Mark Hedges

When I was in grad school I was doing a lot of waveform analysis and the rule of thumb I always used was your sample rate needed to be 10x the highest frequency present in order to capture the signal completely. For a nominal 10 megahertz signal I was using a 100 megahertz digital oscilloscope. For music 200khz isn't going to happen (and probably isn't neccesary) but 100 (or actually 96) khz is possible and to me would be able to better capture the waveform at high frequencies.

RichardHOS

No. Fourier series tells us you can represent a square wave as a sum of sinusoidal waves, but the frequencies required to reproduce a 15kHz square wave with decent fidelity will probably (I'm not going to do the math) run well into (and perhaps past) the MHz range.

Of course, that's if you were asking if a CD could technically repoduce a 15kHz square wave accurately. If you're asking if it can sonically (perceptually) reproduce a 15kHz wave accurately that's a bit more complicated. Numerous tests have shown that humans perceive high frequency waves and sine waves nearly identically. I say nearly because there remains some debate on just how near it really is. Suffice it to say that at the least, they sound very similar. And the reason is related again to the Fourier expansion of the square wave... we simply can't hear the frequency components that are part of the wave at much above 15kHz.

Bill Blank

"STEREO" at it's inception as an improvement on MONO was originally to be a 3-Ch format with the traditional front pair we know today accompanied by a center speaker. That idea was dumped because it was thought that most people would not be able to afford three speakers plus new amplification for those three channels, not to mention the space for such a system.

Now thanks to technological advances that have brought the price down while providing even higher quality, along with the larger size of homes nowadays, we can all enjoy the best music reproduction ever available in one's home: MCH SACD and DVD-A.

Bill

Frank_S

Whether it can or cannot does'nt mean a hill of beans since it seems that the recording industry from the artists to the mastering engineers want their music loud, what does that do to dynamic range? The digital medium MAY be able to create an accurate representation of recorded music, but I have yet to hear an example of it.
As far as vinyl being inferior, at the recent Home Entertainment show many and I mean many of the exhibiters chose vinyl as the source to showcase their equipment, systems totalling $75k and up in a lot of cases, FWIW.

Taken from the article by long time Steely Dan engineer:

Craig_Kg

No, the Nyquist theorem states that you need a sample rate double frequency of the highest harmonic. If you are talking about square waves, then the harmonics required are all the odd ones going up to infinite (although divided by the order so the very high frequencies are increasingly small in amplitude).

Still, show me a speaker that reproduces a 15kHz square wave...

\"Are you ready, Jack?\"
\"I was BORN ready!\"

RichardHOS

lol, don't think you'll find one of those Craig.



Don't I get a cookie or something at least for answering?

Chu Gai

For a 15 kHz square wave, it'd be represented by a summation of sine waves. One part 15 kHz sine + 1/3 part 45 kHz sine + 1/5 part 75 kHz sine and so on. Pretty tough to do digitally, but then pretty tough to do with any bandwidth limited medium, analogue included.

Oh, you wanted a cookie?

Lee Scoggins

No wonder DSD sounds so right! It's higher sampling rate solves all of these problems.

Seriously, I think everyone missed the point about the Steely Dan article (there is a thread by me in Music). The point is that even such a clean engineering job as Everything Must Go can still get messed up at the pressing stage due to jitter.

Sorry Chu. Roger Nichols is a superb recording engineer.

The second point is that the ears can identify things that test equipment misses.

Finally, good two channel truly is a multi-dimensional experience. It is amazing how good stereos can sound these days.

no fears alone at night she's sailing through the crowd
in her ears the phones are tight and the music's playing loud
~skateaway

Chu Gai

I'm sure he's a capable recording engineer. Here's a cookie for you too, Lee. Eat em quick, it gets warm in HotLanta.

Steve Marsh

Guys
Really enjoying this thread.
From the beginning where the member (sorry bad mem for names) stated that he has discovered stereo through upgradin his HT sys. Same thing happened to me. My interest in 2 ch had left with my early college days and the headbangin music which was best played at earsplitting levels. As long as the equip could handle it the finer points such as soundstaging etc did not really matter.
Then I discovered HT and started amassing a decent HT sys. I was under the impression that the DVDs had better sound than the CDs until I spent a little time listening to 2 ch on my new and far better (sonically) sys. Suddenly I was enjoying music again. My tastes had changed due age and my new found appreciation of mastering and production quality.
As one of the "members" also noted I wish I would have spent more on my 2 ch now as 70% of my time is now spent listening to music.
But wait there was a fly in the ointment. For some reason the CDs seemed a little off so to speak especially in the cymbals etc. While I know most of the audiophile lingo I won't use it here but the vinyl has something on the CD in this portion of the music--or so I thought.
When I realized that 70% of my time was spent listening to 2 CH I made the decision to upgrade my 1st gen Sony CD Changer for something a little better. All I can say is that it as the best upgrade I ever made. This new player has given me faith that the CD can better the LP in almost all cases. I always thought the fault was with the disks but now believe the fault was with the player. IMO the problem is that many people believe they all sound the same so the manufacturer heaps on the features at the expense of quality power supplys, dacs, components etc.
To the members here getting into the CD VS Vinyl debate I will not argue against vinyl and still get great sound from my 15 year old turntable and MC cartridge. What I will say is that if you have not listened to one of the better high end CD players then you really do not know how good CD can sound. By high end I am referring to a level that many people (and up until recently myself) would feel completely out of line. After all if you believe they all sound the same then spending 2-3K or higher on a cd player is outrageous right.
Well I'm here to tell ya it aint.
The real good news is that these current state of the art models will be selling used in a couple of years for a price that a lot more people could warm up to.
Oh Oh time to change the disc. Maybe I soulda got a changer LOL.
Steve

Scott Oliver

Steve you should try to upgrade your 15 year old turntable and see the improvements that could make as well. Now if your old table is a Linn LP-12 or maybe an Empire or Garrard my point is little less emphatic, but still vinyl has made huge leaps in performance over the past decade as well. True that Cd has made greater strides and closed the distance, but man you invest about $3500 in a vinyl rig and it takes one hell of a CD player to match it.

JeromeS

I totally agree that the playback component makes a difference. Before I got the preamp, I did an A/B comparison between the different sources through the receiver. Since I had two CD's of the same album it made comparisons easy. The way it came out as follows:[list=1][*]Transport & DAC[*]Panasonic RP-91 w/remastering on[*]Pioneer LD player[/list=1]

I think getting a component that only does one thing gets the resolution wanted since nothing in the circuitry that's not dedicated to it's main purpose doesn't get in the way. This is why a dedicated CD player will sound better than a DVD/CD player. If you're thinking multi-channel, even Sony's flagship SCD-1 SACD player only does SACD/CD.