An additional aspect of the vinyl situation as it has evolved is that there is a second-hand market for objects and none for used downloads.
Steve Smolian
-----Original Message-----
From: Association for Recorded Sound Discussion List [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Tom Fine
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2015 8:56 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] What is really higher resolution?
Hi John:
I think there are two different things driving the LP Revival niche market.
1. a substantial part of this market wants physical artifacts more than "better" sound. They want an nice object, to hold and appreciate. The listening is only part of the experience for them, the physical object, and playing the record are also part of the experience.
2. there is a part of this market that prefers the sound of vinyl. You obviously do not. You will never understand their aesthetic, and they don't understand yours. Best to live and let live.
No matter what we say or think, the vinyl niche is a healthy little market. Pressing plants are at capacity. More pressing plants are opening. There is a Record Store Day event for Black Friday:
http://www.recordstoreday.com/NewsItem/5648
Turntable manufacturers keep reporting increased sales and interest, etc. Bottom line, as far as the overall audio business goes, this niche generates a lot of excitement, and it's a great market because these people are willing to spend money (as opposed to feeling entitled to no-cost music streaming on their gadgets).
By ever measure I've seen, this market is more vibrant, bigger and more profitable than high-resolution audio. There is very limited up-take among consumers for "better" digital downloads.
In fact, the whole idea is widely mocked in the mainstream media (see the vehement and vitriolic reaction to the Pono Player), which sets the tone for all but the most audio-obsessed consumers. As much as I love the idea of HD downloads, I fear the market will wither like SACD, it just doesn't seem able to gain a firm foothold like vinyl. We'll see. Apple requires 24-bit files for Mastered for iTunes, so maybe they will launch a system of higher-than-CD-resolution downloads. I doubt consumers will be willing to pay anything extra (iTunes is already losing business hand over foot to free streaming services, which don't pay the musicians or record companies nearly enough to make the business viable). However, maybe Apple goes to 24-bit lossless downloads as the standard format, in an attempt to stave off the losses to streaming. I doubt a "better sound" argument will work with people who listen to music as background noise on earbuds and computer speakers, but I could be wrong because Apple has a history of doing the equivilent of selling snow to Eskimos.
I think that some of the vinyl revival is backlash against downloads (crappy sound, no physical
artifact) and a perception that CDs are cheap-feeling and bad-sounding. I think the CD gets a bad rap, but that's just me. It's definitely a clunky physical artifact (what's up with the insistence on 4-point type in CD booklets -- WHO CAN READ THAT?), but CDs are capable of very good sound quality, when carefully mastered and manufactured.
As a reminder that not all CDs are created well, I again point to the Sample-Rate Converter
comparison:
http://src.infinitewave.ca/
Not how much potential sound coloration takes place in the just the simple step of down-converting a 96k file to CD format. And this is just sample-rate. Bit-depth reduction involves dither, or not, and there are several choices to make in that step of the process. Great ears are required to get great results. Some people seem to assume digital audio, because its in a computer, is "automatically" good. It's not! As has always been in the pursuit of high-fidelity music recording and reproduction, good ears and good taste and craftsman skill are required at every step.
-- Tom Fine
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Haley" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Tuesday, November 24, 2015 2:16 AM
Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] What is really higher resolution?
> It may be a fifth, but it's a fifth that is something like two octaves or
> so above the top of the piano keyboard, starting to be dog-land up there.
> We need those octaves for the overtones, but they are quite soft way up
> there, compared to louder fundamental tones and lower overtones going on in
> normal hearing range. I'm all for reproducing the overtones, at least
> those we can hear, but the loss of them that far up will be a very subtle
> difference when it comes to experiencing music, and an inaudible difference
> to many people anyway.
>
> Back to the original topic, I just dubbed several brand new sealed LP's,
> recently pressed on "heavy" vinyl (they are reissues of 1960 LP's),
> digitizing them at 96/24 and then messing with them in Izotope RX4. My
> 96/24 dubs sound *exactly* like the LPs themselves. I am reminded how
> essentially inferior the LP medium is, when given the kind of scrutiny I
> have just been giving it. Of course I am using excellent quality playback
> equipment to play the records, and that equipment sounds quite wonderful.
> Looking at the result on the computer, we get a lot of very low frequency
> grunge that is pure groove noise, and even these sealed records are
> yielding way too many clicks and pops, that I have had to remove, even tho
> I cleaned the new records diligently with a soft brush, right before
> dubbing them. The groove noise higher up is occasionally distressing,
> being worse in one channel (I am removing most of it), and the kicker is
> that not a single one of these new records is perfectly centered, with
> respect to the center hole. You an hear that! I am getting excellent
> sound from some of the LP's, after I fix all the problems generated by the
> LP medium itself, but some of them have an unpleasant glaring midrange that
> just sounds like, well, an LP record, as opposed to an all digital
> recording. Granted that there are audio engineering decisions that existed
> before the record was made that may account for some of this, but I keep
> thinking that pressing imperfections in the LP itself are part of that
> problem too, as nobody but a fool would create a master tape today that
> sounds like this. It has taken me several hours per record to bring them
> "up to stuff," so I can really enjoy listening to them without regretting
> the format, and of course the LPs are never going to sound this good again
> after subsequent playings. Bottom line, for me it is really absurd to get
> reissued classic recordings pressed on vinyl. This is just a silly trend.
> These recordings should have been reissued in some hi-def digital format,
> where they would not have suffered the indignities of being put through an
> obsolete, superseded, old-timey format. Phooey on brand new vinyl!
>
> I think trying to figure out if the analog recording process is losing more
> data than a digital format is dancing on the head of a pin. In the real
> world, there are far larger basic performance issues are vastly more
> important. LP records became obsolete for some very good reasons.
>
> Best,
> John Haley
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 6:00 PM, Ellis Burman <[log in to unmask]>
> wrote:
>
>> 14K is an A and 21K is an E, so it's a 5th.
>>
>> Ellis
>>
>> On Mon, Nov 23, 2015 at 2:25 PM, Dave Burnham <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>>
>> > When I was born, (1942), we didn't even have 78s; we only had records. If
>> > you had gone into a record store and asked if they sold 78s, they
>> probably
>> > would just looked at you blankly; that all changed in 1948 when LPs were
>> > introduced.
>> >
>> > In spite of the gifted hearing that my friends and family give me credit
>> > for having, I, of course, have never HEARD bias except as I described
>> when
>> > "rocking" tape at slow speed. So it's probably a non-issue. Now,
>> naturally,
>> > my hearing is not near as good as it was when I was younger, but I was
>> > encouraged by a comment posted here several months ago that the
>> difference
>> > between the 21k I could once here and the 14k I may be able to hear now
>> is
>> > only a few notes of the scale.
>> >
>> > db
>> >
>> > Sent from my iPhone
>> >
>> > > On Nov 23, 2015, at 11:37 AM, Tom Fine <[log in to unmask]>
>> > wrote:
>> > >
>> > > Hi Dave:
>> > >
>> > > 1. most if not all professional tape machines had a "bias trap"
>> > (low-pass filter) to block bias interfering with playback. Keep in mind
>> > that early tape recorders, and especially early magnetic film recorders,
>> > had relatively low bias frequencies (several well under 100kHz), which
>> > could beat with some audible frequencies. So the bias trap was an early
>> > known thing in magnetic recorder design.
>> > >
>> > > 2. in the case of a Plangent transfer, a separate electronics path
>> > recovers bias, onto a separate digital track. The audio tracks do not
>> have
>> > any bias interaction or "pollution." John Chester can explain this in
>> > better detail, since he built the electronics.
>> > >
>> > > Also, I agree very much with John Chester's point that the digital
>> > "recording" system must introduce as few distortions or errors or
>> anything
>> > else as is technically possible, because all of that compounds on the
>> > playback errors from the analog source. One thing we haven't discussed is
>> > that there are many different ADC designs, some offering a more
>> transparent
>> > analog front end and also some being better able to deal with peak-levels
>> > from the source than others (ie analog headroom -- you certainly don't
>> > want overload distortion to happen before something is digitized). The
>> > thing that I find very impressive about the march of knowledge and
>> > technology is that we have these kinds of tools today, at affordable
>> > prices. This has all happened in my lifetime. When I was born (1966), NHK
>> > had not yet developed a reasonable-fidelity digital audio recorder.
>> > >
>> > > -- Tom Fine
>> > >
>> > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "DAVID BURNHAM" <
>> [log in to unmask]>
>> > > To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> > > Sent: Monday, November 23, 2015 10:50 AM
>> > > Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] What is really higher resolution?
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > Well also, (and I haven't read about this anywhere but it seems
>> > plausible), the analog signal on a reel to reel tape is riding on a high
>> > frequency bias. This bias signal is on the tape as an audio signal,
>> > (plainly heard if you are "rocking" the tape across the head at a very
>> slow
>> > speed. If you're sampling at 196khz, I can visualize some interference
>> > between the bias frequency and the sampling frequency unless a low pass
>> > filter completely removes the bias frequency.
>> > > d
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > On Monday, November 23, 2015 8:42 AM, Tom Fine <
>> > [log in to unmask]> wrote:
>> > >
>> > >
>> > > Correction -- I meant to say:
>> > > "Then there's the fact that some tapes AREN'T slit perfectly enough to
>> > ride through the transport
>> > > with relatively even track-tracking (i.e. relatively perfect azimuth
>> > throughout the tape)."
>> > >
>> > > For what it's worth, Irish/Ampex/Quantegy battled slitting-imperfection
>> > issues throughout its
>> > > existence. 3M slitting was generally better, as was BASF and Agfa and,
>> > I'm guessing (due to no
>> > > experience with the product), EMI. Audio Devices (AudioTape) was also
>> > generally slit precisely.
>> > >
>> > > Keep in mind too that age physically distorts some tapes, so the ride
>> > across the heads is even less
>> > > perfect. We all know about acetate tapes warping and curling and
>> > shrinking. There hasn't been much
>> > > science done on baking polyester tapes and whether that creates
>> > transport-azimuth issues. My own
>> > > experience is that some tapes do have issues because, after baking,
>> > there is some non-sticky residue
>> > > on the tape surface and edges. This problem can probably be mitigated
>> by
>> > running a baked tape across
>> > > a Pelon wipe before transfer.
>> > >
>> > > My main point is -- and you can test this with sine-wave and
>> square-wave
>> > signals on even the most
>> > > modern and well-maintained tape machines -- tape is far from
>> > output=input, so it's falacious to say
>> > > its output is "steady-state" fidelity to the original source. Tape's
>> own
>> > mechanical and electrical
>> > > imperfections are constantly "chopping bits off" the original signal,
>> > and thus reducing resolution.
>> > > Same with disk recording and playback.
>> > >
>> > > -- Tom Fine
>> > >
>> > > ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tom Fine" <
>> [log in to unmask]
>> > >
>> > > To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> > > Sent: Monday, November 23, 2015 7:27 AM
>> > > Subject: [ARSCLIST] What is really higher resolution?
>> > >
>> > >
>> > >> There is an argument to be made that analog media playback can't
>> > possibly offer that many data
>> > >> points to be collected. To wit ...
>> > >>
>> > >> 1. when you play a tape, you are fighting the laws of physics. For one
>> > thing, no transport
>> > >> provides a perfect ride across the heads. Resolution is damaged by wow
>> > and flutter (time-smear),
>> > >> plus imperfect tape-to-head contact cause by anything from uneven head
>> > wear to imperfections in
>> > >> the tape surface to simple dust and other particles in the air.
>> There's
>> > also static electricity
>> > >> and other results of friction. Then there's the fact that some tapes
>> > are slit perfectly enough to
>> > >> ride through the transport with relatively even track-tracking (i.e.
>> > relatively perfect azimuth
>> > >> throughout the tape). Tape electronics, especially old ones, are prone
>> > to what are now considered
>> > >> high levels of distortion and noise, and unless they have been
>> > thoroughly overhauled, aging
>> > >> components compound these problems.
>> > >>
>> > >> 2. a commercial disk release has mechanically-lowered resolution from
>> > the get-go. There are some
>> > >> issues with lacquer "memory" (where the groove shrinks back a little
>> > bit when it cools after
>> > >> cutting -- this is a controversial topic among cutting engineers, but
>> > direct-metal mastering was
>> > >> invented as a solution to this alleged problem). Then there is
>> > resolution-loss in the plating
>> > >> process, because the laws of materials science and physics say it's
>> > impossible to make a perfect
>> > >> imprint (there is some granularity to all materials, plating cannot be
>> > perfectly uniform, etc).
>> > >> And, the pressing machines can't be perfectly clean on every press,
>> the
>> > vinyl biscuit can't be
>> > >> perfectly pure, etc. In fact, if you think about disk-manufacturing,
>> > it's quite miraculous that
>> > >> the whole system got to where it can sound as good as some records do.
>> > With shellac records, it's
>> > >> even more so because the technologies hadn't evolved as much and
>> > shellac itself is a very
>> > >> imperfect carrier material. So, before a stylus even hits the groove,
>> > you have stages of materials
>> > >> imperfections baked in (literally), which results in at least surface
>> > noise if not ticks, pops and
>> > >> groove distortion. And then there's the matter that no stylus tracks a
>> > groove perfectly, there is
>> > >> an inherent noise floor in all mechanical playback (dragging a diamond
>> > through a groove), and that
>> > >> only the very best preamps offer super-low noise floors (this is even
>> > more of an issue with
>> > >> low-output moving-coil setups).
>> > >>
>> > >> One argument made by the anti-digital crowd of yore (I don't hear this
>> > argument made about
>> > >> higher-resolution digital, except by ideologue zealots) is, "no matter
>> > how much you sample a sound
>> > >> wave, you're still breaking it into chunks and it's not a steady-state
>> > wave." But, see above. The
>> > >> output from the analog playback system itself is not really a
>> > steady-state wave. Physics and
>> > >> materials science prevent that from being so. So the question is,
>> which
>> > system is actually
>> > >> capturing more "resolution"? Let the debate begin!
>> > >>
>> > >> -- Tom Fine
>> > >>
>> > >> ----- Original Message ----- From: "Corey Bailey" <
>> > [log in to unmask]>
>> > >> To: <[log in to unmask]>
>> > >> Sent: Monday, November 23, 2015 3:14 AM
>> > >> Subject: Re: [ARSCLIST] Hi-Rez symphony recordings
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> > >>> Correction:
>> > >>> Data points per bit should have read: data points per dB of dynamic
>> > range (I changed the math,
>> > >>> but not the description).
>> > >>> So, the comparison should read:
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Lets take a look at the available data points for each dB of dynamic
>> > range for CD quality digital
>> > >>> audio: 65,536 (data points) divided by 96 (dB of dynamic range) =
>> > 682.6 data points for each dB
>> > >>> of dynamic range of a given sample.
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Compare that to 24 Bit/ 96K digital audio: 4,294,967,296 (data
>> points)
>> > divided by 144 (dB of
>> > >>> dynamic range) = 29,826,161 data points for each dB of dynamic range
>> > of a given sample. And,
>> > >>> there are more than twice a many samples taken! Now, we are talking
>> > about some decent resolution.
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Also, my hand typed chart got wacked by the forum formatting.
>> > Hopefully, you get the idea.
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Cheers!
>> > >>>
>> > >>> Corey
>> > >>> Corey Bailey Audio Engineering
>> > >>> www.baileyzone.net
>> > >>>
>> > >>>> On 11/22/2015 7:47 PM, Corey Bailey wrote:
>> > >>>> Mr. Kevil:
>> > >>>> Let's take a look at Bit Depth as applied to digital audio: "Bit
>> > Depth divides a given sample
>> > >>>> by its value."
>> > >>>> Thus:
>> > >>>> BIT DEPTH DATA POINTS DYNAMIC RANGE
>> > >>>> 8 256 48dB
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> 16 65,536 96dB
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> 24 4,294,967,296 144dB
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> Now, lets take a look at the available data points per bit for CD
>> > quality digital audio: 65,536
>> > >>>> (data points) divided by 96 (dB of dynamic range) = 682.6 data
>> points
>> > for each bit of a given
>> > >>>> sample.
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> Compare that to 24 Bit/ 96K digital audio: 4,294,967,296 (data
>> > points) divided by 144 (dB of
>> > >>>> dynamic range) = 29,826,161 data points for each bit of a given
>> > sample. And, there are more than
>> > >>>> twice a many samples taken! Now, we are talking about some decent
>> > resolution.
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> So, even though you have only 70 dB of dynamic range available for
>> > those old tape recordings
>> > >>>> (before the introduction of Noise Reduction), you will obviously
>> > capture much more of that
>> > >>>> available dynamic range using the archival standard 24Bit/96K (Hi
>> > Rez) sample rate and bit
>> > >>>> depth.
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> The same logic applies to any of the old audio carriers.
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> Plus, when restoration takes place, the results are less artifact
>> > prone when using higher bit
>> > >>>> depths and sample rates.
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> Cheers!
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>> Corey
>> > >>>> Corey Bailey Audio Engineering
>> > >>>> www.baileyzone.net
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>>
>> > >>>>> On 11/22/2015 3:03 PM, L. Hunter Kevil wrote:
>> > >>>>> A transfer of a 1960s tape marketed in a 24/96 wrapper is what?
>> > Doesn't the resolution of the
>> > >>>>> tape correspond to the equivalent of an 8- or 12-bit word? If so,
>> > what does the wrapper do?
>> > >>
>> > >>
>> >
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Ellis
>> [log in to unmask]
>> 818-846-5525
>>
>
>
|
