[LAU] Pro Audio? OT rant.

[Florian Paul Schmidt]

On 12/24/2012 10:12 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-12-24 at 09:59 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
>> but there's no data loss
> Oops, might be considered as "misinformation". My apologize that English
> isn't my native language ;).
>
> Yes, there's data loss for records too ;). But usually there are no gaps
> etc. for a record that isn't broken into pieces.
>
> Btw. analog is coming back, for studio productions and for consumers.
>
>


Psychoacoustics are a very interesting and highly complex field :D Some 
people love vinyl (which is also a bandlimited medium, sice the record 
is non rigid and the needle has a non zero mass and some other reasons, 
too) because it sounds "better" to them. That has nothing to do with 
whether a vinyl record represents a signal more faithfully than a CD and 
a good D/A converter.

I play guitar as my main instrument. I like tube amps better than most 
transistor amps simply for the reason that they add something to the 
signal (all these complex non linear components working together to 
produce something very pleasant to me). A simple transistor amp is 
measurably so much more faithful in amplifying my guitar's pickup 
outputs than a tube amp of the same complexity. The imperfections in 
this case are not undesirable, but rather they are experimented with and 
fully embraced by musicians (and audiences)..

The same argument can be made for analogue equipment in the recording 
and production domain. Tube mic preamps, analogue circuits in mixing 
boards, etc.. And there's nothing wrong with that at all :D

Some people really like the imperfections introduced by a vinyl playback 
chain.

Here's a little thought experiment: Get the best available digital 
recording and playback chain, and make a great recording of your vinyl 
player's output for some vinyl records (preferably some that you are not 
familiar with). Now make a double blind test between direct playback 
from vinyl and the digital recordings of the vinyl. My hypothesis is 
that you cannot discriminate between the two in such a way that you'll 
find the direct vinyl playback better than the digital recording of the 
vinyl (in a statistically significant fashion). Or even reliably 
discriminate which is which (i.e. which comes directly from vinyl and 
which from the recording).

Now do it the other way around: Take some digital masters of albums and 
cut vinyl records from then. Now do a double blind test. My hypothesis 
is that you will be able to discriminate the vinyl from the digital 
playback for the simple reason that the vinyl cutting and playback chain 
introduces loads of imperfections that will be clearly audible. You 
might prefer the sound of the vinyl in a sense similar to a guitar 
player preferring the sound of a tube amp over some transistor amp. But 
that doesn't tell us anything about the faithfulness of reproduction. If 
you like the vinyl cut of the albums better than you simply like the 
artefacts and imperfections.

Analogue equipment has its place and knowing when to use it and when not 
and being clear about the reasons is a good thing. Claiming that 
analogue equipment is better in audio reproduction is just simply wrong 
as a blanket statement..

Flo


-- 
Florian Paul Schmidt
http://fps.io