I don't think ALE is suitable for the iPod. Files in ALE are still 30 megs or more, and I think that the iPod has just a 32mb buffer, so you will always be accessing the disk.
Anything higher than that is only useful for archiving or maintaining the maximum amount of pretentiousness.
Going from the iPod out to my car's speakers there is a significant difference when it comes to highs and lows between 192kbps AAC and Apple Lossless. I am not an audiophile, but I know what my ears hear.
Thanks for the info on the buffer, I hadn't really thought about it in-depth. Perhaps I will stick with my trusty old VBR mp3s after all.
Well, I have re-ripped everything to apple loss-less and everything sounds much better than the aac default bit-rate which it was previously ripped at.
That said, I haven't been paying much attention to battery life, but every once in a while my ipod will pause mid song for about 1 to 2 seconds. It never did that before apple loss-less.
Someone did a test setting their iPod to repeat an album over and over until the battery died. With the album encoded as an AIFF file they got 7.5 hours. With the album encoded as AL they got 6 hours. I'll have to dig around for the link.
For best size/quality ratio, I suggest the default AAC 120kbps. For serious Audiophiles used to hearing SACD on a tube amp and $900 headphones, I'd suggest AAC 192. Anything higher than that is only useful for archiving or maintaining the maximum amount of pretentiousness.
You must be kidding -- Have you done any A/B comparisons? Even when ripped at AAC 320 you can hear the difference between the compressed and original CD. And you don't need $900 headphones to tell the difference.
I don't believe you. Any effect you think you heard is a placebo. Try having a friend give you a double-blind test at 192. I bet you'll fail.
And even if you can tell the difference, there are a few questions that need asking:
1. Is the CD version better, or just different?
2. At AAC 192, is your listening experience unenjoyable? If it is then I suggest that you're unbelievably spoiled.
3. (For Groverat who listens in his car: ) Can you hear the difference even when you take into account road noise?
4. Is it worth it?
1. Yes
2. Depends on the speakers
3. I'm not Groverat
4. Yes
It's incredibly easy to tell the difference between MP3/AAC and a lossless format. You just have to pay attention to the sounds instead of the notes. Most of the annoying parts are in the higher frequencies, which most consumer speakers don't reproduce well anyway so the problem goes mostly unnoticed. Until you play it back on a good (not even great) system, at which point you think something like, "Oh wow, this sounds horrible. How in the world did this compression thing ever take off??"
As I posted over at MacRumors back when iTunes 4.5 was released:
I was able to participate in a double-blind listening test last year comparing various bit rates to CDs. The equipment was mid-range (high-end to most) but nothing extreme. Over speakers in the 128k vs 192k test I picked out the 192k samples 7 out of 10 times. Over headphones it was 9 out of 10 times. Over speakers in the 256k vs CD tests I picked out the CD samples 5 out of 10 times. Over headphones it was 7 out of 10 times. There were more but I don't remember them off hand.
I will say that the CD format is not the end all be all of quality sound to begin with. When I listened to an LP for the first time in many years I was blown away. It was so much better than a CD of the same album. It made the CD sound dull in comparison. Background noise is stripped away with CDs but then so is a lot of good stuff. CDs are both a step forward and a step backward. Of course, LPs are not exactly practical in this day and age. I think as technology advances the quality of digital recordings will improve and there is plenty of room for it. A lot of people don't care about quality though. Just give them a lot of bass and their happy. Just take a drive and listen for the boom boom. Hmmm, maybe that's why they can't hear the difference. Their ears are too badly damaged at this point.
Of course, none of this stops me from owning an iPod. I do wish there was a 192k option on iTMS for say $1.50 or so or maybe Apple Lossless. Most of the songs I have bought from the iTMS are pretty good but I can hear room for improvement on most of them. The songs I got off eMusic sound better.
I don't believe you. Any effect you think you heard is a placebo. Try having a friend give you a double-blind test at 192. I bet you'll fail.
What do you want to bet? In a blind test, I can tell the difference in a matter of seconds.
Pretentious prick.
I am following this subject closely as I would love to use the iTMS and an iPod in conjunction with lossless encoding. Let?s keep our fingers crossed...
What do you want to bet? In a blind test, I can tell the difference in a matter of seconds.
I don't believe you either. Have you actually done a double-blind test or are you saying you *could* tell the difference?
TWinbrook46636: is 5/10 statistically significant? That's like calling a coin toss and getting it right half the time, so I'm guessing not. In fact I'm dubious that 7/10 proves anything (I've got a spreadsheet of what's significant lying around somewhere, but I've nothing to load it into on this machine) which means, in short, that you can't (or at least haven't proved you can) tell the difference between CD and 256 AAC even on "high end" equipment, with or without headphones.
That says that even at 7/10 you'd expect that result 18 times in a hundred if you were just guessing. Scientists aim for 0.05 or less, which you only achieved with 128kbps vs 192kbps through headphones. And that's without knowing anything else about the test set-up. They obviously let you think that you'd 'passed' when in reality you mostly failed so I'm not overly impressed by their methodology.
So it seems some others posting in this thread have much better hearing than you.
Im a bit upset at the standard iTunes store quality, I think it shoud be AAC192, not 128, but, I'd also like to point out, that if you value the quality of the music reproduction as more important than the actual music itself then there may be some deception of ones self going on here.
I will say that the CD format is not the end all be all of quality sound to begin with. When I listened to an LP for the first time in many years I was blown away. It was so much better than a CD of the same album. It made the CD sound dull in comparison. Background noise is stripped away with CDs but then so is a lot of good stuff. CDs are both a step forward and a step backward.
I won't debate matters of taste. If you like the sound of LPs over CDs, that's fine. There certainly is a real difference to be heard, and what's pleasing or not is personal.
I take exception, however, with the characterization "Background noise is stripped away with CDs but then so is a lot of good stuff."
What "good stuff" might that be? There's a whole lot of pseudo-scientific claims made about LP sound, including the ridiculous notion the "analog has infinite resolution" or some such nonsense. The steeply rolled-off traces of +20KHz that LPs might sometimes contain is about the only thing an LP might capture that a CD doesn't. That's about it -- There's not a test that's been done that I've ever heard of to prove that this wisp of a hint of very high frequency sound makes any significant difference to the listening experience.
What makes LPs sound good to some people is something called "euphonic distortion" -- in other words, distortion that sounds good instead of bad. It's not more accurate, it's not capturing something that might have been missed, it's adding something that wasn't there that nevertheless can be pleasing and even fool you into thinking it's "more real".
I don't believe you. Any effect you think you heard is a placebo. Try having a friend give you a double-blind test at 192. I bet you'll fail.
Ok... you don't believe me - I've been working in sound for over 20 years, started audio engineering when I was 12, and ran a small recording studio back in the 90s, but oh no, the mighty tonton knows better.
You still did not answer my question, have you done A/B comparisons? Of course, the answer is obviously no (either that or you have a hearing disability of some sort).
Quote:
Originally posted by tonton
And even if you can tell the difference, there are a few questions that need asking:
1. Is the CD version better, or just different?
2. At AAC 192, is your listening experience unenjoyable? If it is then I suggest that you're unbelievably spoiled.
1) Yes it is better.
2) Unenjoyable? Of course not, even listing to cassettes is enjoyable. Which has nothing to do with preferring higher quality (which is more enjoyable).
I take exception, however, with the characterization "Background noise is stripped away with CDs but then so is a lot of good stuff."
What "good stuff" might that be?
That "good stuff" is the music. The quality. The realism. A significant amout of information is thrown out when mastering a CD. Ask someone in the field how it works. A CD is already "compressed" for lack of a better word. There are higher quality digitial formats out like DVD-A and SACD and they won't be the last. Are you saying that the CD is as good as it can get and that DVD-A and SACD and any improvements that follow are just a bunch of BS?
TWinbrook46636: is 5/10 statistically significant? That's like calling a coin toss and getting it right half the time, so I'm guessing not. In fact I'm dubious that 7/10 proves anything (I've got a spreadsheet of what's significant lying around somewhere, but I've nothing to load it into on this machine) which means, in short, that you can't (or at least haven't proved you can) tell the difference between CD and 256 AAC even on "high end" equipment, with or without headphones.
Those were the results with my ears which I'll be the first to admit are not all that great anymore. What I'm saying is with those being my results then someone with better ears than mine should do much better. The results of the listening test I listed were for mp3 files by the way. The AAC results were a little better but I don't know if I still have the paper with the results written down anymore. I'll dig around. All were ripped in iTunes. This wasn't really "high-end" equipment, just not something you can get at Best Buy.
Bottom line: I can tell the difference between AIFF and 256K AAC on my iPod even with my ears.
Not everyone is the same. Everyone is different. You can't just say that because you don't hear a difference no one can and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong.
What makes LPs sound good to some people is something called "euphonic distortion" -- in other words, distortion that sounds good instead of bad. It's not more accurate, it's not capturing something that might have been missed, it's adding something that wasn't there that nevertheless can be pleasing and even fool you into thinking it's "more real".
Could you explain this better, I don't understand.
Regarding information lost going from 24-bit to 16-bit for CDs:
"Given a choice, mastering facilities prefer to work with source material that is higher in resolution than the (16-bit) target media."
"...this assumes that you use the best 24-bit outboard converters, which are capable of performance significantly higher than anything that can be stored on a CD or DAT. And when analog processing is complete, your high resolution music signal needs to be correctly dithered back to 16 bits. Dither could take up several pages of discussion. As you convert your 24-bit signal to 16 bits for CD storage, you can just truncate the data beyond 16, but quality will suffer. The better approach is to add a small amount of random noise called dither to the signal as it is converted to 16 bits. If the frequency spectrum of the dither noise is shaped so that it lies in areas where the human ear is less sensitive, the result can be a CD with an apparent dynamic range of more than 16 bits. Some techniques for dithering work better than others. Sony Super Bit Mapping and Apogee UV22 are just two of the solutions available. The topic of which unit sounds best gets technical very quickly..."
What makes LPs sound good to some people is something called "euphonic distortion" -- in other words, distortion that sounds good instead of bad. It's not more accurate, it's not capturing something that might have been missed, it's adding something that wasn't there that nevertheless can be pleasing and even fool you into thinking it's "more real".
Noise is added to CDs too. In fact, these mp3 and AAC files you are listening to apply advanced psychoacoustical tricks to fool you into thinking it's "more real" as well. With the CD format you loose information twice. Once when it is recorded digitally (hopefully 24-bit) and again when it is dithered down to 16-bit for mastering to a CD. There are pros and cons to every format. My point is that the CD is not the end all be all of sound quality.
There's not a test that's been done that I've ever heard of to prove that this wisp of a hint of very high frequency sound makes any significant difference to the listening experience.
I actually did, quite a while ago though. Possibly in a periodical before the internet was so mainstream.
Anyway, what I read was that the high end sounds reverberate off of the walls, floor and ceiling and eventually drift down into the range of the human ear. This 'trailing sound', for lack of a better term, is lost on a CD and has a distinguishable effect on the music.
That said, I don't really give a rat's ass. My favorite test is to compare Zappa's Hot Rats on LP vs. CD. Because the LP format could only hold roughly 40 minutes of music, Frank had to edit quite a bit of time off of one of the tracks. The intro is lost but was reintroduced on the CD release and the song is better off.
That "good stuff" is the music. The quality. The realism. A significant amout of information is thrown out when mastering a CD. Ask someone in the field how it works. A CD is already "compressed" for lack of a better word.
Noise and frequency response limit resolution, and the amount of information, in an analog signal the same way sample size and sample rate limit digital resolution, the only difference being that the fuzzy error bars surrounding analog signals make it harder to quantify these limitations.
While there may be things that are appealing about analog sound, real resolution isn't one of them. Cheap digital devices and recordings routinely exceed the resolution of hideously expensive analog devices and recordings.
Too many people have seen too many stupid diagrams of waveforms with digital sample points or lines drawn over them and had someone say "See all the stuff between the lines/points that's missing in digital?" -- if you're buying that, you don't understand signal processing.
Because of noise, at no point along an analog waveform can you be certain just how close the reproduced value of the magnitude of the waveform is to the corresponding original magnitude. That uncertainty is just as limiting for resolution as digital sample size.
Frequency response errors cause the shape of a reproduced analog waveform to deviate from the original waveform in ways that are, if you'll pardon the word, "analogous" to the uncertainty of what's happening to a waveform between two digital sample points.
Think of what the word "resolution" means -- the degree to which a thing can be resolved. Analog noise and distortion prevent fine details from being resolved just as much (if not typically more) than digitization does.
I think a lot of people confuse the concept of the resolution of a signal with what might be called the "grain" of the signal. They perhaps think of the surface of an LP, and consider the signal to have as much "resolution" as the most subtle molecular detail of the vinyl surface, or think of an analog signal running through a wire, and consider there to be as much resolution as the smallest quanta of electrical energy.
But that's just "grain", it's not resolution. It's lots of detail that adds nothing to the amount of true information present. Analog noise and distortion decorrelate all of that fine detail from the original signal information.
I think another thing people do when thinking about analog is that they generously picture analog this way:
which is perfectly fine, unless you let yourself believe that in some mystical way analog media truly carry some Platonic ideal of the original signal, with any noise or distortion merely being an annoyance mucking up some tangible, physically present, underlying perfection.
What about digital? Well, you have a digital signal which is not a perfect representation of an original. What do you call the difference between the original and the digital reproduction? Noise and distortion, of course, or simply noise.
This connection to the original signal is just as true about digital as it is about analog, and just as meaningless if you think the equation uncovers some special magical connection to the full resolution of the original signal.
Quote:
There are higher quality digitial formats out like DVD-A and SACD and they won't be the last. Are you saying that the CD is as good as it can get and that DVD-A and SACD and any improvements that follow are just a bunch of BS?
The greatest thing new formats can add beyond what CD can do is spatial fidelity. Two channels is only adequate if your head is rigidly fixed in place. With headphones, the acoustic space unrealistically turns along with your head. Listening to speakers, your head turns and moves through a very poor approximation of the original acoustic space.
So the best thing about some of these new formats is higher channel capacity. The higher sample sizes and sample rates? A marginal contribution to perceived quality at best. What probably makes a lot of these recordings, even the two channel ones, sound especially good is that they are typically engineering and remastered with great care -- that counts much more than 24-bit, 96 KHz gobs of data.
I certainly don't think that what's special about DVD-A and SACD is that they capture more of something magical that CDs don't have, and that LPs do have.
Comments
Anything higher than that is only useful for archiving or maintaining the maximum amount of pretentiousness.
Going from the iPod out to my car's speakers there is a significant difference when it comes to highs and lows between 192kbps AAC and Apple Lossless. I am not an audiophile, but I know what my ears hear.
Thanks for the info on the buffer, I hadn't really thought about it in-depth. Perhaps I will stick with my trusty old VBR mp3s after all.
That said, I haven't been paying much attention to battery life, but every once in a while my ipod will pause mid song for about 1 to 2 seconds. It never did that before apple loss-less.
EDIT: Link -> http://www5.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=70985
Originally posted by tonton
-Snip-
For best size/quality ratio, I suggest the default AAC 120kbps. For serious Audiophiles used to hearing SACD on a tube amp and $900 headphones, I'd suggest AAC 192. Anything higher than that is only useful for archiving or maintaining the maximum amount of pretentiousness.
You must be kidding -- Have you done any A/B comparisons? Even when ripped at AAC 320 you can hear the difference between the compressed and original CD. And you don't need $900 headphones to tell the difference.
Originally posted by tonton
Riight...
I don't believe you. Any effect you think you heard is a placebo. Try having a friend give you a double-blind test at 192. I bet you'll fail.
And even if you can tell the difference, there are a few questions that need asking:
1. Is the CD version better, or just different?
2. At AAC 192, is your listening experience unenjoyable? If it is then I suggest that you're unbelievably spoiled.
3. (For Groverat who listens in his car: ) Can you hear the difference even when you take into account road noise?
4. Is it worth it?
1. Yes
2. Depends on the speakers
3. I'm not Groverat
4. Yes
It's incredibly easy to tell the difference between MP3/AAC and a lossless format. You just have to pay attention to the sounds instead of the notes. Most of the annoying parts are in the higher frequencies, which most consumer speakers don't reproduce well anyway so the problem goes mostly unnoticed. Until you play it back on a good (not even great) system, at which point you think something like, "Oh wow, this sounds horrible. How in the world did this compression thing ever take off??"
I was able to participate in a double-blind listening test last year comparing various bit rates to CDs. The equipment was mid-range (high-end to most) but nothing extreme. Over speakers in the 128k vs 192k test I picked out the 192k samples 7 out of 10 times. Over headphones it was 9 out of 10 times. Over speakers in the 256k vs CD tests I picked out the CD samples 5 out of 10 times. Over headphones it was 7 out of 10 times. There were more but I don't remember them off hand.
I will say that the CD format is not the end all be all of quality sound to begin with. When I listened to an LP for the first time in many years I was blown away. It was so much better than a CD of the same album. It made the CD sound dull in comparison. Background noise is stripped away with CDs but then so is a lot of good stuff. CDs are both a step forward and a step backward. Of course, LPs are not exactly practical in this day and age. I think as technology advances the quality of digital recordings will improve and there is plenty of room for it. A lot of people don't care about quality though. Just give them a lot of bass and their happy. Just take a drive and listen for the boom boom. Hmmm, maybe that's why they can't hear the difference. Their ears are too badly damaged at this point.
Of course, none of this stops me from owning an iPod. I do wish there was a 192k option on iTMS for say $1.50 or so or maybe Apple Lossless. Most of the songs I have bought from the iTMS are pretty good but I can hear room for improvement on most of them. The songs I got off eMusic sound better.
Link -> http://www5.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=75779
Anyone here with similar problems?
Originally posted by tonton
Riight...
I don't believe you. Any effect you think you heard is a placebo. Try having a friend give you a double-blind test at 192. I bet you'll fail.
What do you want to bet? In a blind test, I can tell the difference in a matter of seconds.
Pretentious prick.
I am following this subject closely as I would love to use the iTMS and an iPod in conjunction with lossless encoding. Let?s keep our fingers crossed...
Originally posted by dfiler
What do you want to bet? In a blind test, I can tell the difference in a matter of seconds.
I don't believe you either. Have you actually done a double-blind test or are you saying you *could* tell the difference?
TWinbrook46636: is 5/10 statistically significant? That's like calling a coin toss and getting it right half the time, so I'm guessing not. In fact I'm dubious that 7/10 proves anything (I've got a spreadsheet of what's significant lying around somewhere, but I've nothing to load it into on this machine) which means, in short, that you can't (or at least haven't proved you can) tell the difference between CD and 256 AAC even on "high end" equipment, with or without headphones.
Here's a table I found with Google: http://www.pcavtech.com/abx/abx_bino.htm
That says that even at 7/10 you'd expect that result 18 times in a hundred if you were just guessing. Scientists aim for 0.05 or less, which you only achieved with 128kbps vs 192kbps through headphones. And that's without knowing anything else about the test set-up. They obviously let you think that you'd 'passed' when in reality you mostly failed so I'm not overly impressed by their methodology.
So it seems some others posting in this thread have much better hearing than you.
Originally posted by TWinbrook46636
I will say that the CD format is not the end all be all of quality sound to begin with. When I listened to an LP for the first time in many years I was blown away. It was so much better than a CD of the same album. It made the CD sound dull in comparison. Background noise is stripped away with CDs but then so is a lot of good stuff. CDs are both a step forward and a step backward.
I won't debate matters of taste. If you like the sound of LPs over CDs, that's fine. There certainly is a real difference to be heard, and what's pleasing or not is personal.
I take exception, however, with the characterization "Background noise is stripped away with CDs but then so is a lot of good stuff."
What "good stuff" might that be? There's a whole lot of pseudo-scientific claims made about LP sound, including the ridiculous notion the "analog has infinite resolution" or some such nonsense. The steeply rolled-off traces of +20KHz that LPs might sometimes contain is about the only thing an LP might capture that a CD doesn't. That's about it -- There's not a test that's been done that I've ever heard of to prove that this wisp of a hint of very high frequency sound makes any significant difference to the listening experience.
What makes LPs sound good to some people is something called "euphonic distortion" -- in other words, distortion that sounds good instead of bad. It's not more accurate, it's not capturing something that might have been missed, it's adding something that wasn't there that nevertheless can be pleasing and even fool you into thinking it's "more real".
Originally posted by tonton
Riight...
I don't believe you. Any effect you think you heard is a placebo. Try having a friend give you a double-blind test at 192. I bet you'll fail.
Ok... you don't believe me - I've been working in sound for over 20 years, started audio engineering when I was 12, and ran a small recording studio back in the 90s, but oh no, the mighty tonton knows better.
You still did not answer my question, have you done A/B comparisons? Of course, the answer is obviously no (either that or you have a hearing disability of some sort).
Originally posted by tonton
And even if you can tell the difference, there are a few questions that need asking:
1. Is the CD version better, or just different?
2. At AAC 192, is your listening experience unenjoyable? If it is then I suggest that you're unbelievably spoiled.
1) Yes it is better.
2) Unenjoyable? Of course not, even listing to cassettes is enjoyable. Which has nothing to do with preferring higher quality (which is more enjoyable).
Originally posted by shetline
I take exception, however, with the characterization "Background noise is stripped away with CDs but then so is a lot of good stuff."
What "good stuff" might that be?
That "good stuff" is the music. The quality. The realism. A significant amout of information is thrown out when mastering a CD. Ask someone in the field how it works. A CD is already "compressed" for lack of a better word. There are higher quality digitial formats out like DVD-A and SACD and they won't be the last. Are you saying that the CD is as good as it can get and that DVD-A and SACD and any improvements that follow are just a bunch of BS?
Originally posted by stupider...likeafox
TWinbrook46636: is 5/10 statistically significant? That's like calling a coin toss and getting it right half the time, so I'm guessing not. In fact I'm dubious that 7/10 proves anything (I've got a spreadsheet of what's significant lying around somewhere, but I've nothing to load it into on this machine) which means, in short, that you can't (or at least haven't proved you can) tell the difference between CD and 256 AAC even on "high end" equipment, with or without headphones.
Those were the results with my ears which I'll be the first to admit are not all that great anymore. What I'm saying is with those being my results then someone with better ears than mine should do much better. The results of the listening test I listed were for mp3 files by the way. The AAC results were a little better but I don't know if I still have the paper with the results written down anymore. I'll dig around. All were ripped in iTunes. This wasn't really "high-end" equipment, just not something you can get at Best Buy.
Bottom line: I can tell the difference between AIFF and 256K AAC on my iPod even with my ears.
Not everyone is the same. Everyone is different. You can't just say that because you don't hear a difference no one can and anyone who disagrees with you is wrong.
What makes LPs sound good to some people is something called "euphonic distortion" -- in other words, distortion that sounds good instead of bad. It's not more accurate, it's not capturing something that might have been missed, it's adding something that wasn't there that nevertheless can be pleasing and even fool you into thinking it's "more real".
Could you explain this better, I don't understand.
"Given a choice, mastering facilities prefer to work with source material that is higher in resolution than the (16-bit) target media."
"...this assumes that you use the best 24-bit outboard converters, which are capable of performance significantly higher than anything that can be stored on a CD or DAT. And when analog processing is complete, your high resolution music signal needs to be correctly dithered back to 16 bits. Dither could take up several pages of discussion. As you convert your 24-bit signal to 16 bits for CD storage, you can just truncate the data beyond 16, but quality will suffer. The better approach is to add a small amount of random noise called dither to the signal as it is converted to 16 bits. If the frequency spectrum of the dither noise is shaped so that it lies in areas where the human ear is less sensitive, the result can be a CD with an apparent dynamic range of more than 16 bits. Some techniques for dithering work better than others. Sony Super Bit Mapping and Apogee UV22 are just two of the solutions available. The topic of which unit sounds best gets technical very quickly..."
Originally posted by shetline
What makes LPs sound good to some people is something called "euphonic distortion" -- in other words, distortion that sounds good instead of bad. It's not more accurate, it's not capturing something that might have been missed, it's adding something that wasn't there that nevertheless can be pleasing and even fool you into thinking it's "more real".
Noise is added to CDs too. In fact, these mp3 and AAC files you are listening to apply advanced psychoacoustical tricks to fool you into thinking it's "more real" as well. With the CD format you loose information twice. Once when it is recorded digitally (hopefully 24-bit) and again when it is dithered down to 16-bit for mastering to a CD. There are pros and cons to every format. My point is that the CD is not the end all be all of sound quality.
Originally posted by shetline
There's not a test that's been done that I've ever heard of to prove that this wisp of a hint of very high frequency sound makes any significant difference to the listening experience.
I actually did, quite a while ago though. Possibly in a periodical before the internet was so mainstream.
Anyway, what I read was that the high end sounds reverberate off of the walls, floor and ceiling and eventually drift down into the range of the human ear. This 'trailing sound', for lack of a better term, is lost on a CD and has a distinguishable effect on the music.
That said, I don't really give a rat's ass. My favorite test is to compare Zappa's Hot Rats on LP vs. CD. Because the LP format could only hold roughly 40 minutes of music, Frank had to edit quite a bit of time off of one of the tracks. The intro is lost but was reintroduced on the CD release and the song is better off.
Originally posted by TWinbrook46636
That "good stuff" is the music. The quality. The realism. A significant amout of information is thrown out when mastering a CD. Ask someone in the field how it works. A CD is already "compressed" for lack of a better word.
Noise and frequency response limit resolution, and the amount of information, in an analog signal the same way sample size and sample rate limit digital resolution, the only difference being that the fuzzy error bars surrounding analog signals make it harder to quantify these limitations.
While there may be things that are appealing about analog sound, real resolution isn't one of them. Cheap digital devices and recordings routinely exceed the resolution of hideously expensive analog devices and recordings.
Too many people have seen too many stupid diagrams of waveforms with digital sample points or lines drawn over them and had someone say "See all the stuff between the lines/points that's missing in digital?" -- if you're buying that, you don't understand signal processing.
Because of noise, at no point along an analog waveform can you be certain just how close the reproduced value of the magnitude of the waveform is to the corresponding original magnitude. That uncertainty is just as limiting for resolution as digital sample size.
Frequency response errors cause the shape of a reproduced analog waveform to deviate from the original waveform in ways that are, if you'll pardon the word, "analogous" to the uncertainty of what's happening to a waveform between two digital sample points.
Think of what the word "resolution" means -- the degree to which a thing can be resolved. Analog noise and distortion prevent fine details from being resolved just as much (if not typically more) than digitization does.
I think a lot of people confuse the concept of the resolution of a signal with what might be called the "grain" of the signal. They perhaps think of the surface of an LP, and consider the signal to have as much "resolution" as the most subtle molecular detail of the vinyl surface, or think of an analog signal running through a wire, and consider there to be as much resolution as the smallest quanta of electrical energy.
But that's just "grain", it's not resolution. It's lots of detail that adds nothing to the amount of true information present. Analog noise and distortion decorrelate all of that fine detail from the original signal information.
I think another thing people do when thinking about analog is that they generously picture analog this way:
analog_signal = original_signal + noise
which is perfectly fine, unless you let yourself believe that in some mystical way analog media truly carry some Platonic ideal of the original signal, with any noise or distortion merely being an annoyance mucking up some tangible, physically present, underlying perfection.
What about digital? Well, you have a digital signal which is not a perfect representation of an original. What do you call the difference between the original and the digital reproduction? Noise and distortion, of course, or simply noise.
digital_signal - original_signal = noise
Do a little simple algebra...
digital_signal = original_signal + noise
This connection to the original signal is just as true about digital as it is about analog, and just as meaningless if you think the equation uncovers some special magical connection to the full resolution of the original signal.
There are higher quality digitial formats out like DVD-A and SACD and they won't be the last. Are you saying that the CD is as good as it can get and that DVD-A and SACD and any improvements that follow are just a bunch of BS?
The greatest thing new formats can add beyond what CD can do is spatial fidelity. Two channels is only adequate if your head is rigidly fixed in place. With headphones, the acoustic space unrealistically turns along with your head. Listening to speakers, your head turns and moves through a very poor approximation of the original acoustic space.
So the best thing about some of these new formats is higher channel capacity. The higher sample sizes and sample rates? A marginal contribution to perceived quality at best. What probably makes a lot of these recordings, even the two channel ones, sound especially good is that they are typically engineering and remastered with great care -- that counts much more than 24-bit, 96 KHz gobs of data.
I certainly don't think that what's special about DVD-A and SACD is that they capture more of something magical that CDs don't have, and that LPs do have.