Is digital audio intrinsically "broken"?

[Thomas.Dennehy]

Prioritize them as:

#1: Must Haves
#2: Nice to Haves
#3: Why Do I Have This?

And then schedule recordings accordingly.


TGD

 

[NorthStar]

Yes, welcome to WBF Thomas! :b

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

One can use the approach I did with my CDs: start with the LPs you like the most. Then as you find time, you can digitize the rest. I used to use my forum time to rip my CDs .

I just kept feeding them in (iTunes did all the work according to what I had previously asked it to do) and the Mac spit them out when it was done. A couple of weeks worth of evenings of feeding the beast between doing other things and it was done. Would it have been better to use some slower, less automated ripping method? Maybe. But I'll find all the errors in time and re-rip. I've run across very few so far (and it has been a few years). And now, the maintenance is so easy. I come home from the (used) CD store and I don't even play them. I rip them to the hard drive, put the disc in a binder, the booklet in a file and the jewel box in the garbage.

Which is, IMHO, exactly where it belongs.

Tim

 

[Thomas.Dennehy]

The audio CD is just an install disc for music.


TGD

 

[JackD201]

Prioritize them as:

#1: Must Haves
#2: Nice to Haves
#3: Why Do I Have This?

And then schedule recordings accordingly.


TGD

That's CLASSIC! Yes, I'm guilty as charged.

Welcome to the Forum Thomas.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

The audio CD is just an install disc for music.


TGD

It is to me. Welcome aboard, Thomas. Good Irish name you have there.

Tim

 

[Thomas.Dennehy]

Sometimes processing a #3 will help you mentally re-establish its link to one of the #1's or #2's.


TGD

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I processed them all. It reconnected me with my collection. Then, when it was over, I wallowed in the wonders of "search." Type in "Pork Pie Hat" and up pops six versions. I have re-discovered music I hadn't listened to in years. I believe it sounds better than vinyl. But even if I didn't, it would be worth the compromise.

Tim

 

[Thomas.Dennehy]

(June) Why do I have this Arthur Blythe album?
(July) He played sax with Jack DeJohnette's Special Edition.

 

[Thomas.Dennehy]

Sometimes you can use the transfer process to impose a better structure to a piece -- closer to the artist's intent -- than was present on the original LP. Learn more ...


TGD

 

[Bruce B]

Maybe there is money for someone to get into the high quality LP digitizing business !!!

I do this for anyone that wants to pay. I've only had maybe a dozen or so inquires. No one wants to pay $50/100 per album.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

The modern dematerialized digital music collection is a marvel—weightless, information-rich, strongly interconnected. Mine has nearly 1,000 full-length titles, more than 10,000 individual songs/tracks, over 750 GB of uncompressed audio, all automatically indexed and available to me with constant-time access. It is both the present and the future of playing music.

Still, people like vinyl. (I count myself among their number. Roughly 30% of my library titles were originally acquired on vinyl.)

Analog and digital unite when you ephemeralize your vinyl LPs—give them one last victory spin to change them from physical objects to cloud-friendly digital bits. Why? You can stop the aging process (for your LPs, that is). In some cases, you can reverse old damage. And you bring all the advantages of dematerialized play to your LP-entrapped content while preserving the unique sonic quality of vinyl.

High quality copying is possible. Gigahertz computer clocks facilitate high sampling rates. Near-zero cost of storage makes compression unnecessary. And the software needed to accomplish this is (almost) all free.

Learn more ...

Why not digitize all your Lps?

--vinyl still sounds better than the best digital copy of it.
--vinyl does not wear out in a real world sense (in a lifetime of use anyway). it may get marginally noiser.
--it's fun spinning vinyl
--the state of the art of vinyl playback is still improving at a significant pace. to keep up you'd need to re-digitize your vinyl every few years.

i do think the best digital is very very good. and a digital file optimally sourced from a top vinyl front end is better than most otherwise sourced digital. so i'm with you on the enjoyment of vinyl sourced digital. just that there are good reasons not to go that way too.

 

[microstrip]

Why not digitize all your Lps?

--vinyl still sounds better than the best digital copy of it.
--vinyl does not wear out in a real world sense (in a lifetime of use anyway). it may get marginally noiser.
--it's fun spinning vinyl
--the state of the art of vinyl playback is still improving at a significant pace. to keep up you'd need to re-digitize your vinyl every few years.
(...)
.

-- because the digital people are still arguing what is the best digital format (inspired by a Jack post in the Nice Review of DSD by Andreas Koch thread .

 

[Bruce B]

-- because the digital people are still arguing what is the best digital format (inspired by a Jack post in the Nice Review of DSD by Andreas Koch thread .

There is no "best". It's what suits the music, the personal taste and the wallet! Just like any piece of equipment.

 

[Thomas.Dennehy]

I keep my original recordings and intermediate files in 24-bit/96KHz WAV. Presumably from there I'll always be able to export the format du jour, right up until the day when audio is implanted directly into our brains at full fidelity.


TGD

 

[Mike Lavigne]

There is no "best". It's what suits the music, the personal taste and the wallet! Just like any piece of equipment.

Bruce,

do you really feel that way?

are you saying specific digital formats are ranked differently with different types/styles of music?

or that different digital formats are ranked differently based on the source format? (live, tape, PCM of various resolutions, dsd)

or it's more a personal preference based on one's reference? or taste? as in growing up with i-pod pcm as the reference.

i just don't see the confusion on the best current digital format. it's 2xdsd clearly if one wants the closest to the source. i'm trying to understand where that might not be true and why? other than the customer is always right. hey, you are running a business after all. i don't have that problem.:b

 

[Bruce B]

Bruce,

do you really feel that way?

are you saying specific digital formats are ranked differently with different types/styles of music?

or that different digital formats are ranked differently based on the source format? (live, tape, PCM of various resolutions, dsd)

or it's more a personal preference based on one's reference? or taste? as in growing up with i-pod pcm as the reference.

i just don't see the confusion on the best current digital format. it's 2xdsd clearly if one wants the closest to the source. i'm trying to understand where that might not be true and why? other than the customer is always right. hey, you are running a business after all. i don't have that problem.:b

Good question Mike...
It's like this... these digital formats are more a personal preference and what the client/consumer can afford. My personal preference it to always use DSD128fs. Some of my clients absolutely hate the way DSD sounds. A lot of people (studios and audiophiles) don't want to go through the added extra expense of having to support DSD as well as PCM. To them... PCM is "good enough". No Mike, we don't have that problem, but with so many cutbacks and the economy, DSD is a luxury to most people.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Good question Mike...
It's like this... these digital formats are more a personal preference and what the client/consumer can afford. My personal preference it to always use DSD128fs. Some of my clients absolutely hate the way DSD sounds. A lot of people (studios and audiophiles) don't want to go through the added extra expense of having to support DSD as well as PCM. To them... PCM is "good enough". No Mike, we don't have that problem, but with so many cutbacks and the economy, DSD is a luxury to most people.

your "personal preference" says it all.

ok, the world is back on it's axis.

too bad more people cannot visit your studio and hear what each digital format does to an analog signal with quick switching. all the graphs and papers in the world get marginalized very quickly. i think that people don't get what PCM does to that analog signal until they hear what 2xdsd doesn't do to it.