Downsampling of high-resolution master files decreases fidelity, according to several comments by Bruce B. here. It would be interesting to compare the magnitude of degradation caused by downsampling vs. the degradation caused by the transition from Master analog tape to LP.
My belief is that the loss in downsampling is absolutely minimal, compared to the type of losses going from tape to LP. The big headache in trying to test this is that you always have to have some mechanism to replay the different media formats, and how do you separate out the effect that has on what you're trying to assess.
If I were a betting man, I'd put good money on one day people saying, "why did we think that analogue was intrinsically superior to digital, silly us ...". And there's at least one simple answer why: ultimately there is no limit to the degree of resolution of digital. Just to be silly, there is no inherent reason why in the right digital format you couldn't have an opera track layered over a heavy metal layered over a classical guitar solo, and on playback to completely, 100% separate them out, play them in 3 separate rooms and have zero cross interference, and "perfect" reproduction. Try doing this trick with your very best R2R ...
To be fair Frank there are famous mastering engineers that compare the master vs the lacquer and destroy the lacquer because the CD sounds as good as the master. Makes good conversation....but something is wrong.
I'll just make one observation about the best digital CDs I have heard and this latest A2DX CD I have listened to. The digital recording I describe as "day old bread" and analog as "fresh". I'm talking about Reference recordings which most consider cutting edge vs the Richardson Records.
If I were a betting man, I'd put good money on one day people saying, "why did we think that analogue was intrinsically superior to digital, silly us ...".
If I were a betting man, I'd put good money on people looking back on the era of vinyl the way we look back on the Victrola. And when they do so, I'd bet they'll look straight past the short period in which a small group of hobbyists held onto the old technology, actually believing, against all evidence to the contrary, in its superiority.
I'll just make one observation about the best digital CDs I have heard and this latest A2DX CD I have listened to. The digital recording I describe as "day old bread" and analog as "fresh". I'm talking about Reference recordings which most consider cutting edge vs the Richardson Records.
I'll keep it going a touch longer: just spent a quick afternoon with the friend with the Naim gear, and CD and vinyl. He's well and truly indocrinated into this heavy duty tweaking, and making excellent progress. He commented at one point that he's at the stage where if he gets a recording in one format or the other he's not fussed about having to have it in the alternative, it's very much swings and roundabouts. A very good sign is that we were running things loud, to the point where my ears were ringing at the end of 4 hours. We finished with digital DSOTM, big, big sound, certainly the best I've heard it on someone else's digital setup. He had inbetween improved the bass on the vinyl by a major factor, Boney M with very sweet, almost ethereal, vocals riding over a very bitey, hard hitting disco beat and arrangements. It's a key indicator to have a very busy mix, layer upon layer, and the vocals still come through totally clear and natural.
My point: at the end of the day it's all about music, and either analogue or digital can do it well enough to be totally satisfying
If I were a betting man, I'd put good money on people looking back on the era of vinyl the way we look back on the Victrola. And when they do so, I'd bet they'll look straight past the short period in which a small group of hobbyists held onto the old technology, actually believing, against all evidence to the contrary, in its superiority.
And when will that era end Tim? It shows no signs of abating. The record plants in the U.S. are at capacity which is why Chad started his own pressing plant. The *problem* with 2XDSD and other super-high resolution digital formats is that mere mortals don’t get to hear those recordings at home. These super-high resolution digital recordings may never be available for sale. Regular SACDs never really took off in the commercial market place so why would record labels be ready to jump in with 2XDSD and take another beating with yet another format that won’t sell on Maine Street?
Anybody run the percentages of hi-rez files that you can download from places like HDTracks that are sourced from analog tape? Digital confusion abounds and it remains to be seen how far off we are from being able to purchase recordings made at higher resolution than what is available today and with different format(s) that are commonly available to consumers.
I asked Charlie's opinion as to why his master tapes sound better than his CDs and this was his response.
"The tapes sound better because they are the analog originals. There is then made a 2nd generation hi rez digital 88.2 master which also sounds good, but then it is down converted to 44.1 CD which is 3rd generation from the tape. The digital copies cannot sound as good as the original analog tape because there are digital conversion losses and lower res CD copies that take place.
In my CDs, most originate from older analog tape recordings, while some newer ones are all digital. When you get the rest of my CDs, there will be lots of examples to listen to and evaluate. Then you can decide what you like and think of the different technologies used. The Annapolis Sounds CDs have a wide range of various technologies used in making them over the years.
Today I can do even better recordings than in the past due to more improvements, etc. I would like to do some new surround recordings and also some Hi Rez SACDs, but the market is not there for such things.
I also use HDCD encoding for the CDs which helps too, but one must have an HDCD player with HDCD playback circuitry to take advantage of this in CD playback . Does your CD player have HDCD decoding capability? If not, then try getting and using a HDCD player. Not many CD players have the HDCD technology, so you have to look at the fine print in the specifications to tell if it has HDCD playback abilities for HDCD encoded discs.
Most of my CDs have the HDCD logo on them to indicate they use HDCD encoding.
Yes there are new improved digital technologies and DSD is one of them. Digital does manage to improve over time. However, analog can also be greatly improved over its current state too. If I had the industry's full support, a new tape machine design would vastly improve analog recording. Far better tape machine mechanics, lower distortion, reduced scrape flutter and modulation noise, better signal to noise ratio, wider frequency response, better transient response, extended bandwidth, lower crosstalk, more transparency, along with better made tapes that can last for centuries. The old master tapes can be restored and preserved with better sonic performance. It all can be done, but there is no market, and no money. Its next to impossible to find competent people to carry out my novel and unique work. I can't do it all myself or pay for it. The industry simply does not care. Most think digital is everything, so that is where the market and the money is and will be."
What was very interesting was a comment made by Rich in his Vinylphile magazine. In his review of the album The Surbubs by Arcade Fire, he said that the CD was made from a recording of the LP because the band wanted both the LP and the CD to sound the same.
It's unfortunate that despite good music, neither the LP nor the CD sounded good. After I bought the CD and was disappointed, I bought the LP. Wish I had read Rich's mag before wasting my money. However, the band achieved their objective because the LP sounded like the CD, and I thought that the LP was made from the CD
It is a terrific disk of compilations, well recorded with none of the foufrou suggested by Frank and as Mark said, the Boz Skaggs cut is as close to the real thing as I have heard
This will sound crazy to many people, but someone will make a lot of money doing this. Get a CD, any CD, or even better a music server, get the very best, most "musical" D/A converter, and the best R2R recorder you can get hold of. Take the gear out of the studio, right away from every last ounce of electrical interference, isolate the tape deck from the digital source to the n'th degree in terms of power supplies, etc and record the CD to tape. You will then have a tape master that people will drool over, and that person will make a fortune selling copies to tape enthusiasts ...
This will sound crazy to many people, but someone will make a lot of money doing this. Get a CD, any CD, or even better a music server, get the very best, most "musical" D/A converter, and the best R2R recorder you can get hold of. Take the gear out of the studio, right away from every last ounce of electrical interference, isolate the tape deck from the digital source to the n'th degree in terms of power supplies, etc and record the CD to tape. You will then have a tape master that people will drool over, and that person will make a fortune selling copies to tape enthusiasts ...
Remember the conditions I set in the previous post. Just hooking up a bit of gear in a sloppy manner to record to tape is NOT going to work, I've said over and over again that digital is very sensitive to any interference, and unless you take extreme care doing the recording, it most certainly won't succeed. That's why the person who really, really makes an effort to do it properly will reap a rich reward ...
Of course most people won't believe me, the idea that you have to be fussy is too much to handle, which is why the industry is in such a mess trying to get audio to always sound right .
This will sound crazy to many people, but someone will make a lot of money doing this. Get a CD, any CD, or even better a music server, get the very best, most "musical" D/A converter, and the best R2R recorder you can get hold of. Take the gear out of the studio, right away from every last ounce of electrical interference, isolate the tape deck from the digital source to the n'th degree in terms of power supplies, etc and record the CD to tape. You will then have a tape master that people will drool over, and that person will make a fortune selling copies to tape enthusiasts ...
Frank
You have that arse backwards.....the biggest difference I can tell between a digital master and a analog master is the amount of ambient information captured. Analog tape is the king at doing this and then some tape electronics are better than others. When digital has approached this key level then and only then will what you suggest be worth doing.
You have that arse backwards.....the biggest difference I can tell between a digital master and a analog master is the amount of ambient information captured. Analog tape is the king at doing this and then some tape electronics are better than others. When digital has approached this key level then and only then will what you suggest be worth doing.
Roger, I've been through this scenario so many times already! The friend's CD setup suffered exactly the problem you're talking about, I was amazed at times at how the sound on a track literally seemed to disappear when it dropped below a certain level; I thought, where's the hole in the floor!! But now, without having swapped to any other component, we now get sound going way, way down there, not perfect, but so much better than before.
The simple answer is that the ambient info is on the CD, tons of it in fact, but if the system is not right all that good stuff is lopped off at the knees, you never hear it! It just requires more work to sort out where the problems are, that are causing the playback to hiccup in this way ...
Actually, I have just realised what the problem is, rereading your post: the analogue master is compressed compared to the digital, the ambient is there in the latter but it's lower in volume, in fact, at the correct volume. The tape medium has limited signal to noise, so the meaty music bit has been dropped in volume, while mastering, to get onto the tape, so getting closer to the level of the ambient sound. Hence the ambient sounds more impressive on the analogue master because it's effectively been boosted to a higher, incorrect level.
I am so tired of the nonsense and drivel. In the thousands of times you have been asked to explain exactly what you have done to elevate a HTIAB which was never designed to be anything close to what a good mid-fi system could deliver in order to achieve the laws of physics defying feats you claim to have achieved, you have never come close to telling us. Some of your answers started off with hardwiring the AC cord into the wall and soldering your speaker cables inside the receiver. After that, you clammed up and acted like you are sitting on some really great tweaks that you can't share because they might be bankable in the future. Some of us have asked you to take pictures of the inside of your HTIAB so we an see the havoc you have wreaked, but that's top secret too.
Don't you think it's a wee bit odd that you own a HTIAB and you are on a forum called "What's Best" and yet you make claims for the performance of your system that people who have systems well into the six-figure mark would never claim to have achieved?
