[LAD] Re: Direct Stream Digital / Pulse Density Modulation musing/questions

[Fons Adriaensen]

On Tue, Sep 25, 2007 at 10:50:48AM -0600, Bearcat M. Sandor wrote:

> When i went down my local (ok, only) studio to have some LPs transferred to CD 
> the studio owner and i were talking about this very subject.  He told me that 
> one day he bought a new mixer to replace his aging one.  He set it next to 
> his old one and got it ready. The phone rang. He spent the next few hours 
> experimenting with it, and was happy with the differences it made in the 
> sound he was trying to achieve.  However, he had forgotten to turn it on.
> 
> I'm sure this isn't the only such story out there. If a person can fool 
> themselves into believing that such a piece of equipment is even functioning, 
> how much difference can it make?  As a matter of fact, i think he returned 
> the mixer and stuck with his old one.

A nice variation on this theme occured years ago at an AES conference.
The speaker wanted to demonstrate that 'digital' sound was crap, by
using the familiar 'push down the extended arm' test. Test persons 
listening to analog sound could easily resist, while they lost all
force when listening to a digital recording.

What the speaker didn't know was that the PA system used to play the
tracks was fully digital...

Years later the same person was promoting DSD against PCM, by the way...

Ciao,

-- 
FA

Follie! Follie! Delirio vano è questo !