On Mon, 2012-12-24 at 10:45 +0100, Florian Paul Schmidt wrote:
> On 12/24/2012 10:12 AM, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > On Mon, 2012-12-24 at 09:59 +0100, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> >> but there's no data loss
> > Oops, might be considered as "misinformation". My apologize that English
> > isn't my native language ;).
> >
> > Yes, there's data loss for records too ;). But usually there are no gaps
> > etc. for a record that isn't broken into pieces.
> >
> > Btw. analog is coming back, for studio productions and for consumers.
> >
> >
>
>
> Psychoacoustics are a very interesting and highly complex field :D Some
> people love vinyl (which is also a bandlimited medium, sice the record
> is non rigid and the needle has a non zero mass and some other reasons,
> too) because it sounds "better" to them. That has nothing to do with
> whether a vinyl record represents a signal more faithfully than a CD and
> a good D/A converter.
>
> I play guitar as my main instrument. I like tube amps better than most
> transistor amps simply for the reason that they add something to the
> signal (all these complex non linear components working together to
> produce something very pleasant to me). A simple transistor amp is
> measurably so much more faithful in amplifying my guitar's pickup
> outputs than a tube amp of the same complexity. The imperfections in
> this case are not undesirable, but rather they are experimented with and
> fully embraced by musicians (and audiences)..
>
> The same argument can be made for analogue equipment in the recording
> and production domain. Tube mic preamps, analogue circuits in mixing
> boards, etc.. And there's nothing wrong with that at all :D
>
> Some people really like the imperfections introduced by a vinyl playback
> chain.
>
> Here's a little thought experiment: Get the best available digital
> recording and playback chain, and make a great recording of your vinyl
> player's output for some vinyl records (preferably some that you are not
> familiar with). Now make a double blind test between direct playback
> from vinyl and the digital recordings of the vinyl. My hypothesis is
> that you cannot discriminate between the two in such a way that you'll
> find the direct vinyl playback better than the digital recording of the
> vinyl (in a statistically significant fashion). Or even reliably
> discriminate which is which (i.e. which comes directly from vinyl and
> which from the recording).
>
> Now do it the other way around: Take some digital masters of albums and
> cut vinyl records from then. Now do a double blind test. My hypothesis
> is that you will be able to discriminate the vinyl from the digital
> playback for the simple reason that the vinyl cutting and playback chain
> introduces loads of imperfections that will be clearly audible. You
> might prefer the sound of the vinyl in a sense similar to a guitar
> player preferring the sound of a tube amp over some transistor amp. But
> that doesn't tell us anything about the faithfulness of reproduction. If
> you like the vinyl cut of the albums better than you simply like the
> artefacts and imperfections.
>
> Analogue equipment has its place and knowing when to use it and when not
> and being clear about the reasons is a good thing. Claiming that
> analogue equipment is better in audio reproduction is just simply wrong
> as a blanket statement..
Friends and I made tests with best studio equipment available, but we
never made double blind tests, those tests were blind tests or they were
completely not blind.
It's possible to get the same results with analog and digital equipment
and only to get the wanted colouration.
For home studios analog has got the better colouration, regarding to
tape saturation, you can't control neither digital nor analog
colouration for a home studio.
Tubes don't need to colourize the sound. Other than Neumann, the Brauner
VM1 e.g. doesn't cut sound by path filters, the sound quality of the VM1
is caused by the capsule, that's why not all microphones do sound equal,
some have colouration, others don't colourize the sound. If somebody
ordered a stereo pair of the VM1, Mr. Brauner and I selected the
microphones without doing blind tests, without measurements, just by
singing and speaking into the microphone. If you have experiences in
listening, this is easy to do, at least no customer ever was
unsatisfied. For guitar amps there's colourisation, because the amps are
build this way, e.g. by using Celestion speakers.
That a lot of tube equipment does colour the sound that much is
regarding to bad tubes and bad circuits.
I guess there are several articles from Mr. Brauner in the VDT-Magazin,
however, he also has his knowledge from books, such as Winfried
Knobloch's "Röhrentechnik ganz modern", Pflaum Verlag München, ISBN
3-7905-0660-5. Unfortunately it was stopped to continue knowledge about
tubes around 15 years ago by e.g. Elektor-Verlag, but they provided some
good books about tube circuits. I guess they even stopped to sell
Horowitz/Hill "The Art Of Electronics" ("Die Hohe Schule Der
Elektronik").
It's often written that digital should be better regarding to the
"neutral" sound quality, but I recognized that the knowledge about
discrete analog circuits is gone. There are studios that still record
analog, they don't use samples, but provide Melotrons and other gear.
So using digital and than using samples that emulate Melotrons, Moogs
etc., to add a saturation plug etc. never ever will sound as good as an
analog production using a Meltron, Moogs etc. and a tape recorder.
People often claim that digital should sound better, more neutral, but
than they try to get all kinds of emulations. To "produce sound" we want
colouration. It's possible to use professional analog gear, to get no
colouration, but we want colouration.
2 Cents,
Ralf
_______________________________________________
Linux-audio-user mailing list
Linux-audio-user@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.linuxaudio.org/listinfo/linux-audio-user
