Wow, I've Discovered Stereo (1 Viewer)

[Angelo.M]

Angelo, what vintage would that be?

 

[Parker Clack]

I was a big fan of discrete quad. I remember some great recordings of Cat Stevens and early Elton John in discrete quad. You could say I was listening to surround sound long before it was the thing to have.

I still have yet to hear a really good recording on CD that can compare to vinyl. I don't miss the snap crackle and pop or the discs skipping or having to replace my albums over and over because I wore them out. But I do miss that sound. When you compress all of that information on to a CD you do remove a lot of the "soul" of the music. Even though the compression schemes are getting better you still can't get that square wave totally sinusoidal.

Parker

 

[Chu Gai]

Sure you can as it satisfies the Nyquist criteria with a 20 kHz wave being represented by more than 2 datapoints per cycle.

Nyquist's theorem: A theorem, developed by H. Nyquist, which states that an analog signal waveform may be uniquely reconstructed, without error, from samples taken at equal time intervals. The sampling rate must be equal to, or greater than, twice the highest frequency component in the analog signal.

There are certainly difference between vinyl and CD but a CD's ability to accurately reproduce a signal isn't one of them.
As far as compressing goes, there's a lot of it that occurs on vinyl. It's not easy to get the information from a musical performance to fit.
With all due respect to the owner of HTF.

 

[Frank_S]

There are certainly difference between vinyl and CD but a CD's ability to accurately reproduce a signal isn't one of them.

Chu, here is an interesting article on the recent Steely Dan CD, check it out.
http://www.rogernichols.com/EQ/EQ_2000_02.html

 

[Chu Gai]

From the article:

Somehow the problem was in either the glass masters or the plating process afterwards that makes the stampers that press the CDs[/quote}
and a bit later...

I will be doing further investigation into the problem and let you know.

Well something happened but whether people were playing the CYA game we'll never know I guess unless that author let's us know his take on what happened.

But all that aside, it still has nothing to do with the ability to record and playback something like a 20kHz sine wave perfectly.

The above comments were only to correct a minor error and have nothing to do with a person's preference for one format over another. But there are technincal reasons as to what goes on with vinyl and I quite agree there is some fine sounding vinyl that's not available on CD and there's no shortage of crappy recording in either medium. In fact, there's a pretty fair amount of crap out there period.

 

[Frank_S]

Cranking the level up with compressors and limiters is just not enough for them, so they goose the level up even further until the over lights come on at every boom or smack of a backbeat. To keep the CD plant from going ballistic, the mastering house makes a copy of the audio and turns the overall level down by .1dB. This assures that the chopped off wave forms that result from digital clipping do not show up as overs when checked by the CD plant. Copy the audio from a Brandy CD into your waveform editor and look at it once. The waveforms look like square waves because they have been chopped off do drastically.

What do you make of that Chu?

 

[Chu Gai]

shitty recording, mixing, and incompetent recording engineers come to mind. it has nothing with being able to accurately reproduce a sine wave given the 44.1 at the frequency I mentioned though. do I really have to get a Brandy CD? this just isn't fair!

 

[JamesHl]

This music is for the people who turn the bass boost on the cheap stock stereo in their chevy econobox all the way up. No one anywhere in the chain from artist to consumer in that kind of music tends to care about fidelity.

I say chevy because one of my friends has a monte carlo and I just had to drive a rental cavalier for a week and a half and they have the boomiest, most horrifyingly inaccurate bass ever.

 

[Parker Clack]

Chu:

No problem. I understand your point about the square wave form being able to match a sinusoidal. I just think that there is enough of a difference (even though they are technically the same) that you can hear it. Maybe this is way off but I know I can hear the difference between vinyl and a CD. Maybe with the subtraction that is going on with digital compression something is getting removed that you hear with the analogue recording that you don't with digital. I am not sure. All I know is that vinyl seems to have a fuller and richer sound. Maybe this is also related to the recording engineers of the time putting down a better track than today. I am sure there are many other variables that come into play. Thanks for your input on the technical side.

Parker

 

[Chu Gai]

That's all it was Mr. Clack, strictly technical.
Now here's a question for everyone: Can a CD accurately represent a bona-fide square wave at say 15 kHz? Why or why not?

 

[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]

Now here's a question for everyone: Can a CD accurately represent a bona-fide square wave at say 15 kHz? Why or why not?

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]

Lots of artists want their CDs to be so loud that you can listen to the CD without a CD player. Cranking the level up with compressors and limiters is just not enough for them, so they goose the level up even further until the over lights come on at every boom or smack of a backbeat.

 

[Craig_Kg]

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.

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...

 

[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, the Nyquist theorem states that you need a sample rate double frequency of the highest harmonic.

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.

 

[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