Analog or digital? - Smart Car of America Forums : Smart Car Forum

**jwight** · 01-20-2008, 10:19 AM

I'm sure there are many experts out there who will chime in on this. Here's my thinking:

Best sound reproduction is a live performance.
Next best is pure analog - tape to vinyl record.
Next best is analog recording to digital.
Next best digital recording to digital.
Last on the list is mp3.

My reasoning is that each step away from the live recording leaves out more and more of the actual music played. By the time you get to mp3s the sampling ratio is too much; you're not listening to the music but a shorthand version of it.

To test this I took an mp3 player on a recent road trip where I could compare it to FM radio, cassette tapes and CDs. To my ears (no need to go ballistic on this) CDs had far better sound than the mp3 tracks. FM radio sucked and cassette tapes were in between radio and CDs. So, I'm sticking with CDs and XM radio for now; will see what HD radio sounds like but if it's just the same commercial format in HD, who cares?

mfoster · 01-20-2008, 10:22 AM

Live is best
Digital recording of live is next.
Digital to other compressions, MP3, WMA loses something but to most of us it is not noticeable.

**jwight** · 01-20-2008, 10:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfoster

Live is best
Digital recording of live is next.
Digital to other compressions, MP3, WMA loses something but to most of us it is not noticeable.

Is the digital recording of live a 100% sample, comparable to analog?

Old smart · 01-20-2008, 10:56 AM

I'm with jwight on this. The first thing to go with digital is "timbre." Some people call it "presence." It is something that you generally don't think about being there - until it is gone. Live has it; good analog can retain it, digital doesn't have it to begin with. A good example is in orchestra tuning - the First Oboe plays modern "A" (440 HZ); a Moog synthesizer or some other electronic instrument plays the same note (440 HZ) at the same volume. They sound different. The electronic instrument cannot produce timbre and harmonics, only the pure frequency.

Carnut · 01-20-2008, 11:01 AM

Agree with Wight, he's right. BTW, tube units beat the crap out of solid state for "live" sounds.

Being "old school" has its advantages having heard original McIntosh, Bose, Vinyl, music!

mfoster · 01-20-2008, 11:01 AM

I was referring to digital recording of live music, not digitally generated music. I play an upright bass and my keyboards have the ability to produce an upright bass sound but it doesn't even come close to the real thing. My point in saying digital recording is better than analog is that the major recording companies wouldn't have moved from analog if digital wasn't a better medium for recording and mastering.

Old smart · 01-20-2008, 11:08 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mfoster

... My point in saying digital recording is better than analog is that the major recording companies wouldn't have moved from analog if digital wasn't a better medium for recording and mastering.

Well, cheaper, portable, and more convenient for the user.

Me, I'm all NAD, Grado, and Polk. Lots of MHS vinyl.

**jwight** · 01-20-2008, 11:13 AM

Never owned any tube stuff, but plenty of vinyl records. If the new tube amps weren't so expensive I'd consider going to them.. Same with digital photos - very convenient but not the same feel as film. Luckily I still have all my film cameras.

Did I hijack my own thread?

mfoster · 01-20-2008, 11:16 AM

When I was playing music back in the mid to late '70s I bought a Nakamichi cassette deck designed for recording live music. That thing was very expensive back then and was analog. With the development of the computers taking those very good recordings into wav files and being able to product cds of those live recordings is great. I would venture to say that if we used electronics instruments and recorded it digitally it wouldn't come close to what we did back then. All the instruments were acoustic using mics to record. No amplification on the instruments at all.

Fredvon4 · 01-20-2008, 01:32 PM

From the original creation of the sound... be it vocals, or analog instrument--- to record it--- always had some level of artifact, distortion, and loss of fidelity from what ever medium was used.... rarely did sounds ever go direct to the master record... for decades they we captured on multi track tape as magnetic images... processed, separated, combined, effects added, a true science and art

Re recording is what Jwright was observing----Yes depending on the original sample and the conversion process a lot can be compressed and lost... and it is real noticable...

However we have come a very long way--- if you have a good condition vinyl recording or a high end CD copy you can make damned good digital recreations with a good computer and good (free) lossless codec software. The only down side is storage space... less songs fit on the DVD/CD or device memory

There is a point of digital density (very high sample rates) that is real hard to ever distinguish by ear...especially in us older folks with some measurable frequency loss

I down loaded several free codecs.... used a CD of a song I knew well from the live concert... Rare Earth Get Ready... and played with teaching myself what sounded best and took least time to convert...

128 and 256 bit sample rates were real close for my ears to the good CD through a good sound system... The standard or default MP3 / WMA sample rates of 24, 32, 64 bit rates loose too much fidelity.

The higher rates 192, 384, 512 bit don't sound any better, take a lot of time to code, and eat up a lot of MBs strage space