skull is protected by tinfoil.

--Andre

Not to derail the thread in yet another direction, but what is a good "budget conscious" record player? I can't drop $1200 on a direct drive Technics...

Here is a view on analog that matches mine:

http://blogs.cnet.com/8301-13645_1-9....html?tag=more

Originally Posted by Andre Yew

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Do you like it, the non sequitur? What the heck do LP's tiny grooves have to do with analog master tape?

**Analog LPs capture the master tape very well in my experience.

Your friend is free to believe what he wants. I'll give you your discontinuous transients the day you show me analog has infinite bandwidth and you find me a real-life signal with zero rise time.

**I believe that Tim DeParavicini found LPs to have an 11 microsecond rise time but I'm not sure what significance that has at the end of the day.

Analog isn't that hot either: generational loss with each copy, noise, bandwidth limitations, and non-linearity dependent on a zillion factors that are hard to control, and can't do justice to transients either.

**Yet analog sounds better to my ears so maybe these things don't explain it all.

--Andre

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