 Analog vs digital offtopic split offs |
Abnormalbrain 
Cool Producer
Registration Date: 24-03-2005
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edit by thechronic: since people always tend to go extremely off topic as soon as the words 'analog' and 'digital' are used in the same thread, I'm going to move all these posts in here
Actually I can hear a big difference in analog and digital sound. Take for example a 12" vinyl record and compare it to CD. The 12" record sounds much better. I would say that exept the noise I would go for only lisstening to vinyl couse it's so much better. Does anybody know how to get this sound on CD or is it impossible? Can you record it on vinyl and then make a record from the vinyl record to a CD?
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da rollaz, da steppaz da true playaz
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19-07-2005 16:07 |
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djfreemc
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Registration Date: 25-07-2003
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"Better sound" is relative, but you are absolutely right on the fact that vinyl sounds different than CD. Most people find vinyl to sound warmer. CD is actually made to reproduce sounds as natural as possible. We are used to hearing music in all kinds of ways that are not natural. The pure truth is they both have theyre downsides. CD is digital: no scratches, no added noise, everything sounds clean. But working in the digital domain also has some disadvantages. In the analog world, everything is infinite. A sine wave of any frequency can be split into an infinite number of parts. On a digital medium, there is nowhere even near infinite storage space. So when making a digital system you have to make 2 choices: the sampling frequency and the number of bits (resolution). The sampling frequency will cause a limitation in the time image, the resolution will limit the maximum possible amplitude, and amplitude steps. In order to replicate a analog signal properly, the sampling frequency must be at least twice the maximum frequency. So in order to reproduce the audible limit of 20KHz, any digital recording system must have at least 40KHz sampling rate. For technical reasons (image filters etc.) CD sampling frequency was decided to be 44.1KHz. Now with the 16bit resolution, the S/NR is about 92dB and noise floor 6dB. Those figures are way over what you will get from a record. If you listen to a piece of classic music, you will probably find it sound better on CD, because details are much better than on record. So where does that warm vinyl sound come from? I don't have a straight answer to that, I know more about digital sound technology. What I do know is that the newest generation of DSD ADC's is said to be able to give both the same warm sound, and the high details. I haven't heard them yet, so I can't tell for sure. The DSD (Direct Stream Digital) ADC split up the entire amplitude range into parts, but store the difference with the previous sample. Therefore details in sound levels can be reproduced much more accurate, since extremely sudden changes (seen in sampling intervals) don't happen in music. These are used on the next-generation digital audio such as DVDA and SACD, so you could get these to get the vinyl sound with digital quality.
For more info on getting getting warmth into your recording, read the thread about reel to reel recorders here somewhere.
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The mysteries of the distorted snare...
Can't win if u don't play
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19-07-2005 16:50 |
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Halph-Price
Zombie Algorithm
Registration Date: 22-12-2004
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one day, people are gunna be like,
"rember when you file shared mp3's, they had sucha warm organic feel"
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21-07-2005 03:49 |
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