27 Dec
2012
27 Dec
'12
2:57 p.m.
On Mon, 2012-12-24 at 10:38 -0600, Brent Busby wrote:
12 KHz, 14 KHz etc. are needed for transparentness, to add room to the
sound.
Regards,
Ralf
On Mon, 24 Dec 2012, Thomas Vecchione wrote:
Correct, accuracy isn't wanted, but it's possible with analog gear too.
Your McDonalds analogy would be a better analogy
if applied to lossy
compression, and MP3 in particular, rather than Digital vs Analog. A
more suitable analogy for digital vs analog is going to the fine
restaurant, having an amazing meal, and then being able to reproduce
the exact same meal every time(Digital), whereas a chef might make
small changes to the recipe(Analog).
Actually I think the thing with analog is that while it's not sonically
accurate, the inaccuracies are often musical and pleasant (though that
may be more true to older people who are used to the sound of tubes and
tape than younger people who are used to MP3's and digital aliasing
artifacts). A lot of the warmth that people associate with an analog
signal is harmonics that were not even in the original signal to begin
with -- but few can argue that they sound good! That's the whole point
of tube compressors and preamps...not to sound accurate, but to sound
even better than accurate.
After a lifetime of listening to tape saturation and harmonics from tube
coloration, accuracy is so...boring. The
Shannon-Nyquist theorem was absolutely the primary inspiration
behind the choice of sample rates of CD. The theorem states that you
can reproduce exactly any frequency that you sample at over twice the
frequency. So when 44.1 was chosen, it allows for any frequency up to
just above 22kHz to be reproduced exactly. The limits of the average
undamaged human hearing is 20kHz, and the average limit for typical
adult hearing is probably closer to the 18k range if the ears were
well taken care of. For most people that listened to loud music, etc.
that limit is probably much lower.
The really nice part about that (especially for people like me who
actually have damaged their hearing in some frequency zones due to
unwise loud playing of the ride cymbal bell and such things as that) is
that fortunately, most of the frequencies that really make people groove
aren't up in the >10kHz range anyway. People really respond to bass and
mids, even upper midrange, but if you give people too much high treble,
unless it's really smooth, it can be described by so many fairly
negative adjectives: metallic, harsh, cold, tinny, abrasive, clangy.
Most people like warm recordings. Those near ultrasonic frequencies
usually just aren't that big a part of the music.