So since I ended up contributing to taking a thread off-topic (sorry) and the other poster said he wouldn't mind talking about this in a different thread I'm now posting it here. Basically he referred to the following article: "Is the sound on vinyl records better than on CDs or DVDs?"
My contention is that the article isn't just incomplete, it is straight out misleading. Here are things that ticked me off:
1. "Distortion"
The distortion it talks about is addressed in two ways. First frequency dependent distortion is addressed through filtering. The sharp edges in the graph are essentially just high frequencies. By inserting a filter and cutting them out when reconstructing the waveform (digital-to-analog) that problem is solved. The other issue is the number of bits used per sample to describe the amplitude of the signal at that point. The thing is however that the article doesn't point out that adding more bits doesn't increase the amount of steps to describe the same limited range of amplitudes, it instead extends the dynamic range. A 16-bit system has a potential dynamic range of 96dB and a 24-bit system 144dB. The latter would have been "more accurate" if it still had 96dB but represented it with more steps, but that's not the case.
And so the question here isn't so much about the accuracy of what's captured as it is what we want to capture. Do we need increased dynamic range? Do we need increased frequency range? The former is pointless since the practical dynamic range allows for signals to go from disappearing into the combined noise floor of the playback system + acoustic space all the way up to damaging our hearing. We don't need more than that I think. And the latter would take us beyond what is recognized as being the limits of human hearing at our peak, roughly speaking. Or in other words; what's the use of playing back frequencies only our dogs can hear?
2. "A vinyl record has a groove carved into it that mirrors the original sound's waveform. This means that no information is lost."
This is just plain inaccurate (assuming "the original sound" is what went into the microphone). While there is arguably no "great amount" of information lost when taking a signal and "carving it into vinyl" the issue is really what happens before that is done in the mastering process. In order to control the needle not only is audio filtering (cutting out and/or attenuating frequencies) taking place but so is dynamic compression - before the groove is "carved". So yeah, "information is lost", it's just that it happens before what's left is carved into the disc.
I wouldn't normally start a thread to just diss a random article, but since it was brought up and was misleading and this is the section about "audiophilia" I thought it was worthwhile pointing this out.
Any additional thoughts/comments are welcome.
Bookmarks