Re: [LAU] Pro Audio? OT rant.

On Sun, Dec 23, 2012 at 12:39:17PM -0500, Thomas Vecchione wrote: Yeah, but what about harmonics? For truly PRO work, analog should be used. CD's came out as the poor mans quality stereo, it was a compromise for high quality vinyl. Just as McDonalds is a poor compromise for a quality restaurant. But with the proliferation of advertising, huge product selection, the rising cost of the real quality goods; digital and McDonalds soon became the norm. I believe it was Shannon's law which basically stated that the sampling frequency should be twice as high as the highest frequency (or bandwidth, if the lowest is zero). This was used in telecomunications where a 4kHz (actually 3.4kHz but usually rounded off to 4kHz) bandwidth was considered to be ample to convey human speech at a quality which was considered acceptable. Therefore, an 8kHz sample rate was used. I believe the same reasoning was used when they started fabricating CDs. In all fairness, if the source of the music is digital, then digital mastering throughout the whole process is acceptable (the DDD) on the cover of the CD usually (used to?) indicates this. Others are AAD and ADD, where the A stands for analog. So, consider a musician playing a Stradivarius violin. You'd want to be able to reproduce all the tonal richness, and harmonics during the recording phase. Some people say the ear can't hear above a certain frequency anyway, so it doesn't matter whereas there are others who can pick the difference between a Stradivarius violin and an "ordinary" violin. I also understand that vinyl is now increasingly (very slowly though) becoming the preferred medium for listening to music. Remember: If you sample at an infinite frequency you have analog, and isn't the idea of quality digital to have a high sample rate. -- "If you're not careful, the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the people who are doing the oppressing." --- Malcolm X