Vinyl is not obsolete, Will CD become obsolete ?

[Evil Emperor]

sorry, I don't accept the argument that 44.1 delivery is as good as 96k merely because it satisfies many of a 'target' market?

No. 96kHz is as good as 44.1kHz because all you are paying for is additional self-noise in most microphone systems. The reason why studios go for 24/96 over 16/44 is it gives them a far 'larger' workspace. The fact that it also potentially gives you the sort of dynamic range that would allow you to accurately reproduce the sound of a jet engine up close is immaterial because no transducer you'd want either in the studio or in the home is capable of reproducing that sort of range.

 

[Werner]

sorry, I don't accept the argument that 44.1 delivery is as good as 96k merely because it satisfies many of a 'target' market?

I didn't write market.

I wrote target listeners.

I assume it can be demonstrated, with statistical evidence, that generally 44.1kHz is not sufficient for 4-year old females. Does this mean that we have to direct the whole recording industry to satisfy that group of listeners?

 

[Pac1]

Unfortunately, that just means progress marches over them. The "too big to fail" argument might help prop up a bank or two, but it's at best a temporary crutch.

If you were viewing electrification from the position of someone 120 years ago, there were too many people with gas lighting to see the move to electric light in the home being a resounding success.

How many people had a wall full of VHS tapes? How many of those still have a wall full of VHS tapes? That all but vanished in less than a decade.

Superiority of one format over the other or the joys of collecting are essentially side issues. A generation from now, people will be looking back at that twee time when everyone had shelves full of books, records and CDs. Yes, there will always be collectors, but it's becoming a minority interest even now.

Perhaps, but that's not the point. The point is that many enthusiasts who have 1000's of titles on LP will not be bothered to spend a good portion of their lives committing the whole lot to digital, because that is a significant commitment. Also, there's a lot about committing to digital that is a right royal pain such as being unable to commit a good deal of the supporting album information.

Technology always marches on and always will. To write off LP playback as vastly inferior when there is so much opinion to the contrary won't convince people who are already perfectly happy and content with the music libraries that they have built up and the means to exploit them.

This does not of course mean that such people (including myself) will not embrace new technology for what is already available in download format, just that life is way too short to fret over converting 1000's of albums!

We are perhaps the last generations who will have this issue unless youngsters embrace vinyl, and that percentage may always be a small minority. No arguments about technology, but writing off vast music libraries because of technology is simply a backwards step in so many ways.

 

[Werner]

Well ... who says they don't? By the way, I refer to playback in my previous post (I wrote it in capitals to be fair) and here.

Yes, me too: playback.

40 years ago the well-heeled hunted down masters, or first-gen copies of masters. This was seen as the ideal playback format.

 

[Plutox]

sorry, I don't accept the argument that 44.1 delivery is as good as 96k merely because it satisfies many of a 'target' market ...

No, it's as good because it satisfies the hearing and listening abilities of an overwhelming majority of human beings.

This bell curve, naturally, excludes audiophiles on account of their supernatural hearing abilities combined with massive skill and experience.

 

[darrenyeats]

Yes, me too: playback.

40 years ago the well-heeled hunted down masters, or first-gen copies of masters. This was seen as the ideal playback format.

Werner,
It might have been seen as that ... but that isn't any reason to doubt the solid arguments made in the link that 44/48kHz can be better than higher sampling rates for playback.
Darren

 

[Werner]

the solid arguments

Could you list here what you think are solid arguments?

 

[DSCOTT]

I'm with Evil Emperor, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to own LP's, CD's, SACD's, Hi-Rez files, Books etc.

In fact there should be some sort of amnesty where people can hand their collections in to a government agency - after the amnesty all bets are off.

This is the brave new world we should all embrace with Evil Emperor as the err "Emperor". Less choice is the way forward, niche markets in anything must be extinguished.

 

[darrenyeats]

Could you list here what you think are solid arguments?

Werner,
The information is all in the link, it is written better than I could write it. So far your objections haven't convinced me, so I continue to believe the arguments there are solid. However, I try to have an open mind.
Darren

 

[Mikas]

One would think so wouldn't one? But, counter-intuitively, there are strong arguments that a 44.1/48kHz sampling rate will sound BETTER than higher sampling rates AS A PLAYBACK FORMAT (NOT necessarily for recording purposes in the studio).

It doesn't make sense at first but there are solid arguments for it.
http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Digital audio doesn't work in an intuitive way.
Darren

Quoting the article:

It's true that 16 bit linear PCM audio does not quite cover the entire theoretical dynamic range of the human ear in ideal conditions. Also, there are (and always will be) reasons to use more than 16 bits in recording and production.

None of that is relevant to playback; here 24 bit audio is as useless as 192kHz sampling. The good news is that at least 24 bit depth doesn't harm fidelity. It just doesn't help, and also wastes space.

So why is it relevant for recording, but not for playback?
If you have the possibility to playback exactly what you've recorded, how come downsampling it to 16 bits / 44kHz could ever sound better?

Another quote from the article:

"Neither audio transducers nor power amplifiers are free of distortion, and distortion tends to increase rapidly at the lowest and highest frequencies. If the same transducer reproduces ultrasonics along with audible content, any nonlinearity will shift some of the ultrasonic content down into the audible range as an uncontrolled spray of intermodulation distortion products covering the entire audible spectrum

"
One if not the big advantage of higher than 44.1kHz sample rates is that ultrasonic content being shift down by filters or other limitations, still stays ultrasonic, out of the audible spectrum.
If that implies bigger accuracy transporting the data to avoid nonlinearities, so be it.
That would be like avoiding to drive more powerful cars just because they can quickly run more dangeroulsy faster...

Michael

 

[adamdea]

Quoting the article:

So why is it relevant for recording, but not for playback?

Michael

Basically
A. the headroom it gives you to set the gain lower than you need to and still allow you to adjust it while retaining 16 bit precision. If you record in 16 bits with a peak at -10dB you won't be using full advtange of the available resolution.

B you will get rounding errors when peforming dsp (and you will be perfroming lots of dsp). so if you start up with 16 bits, the end result will be less than 16 bits. Instead you start off with 24 bits so you know you won't end up with less than 16 bits

All of this is about making sure you do end up with 16 good bits at the end; not about needing more than 16 bits at the end.

 

[Colonel_Mad]

Do I remember that downloaded music from itunes can only ever be transferred onto a few devices? What happens in 30 years time when you're on your 4th device replacement/upgrade and can no longer use your music you've paid for on your own players?

Jonathan

 

[formbypc]

Basically
A. the headroom it gives you to set the gain lower than you need to and still allow you to adjust it while retaining 16 bit precision. If you record in 16 bits with a peak at -10dB you won't be using full advtange of the available resolution. .......

All of this is about making sure you do end up with 16 good bits at the end; not about needing more than 16 bits at the end.

OK, on the assumption you're not a recording engineer, can you provide any backup to show that this is actually what recording engineers do in practice?

 

[johnfromnorwich]

Do I remember that downloaded music from itunes can only ever be transferred onto a few devices? What happens in 30 years time when you're on your 4th device replacement/upgrade and can no longer use your music you've paid for on your own players?

Jonathan

Deauthorise your machine as you retire it.

A bigger problem is when you already have a large selection of devices in the family that you might wish to use day by day. A couple of phones a couple of iPods, work machine, iPad, home laptop etc. iTunes store is the absolute last resort and only every used when no other option is available. Occasionally that is the case though (Cardiacs for example).

 

[Werner]

So far your objections haven't convinced me, so I continue to believe the arguments there are solid.

The Xiph bloke theorises around, and then states "In summary, it's not certain that intermodulation from ultrasonics will be audible on a given system. The added distortion could be insignificant or it could be noticable. "

And you call that convincing?



Drinking Wine Is Very Silly.

It is well known that vinification processes generate amounts of methanol. Methanol is toxic, causing blindness or even death. Traces of methanol in wine are tiny, yet, it is obviously much safer to avoid them altogether and drink grapejuice. In summary, it's not certain that toxification from methanol will be a fact for a given person. The added effect could be insignificant or it could be noticable.



When a loudspeaker or an amplifier suffers from intermodulation caused by stimuli in the, say, 20-40kHz band, then there is obviously something very wrong with this component, and restricting its input to <20kHz really won't help much. It will be as compromised, and not worth listening to (unless it is an esoteric tube design, in which case these intermolations make up the amp's cherished sonic fingerprint and perhaps more ultrasonics will bring more musical pleasure ...)

 

[adamdea]

OK, on the assumption you're not a recording engineer, can you provide any backup to show that this is actually what recording engineers do in practice?

It's common knowledge old thing. B is not about practice its about understanding DSP.
Try making a recording of any live event digitally and you will understand A. Or try looking up "gain riding". The point is that with a live event you don't know exactly how loud the loudest noise is going to be....

Anyone who has tried digitising a cd or vinyl knows this. But in a recording of live music you can;t just make them start again if you get it wrong- even if you did, it would probably come out different. So you have to build in a bit of headroom


Not being funny but the points I have made would be understood by anyone with an even rudimentary amateur knowledge.

 

[Evil Emperor]

I'm with Evil Emperor, there is absolutely no reason for anyone to own LP's, CD's, SACD's, Hi-Rez files, Books etc.

In fact there should be some sort of amnesty where people can hand their collections in to a government agency - after the amnesty all bets are off.

This is the brave new world we should all embrace with Evil Emperor as the err "Emperor". Less choice is the way forward, niche markets in anything must be extinguished.

The fact there's no reason for anyone to own these things does not prevent people from owning them. Just that any talk of LP staging a huge comeback must be tempered by the fact the huge comeback moves it from 0.2% of the market to 1.2% of the market.

Audiophiles are inherently unrealistic in their view of how the world works. Our view is not shared by everyone, no matter how loud we shout it. There is no god-given right for CD to continue to exist and the whole market (not just audiophiles) will determine if CD survives, disappears of becomes just another hanger-on niche.

Niches are the way things like CD and LP will survive. LP is still a sustainable niche. Whether CD can survive as a niche market is not clear. Certainly the production of both CDs and especially CD transports is more involved than the production of the same for LP, which suggests it might only survive if the economy of scale argument still holds.

Ultimately, as the market for mainstream CD goes away over the next few years, how much of a premium will you be prepared to pay for a CD or a CD player?

 

[DSCOTT]

It seems to me that some people just like to whinge and make sweeping generalizations and/or declarations:

I like the fact that I can:

Buy LP's
Buy CD's
Buy SACD's
Buy Blu-Ray's (both Audio & Video)
Buy Hi-Rez Downloads
Buy CD quality downloads
Stream Spotify

Why some people want to argue none of this is required, is an illusion, should be prevented, outlawed etc etc is just beyond me.

 

[adamdea]

OK, on the assumption you're not a recording engineer, can you provide any backup to show that this is actually what recording engineers do in practice?

On mature reflection my response was a bit snappy so, assuming that your inquiry was a genuine one, try reading this
http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/sep10/articles/qa0910-1.htm

I wouldn't necessarily take sound on sound's word on everything, but since your inquiry was about recording practice, I hope that this will either satisfy your curiosity or provoke a healthy interest in the area.

 

[darrenyeats]

Drinking Wine Is Very Silly.

It is well known that vinification processes generate amounts of methanol. Methanol is toxic, causing blindness or even death.<snip>

Werner,
The bit you missed from the quote is shown below.

"In summary, it's not certain that intermodulation from ultrasonics will be audible on a given system. The added distortion could be insignificant or it could be noticable. Either way, ultrasonic content is never a benefit, and on plenty of systems it will audibly hurt fidelity."

The above quote is the claim for which there is a solid argument. Solid refers to the how confident I feel about the arguments for the claim in the article ... it doesn't refer to how absolutely the claims are worded. (In fact, that the claim is qualified makes it all the more reasonable.)
Darren