What's wrong with Redbook, really?

[mep]

Here is where Bruce needs to chime in and add a little more to the conversation as I think he did touch on this before. I think that in the right hands, RB digital can be made to sound damn good. I think it takes better, more experienced hands to do so in comparison to higher resolution digital. The question is, is that so because you only have 16 bits to play with and if you are not careful, you start losing resolution and increasing distortion? Do 24 bit recordings give the engineer more of a fudge factor to play with before they run out of resolution?

 

[JackD201]

I was never hot on XRCD or Mo-Fi Gold, was a bit impressed with HDCD but the K2 sampler was an eye opener first time I heard it.

 

[flez007]

I have heard master tapes flez, actual master tapes, not the 15 ips second or third generation dubs that is the best (if we're very lucky) that most us can ever do with even remotely commercial music. But this is about hi-res digital and 16/44.1, not analog vs. digital.

Tim

It would be great to achieve a similar level of performance with Hi-Res compared to, say, TP tapes (agree here on the generation gap), unfortunatly we compared both sources here (PMS Alpha DAC, dedicated server, etc..) and the tape was still a tad better for all attendees.

 

[mep]

Fernanado-There you go, you keep bringing up analog in Tim's digital discussion. And to think I was trying to behave myself.

 

[flez007]

You know, I thought the same just before I posted my response, sorry Tim...the answer was out of context from your original post. Back to red-book! - I can happily live with just that option.

 

[JackD201]

I'll believe it when I see it Fernando LOL

 

[flez007]

My largest music library is CDs Jack, I really meant it...

 

[mep]

My largest music library is CDs Jack, I really meant it...

I'm sorry Fernando, I had no idea. Now back to the digits!

 

[JackD201]

My largest music library is CDs Jack, I really meant it...

I've been on a new artist binge lately so that means I'm buying more CDs than LPs recently. Quite a bit to go before 16/44.1 catches up in number for me. That is unless I get a run at Ron Party's NAS drive LOL.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Fernanado-There you go, you keep bringing up analog in Tim's digital discussion. And to think I was trying to behave myself.

It's ok. Though I appreciate your attempts to behave, Mark.

Tim

 

[mep]

Bruce will know more than I, but I'm pretty sure you're talking about a different thing, Mark. Most (all?) professional digital recording is done at high resolution these days because, evidently, the process needs the headroom (a digital concept that escapes me) in recording, processing, multi-tracking, etc, regardless of whether or not the final product is mastered at 16/44.1 or a higher res.

Tim

Uh Tim, how did you manage to post this under my name??

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Oh...sorry, the power of the mod meets the inability to handle it. I accidently clicked the edit button instead of the replay button. Pretty good trick, huh?

Tim

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

All better now...

 

[treitz3]

Oh...sorry, the power of the mod meets the inability to handle it. I accidently clicked the edit button instead of the replay button. Pretty good trick, huh?

Tim

Hehe, I know all too well about hitting the edit button instead of the quote. I can't say that I actually have done what you did [yet] but I completely understand how it could happen. I wish they would place that button elsewhere! Too funny.....at least to me.

BTW, thanks for the welcome. I'll send you a PM shortly. It would be nice to meet up one day, since we apparently live so close to one another.

 

[mep]

Oh...sorry, the power of the mod meets the inability to handle it. I accidently clicked the edit button instead of the replay button. Pretty good trick, huh?

Tim

Yeah, but since you posted under my name, it also gave me the ability to go in and edit and twist your words all around.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Yeah, but since you posted under my name, it also gave me the ability to go in and edit and twist your words all around.

Yeah but the odds of you twisting them more than I twist them myself are very, very slim.

Tim

 

[Johnny Vinyl]

Yeah but the odds of you twisting them more than I twist them myself are very, very slim.

Tim

Now there is a quote of confidence!

 

[fas42]

Back to the topic again, and to repeat myself, the actual format of the identical source material can make a big difference to the apparent quality. I'm playing quite a bit with this decompression thing at the moment, and I'm using Bruce's generously made available track of dynamically uncompressed Latin music to play with. Thanks, Bruce, and sorry, I'm doing some terrible things to the content, in the name of science!

The track, called Bronze, downloaded in MP3, was obviously very clean and dynamic. So, in the playing around with the track it's now in standard WAV, and 24/192 WAV: in the process the size of the file went from a demure under 8 Meg size to a whopping 266 Megs, obviously that with the 24/192 version. And you know what's coming: on playback on a completely normal desktop PC, using the built-in DAC, to completely standard PC speakers; absolutely no tweaking or funny business indulged in, the worst playback is the original MP3, next is the normal WAV, and the best by a big margin is the 24/192. This is in all the key areas of treble sparkle, sense of the acoustic, space: there is an old Wurlitzer (I think!?) electric piano in the mix, and the difference in the tonal quality of that is quite dramatic.

So what's this saying then?

Frank

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

It could be saying any number of things. What's the sound card in that completely normal PC?

Tim

 

[fas42]

It could be saying any number of things. What's the sound card in that completely normal PC?

Tim

No idea. It's a second hand ex-commercial item, pretty well built, a HP, my wife's machine. It most likely is an all-in-one chip on the main board. But it's good enough to pick up the subtleties with different formats. Some time ago someone, I think Bruce, posted a number of versions of the same music actually mastered at different bit rates, and the same story was there: the denser the data, the better the sound was. So one would say in that case the poorer resolution files had "lost" information that was encoded in the higher.

Yet, here was a nominally quite poor information file, the MP3, going in the other direction, in terms of acquiring "quality", by resampling in a separate software exercise, and there is a similar result.

My take is, that especially with MP3 the processor has to do quite a bit of digesting to recreate the sound information, with a normal WAV only the DSP filtering in the DAC has to work hard, and finally, in the heavily upsampled, 24/192 version the chip basically can just run the musical data through with minimum fuss. So it's the level, the amount of computer style processing necessary to turn the file into the analogue what counts, that determines the end quality.

Frank