Re: the problem with digital CD's

duty-honor-country wrote:
So what are the benefits of analog sound over digital? There's the
"warmer" and "more open" arguments, as well as "smoother" and "less
harsh." Even on the modest phonographic equipment I own--and despite
the fact that major strides have been made in digital mastering--I've
discovered in general that I can listen to analog sound longer than I
can to digital. Digital's "ear fatigue" syndrome has me stopping an
album midway through--a disturbing phenomenon for one who loves music
as much as I do.


Well you must have a real crap digital gear then. Usually you can record
your analogue music onto digital gear, and all the 'warmth' from teh
original playback is reproduced.


Famed record producer George Martin gave an overview of digital
recording in his book Making Music: "Ordinary [analog] recording
stores the electrical impulses (which have been converted from the
pure aural vibration by the microphone) on magnetic tape as magnetic
variations in the coating. Digital recording, on the other hand,
analyzes the frequencies constantly and stores the information as
binary code on tape. If you can imagine `stop-framing' a slice of
sound, analyzing it in terms of frequencies, converting the
information into numbers to store on tape and doing that 50,000 times
a second, that is what a digital recorder does. And on playback, a
reverse process takes place."

Yes, sort of. And .....


The trade-off, analog enthusiasts say, is the loss of a natural,
organic quality that many audiophiles say they hear only from analog
sources such as LPs and tapes. Rock icon Neil Young has been one of
the most outspoken opponents of digital audio (surprising, since he
has recorded many of his albums on digital equipment).

How depressing.


George Martin acknowledges in his book that many musicians and
listeners are "uneasy" with digital audio. "The absolute ceiling of
20kHz in frequency range may have something to do with that, but my
personal aural equipment is not capable of hearing such high
frequencies (very few people are blessed or cursed with a receptivity
beyond 16kHz), so digital presents this one with no problems."

Digital audio has no such limitation.

geoff


.

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