Diff in recording/reproduction in Analog/CD/SACD

Digital is far superior to Analog. This is a well known fact. Why else has digital become a standard for playback and recording? Perhaps those who prefer analog are either nostalgic or have made such a significant investment in vinyl that they are reticent to switch due to the cost.

In theory CD should be pretty close to perfect for playback. Some people claim an imprvement with SACD....certainly a higher bandwidth may have some advantages ofr studios ...but very unlikely to make a difference in playback.

Dopogue,

I respect that your $3000 turntable may sound nicer to your ears than a $150 CD player on a particular recording...I see this as a question of taste and not a measure of performance. I respect that some people love vintage cars too...and there is nothing wrong with prefering an unreliable gas guzzling beast with an old carburator, drum brakes and solid rubber tires....but even those who adore these vintage cars would not argue that they outperform modern vehicles. ( I do not mean to compare your $3000 turntable to an old car...certainly high quality turntables do a handsome job at sound reproduction much better than an old vintage car verses a modern car...but you get the idea even if the differences are less extreme)

Certainly the quality of source material as affected by the mix or mastering studio/engineer, which can have a big impact. Indeed some original vinyl recordings are better soundingthan the CD version despite all the distortion that the vinyl analog source introduces....this is because the orginal recording may have been better mastered or mixed on to the vinyl than it was to CD. It is also possible that old recording studio masters were mixed by an engineer intending it to be played back on a turntable...and therefore the sound was mastered for this medium....playback on a turntable will then be closer to what the engineer/artist originally intended when compared to a CD straight from the same master tapes (assuming they have been adequately preserved, which is unlikely).

This does not change the fact that the majority of the recording industry use Digital... and I doubt this majority have hearing deficiencies or that there is a conspiracy against Analog.

Digital is undeniably better in terms of performance but I will admit that high quality Analog can sound extremely good and may actually sound better for some particular older original recordings.

Interesting thread.

I respect that some people may prefer how Analog recordings or vinyl sounds, however, I maintain my view that Digital is an undeniable improvement over Analog (for many reasons).

Since the evidence is overwhelming and widely available, there is no point to delve into technical details of linearity, channel separation, signal to noise, dynamic range, and harmonic distortion issues from mechanical analog systems.

In any case, I can see that a technical argument will have little weight with those who categorically prefer vinyl/Analog and would claim that I am speaking nonsense.

As for myself, while I am willing to admit that the transfer of a limited number of older analog master tapes to digital has sometimes resulted in a reduction/less pleasurable sound quality compared to the original, I do not so easily dismiss all the technical evidence and wide professional audio recording industry support for Digital.

A properly recorded, mixed and mastered Digital recording is simply superior to what can be achieved with Analog.

16-bit 44.1 KHz digital is like low-resolution video.

Comparing Digital audio with low resolution Digital video is another audio myth. Let me clarify why this statement can be misleading:

Our eyes can clearly detect much greater pixel video resolution than mainstream digital video formats and therefore higher pixel resolution (HDTV) is still a worthwhile pursuit in video reproduction (although a much higher frame rate than 30 fps is not generally worthwhile as our eyes do not perceive this benefit). Since we do not hear much if anything above 20KHz, there is actually very limited benefit to seeking significantly higher sampling resolution in audio reproduction than we already have today with CD reproduction...except perhaps in a recording studio where a higher bandwidth may provide greater flexibility and allow for optimal bandpass filtering when mixing/mastering (same goes for using 20 bit or higher resolution for studio digital applications).

For those interested, there are some experts who are actually willing to state their position about the sample rate myths and other well propagated myths of Analog versus Digital, including other audio tweaks. I will not claim to be an expert or to have 'golden ears' but I think this link presents a useful. "down-to-earth" viewpoint to audiogoners, even if many will disagree, at least it can act as a rudimentary guide of where to spend the majority of our $$$ in audio equipment and maybe act as a warning against high $$$ "to good to be true equipment claims";

See

http://signal.ece.utexas.edu/seminars/dsp_seminars/01fall/AudioMyths.pdf

Albertporter,

Nice story connecting Dr Thomas Kite, PHD of Audio Precision Inc. with the victorian circus poster "Kite" that inspired Lennon! I enjoyed this and had a good laugh.

All,

More seriously, Audio Precision Inc is a company soley dedicated to manufacturing test and measurement equipment necessary to design, build and verify audio products. Audio Precision customers include the world's top manufacturers in the areas of recording and broadcast, A/D and D/A chip design, signal processing, computer audio, home entertainment, personal stereo, telecommunications, loudspeaker, microphone and amplifier research, design and manufacturing.

Back to the discussion of relatve merits of Analog/CD/SACD, assuming that some people may actually be interested in a serious discussion rather than resorting to Vinyl molecules, calling Digital nonsense and suggesting that listening dispells myths:

Dr Kite actually has this to say about SACD;

The new Super Audio CD (SACD) promoted by Sony and Philips is a CD-size optical disc containing a 1-bit digital audio bitstream, a format known as Direct Stream Digital (DSD). DSD is the bitstream produced by a 1-bit 5th-order sigma-delta converter operating at 2.8224 MHz. Although low-bit converters have become standard in the industry, the insoluble problems with 1-bit converters have slowed or eliminated their use in professional applications. These problems include distortion, noise modulation, and high out-of-band noise power. The choice of a 1-bit format for SACD would therefore appear to be a mistake.

This is interesting coming from an expert that works for a company which is soley dedicated to manufacturing test equipment for the audio engineering industry...so I thought it worth sharing.

Does anyone have some technical views on SACD versus CD Digital ?