Is the dynamic range of CD sufficient?

[JackD201]

Jack,

You can always search yourself for the expertise and credibility of the author of these (and other) words. I did it since post 1.
http://www.kenrockwell.com/

I saw it from the start too Micro. I read his photography site. I didn't think I needed to bring the fact in that he is from another field. I did wonder what technical set of parameters of DP that he thought was "more than enough for perfect fidelity" for an image!

 

[Julf]

ergo.............

Just that the fact that Avid went 64bit has nothing to do with preserving information, and all to do with faster processing.

 

[JackD201]

My turn to say no. It adds the ability to do more tracks and lay on more processing within the same time at 24bit, along with the visual goodies of course. THAT was why they needed to go with more power. That cinema is the driver and not music production is beside the point. More tracks, more processing the faster you run out of headroom. We know what happens when that happens and what one has to do to avoid that. We also know what the effect of that would be on the final product. You'd have to go back to the beginning at gain structure if you are a perfectionist and have all the time and money or resort to digital attenuation if you don't. You stated yourself the need for 32bit for additional processing. You are contradicting your own stated principle.

 

[Julf]

My turn to say no. It adds the ability to do more tracks and lay on more processing within the same time at 24bit, along with the visual goodies of course. THAT was why they needed to go with more power. That cinema is the driver and not music production is beside the point. More tracks, more processing the faster you run out of headroom. We know what happens when that happens and what one has to do to avoid that. We also know what the effect of that would be on the final product. You'd have to go back to the beginning at gain structure if you are a perfectionist and have all the time and money or resort to digital attenuation if you don't. You stated yourself the need for 32bit for additional processing. You are contradicting your own stated principle.

No contradiction. Avid worked fine for 24 bit with an internal 32 bit architecture, with more than enough headroom. The reason they switched to 64 bit is that modern processors work faster with 64 bit full words rather that 32 bit half words.

Remember this sub-thread started from you statement:

I know right? Avid just released its new 64bit platform so they can do for 24 what 32 was doing for 16. Preserve it.

They didn't go 64 bit to preserve anything, but to run faster.

 

[Al M.]

Al. M.

Better sound reproduction is a statistical matter of preference analysis - the best essay on it I know about can be found in the F. Toole book "Sound Reproduction: The Acoustics and Psychoacoustics of Loudspeakers and Rooms".

Or just as said by Nelson Pass "We want our products to invite you to listen. We want you to enjoy the experience so much that you go through your entire record
collection - again and again. This, by the way, is a very strong indicator. " Some old articles by Harry Pearson in TheAbsoluteSound about these matters are also very interesting.

Yes, that is a good answer.

On this subject I part with Tim and other 'objectivists' here. You can never re-create at home with certainty what the recording engineers had in mind, since you don't know how it sounded in their monitoring systems -- and as has been pointed out, the same monitor speakers show very different in-room responses in studios around the world.

Rather, I would say that reproduction should be about believability. And preferences do decide about what one person may find believable over another. Let's say, someone is an avid listener to live classical music, and his hometown hall, where he listens to most performances, is rather light and airy in tonal balance. This may reasonably have this person be inclined to a stereo system that is also rather light and airy in tonal balance. For myself, I prefer the more earthy sound that I hear at home (which now does have sufficient air as well after my last system changes) since it jibes well with both my average concert experiences and my favored live sounds.

There are many flavors to how live can sound, but the believable timbral palettes are all within certain boundaries. For a more general look at believability, I think we can all agree, a system should enhance the aspects that bring it closer to live sound, e.g., resolution, and should avoid aspects that are absent in live sound, i.e. sonic artefacts, often also induced by acoustic noise (room reflections not found in live venues) and electronic noise.

BTW, what is your LP system at home?

See my signature.

 

[Al M.]

Yes, I was actually agreeing with you

Yes, I know

 

[BlueFox]

.... I think we can all agree, a system should enhance the aspects that bring it closer to live sound, e.g., resolution, and should avoid aspects that are absent in live sound, i.e. sonic artefacts, often also induced by acoustic noise (room reflections not found in live venues) and electronic noise.

Reflections do not occur in a live venue? I thought that only happened if the live venue was outdoors on a flat field. Aren't reflections in a venue what gives that venue it's ambience? The hard part of home music is mimicking the reflections found in live venues. However, I doubt if a CD/SACD has any control over that.

 

[Al M.]

Reflections do not occur in a live venue? I thought that only happened if the live venue was outdoors on a flat field. Aren't reflections in a venue what gives that venue it's ambience? The hard part of home music is mimicking the reflections found in live venues. However, I doubt if a CD/SACD has any control over that.

I said specifically "room reflections not found in live venues". For example, reflections in the listening room can mask acoustic information about the recorded venue (which, yes, is also reflection-based), and present everything with a congested and flat soundstage, instead of reproducing size and depth. That happened with my system in my room before acoustic room treatment.

And no, you don't need to mimic the reflections found in live venues. Your system and room just have to allow for this information to come through from the recording.

 

[Bruce B]

Why stop at 32-bit? Cakewalk had a 64-bit engine long before Avid. Now I've seen them up to 84 and 96-bit precision.

 

[esldude]

Why stop at 32-bit? Cakewalk had a 64-bit engine long before Avid. Now I've seen them up to 84 and 96-bit precision.

As you are someone who works with this stuff, what is the benefit of 84 and 96 bit precision in your opinion?

 

[Bruce B]

As you are someone who works with this stuff, what is the benefit of 84 and 96 bit precision in your opinion?

Once you get above 48, I see no difference on the mastering side. The difference comes in when you have huge multi-track projects with lots of plug-in processing. You do these kinds of projects on some of the Pro-tools and other workstations 6-10yrs ago and the sound just falls apart.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Yes, that is a good answer.

On this subject I part with Tim and other 'objectivists' here. You can never re-create at home with certainty what the recording engineers had in mind, since you don't know how it sounded in their monitoring systems -- and as has been pointed out, the same monitor speakers show very different in-room responses in studios around the world.

Rather, I would say that reproduction should be about believability. And preferences do decide about what one person may find believable over another. Let's say, someone is an avid listener to live classical music, and his hometown hall, where he listens to most performances, is rather light and airy in tonal balance. This may reasonably have this person be inclined to a stereo system that is also rather light and airy in tonal balance. For myself, I prefer the more earthy sound that I hear at home (which now does have sufficient air as well after my last system changes) since it jibes well with both my average concert experiences and my favored live sounds.

There are many flavors to how live can sound, but the believable timbral palettes are all within certain boundaries. For a more general look at believability, I think we can all agree, a system should enhance the aspects that bring it closer to live sound, e.g., resolution, and should avoid aspects that are absent in live sound, i.e. sonic artefacts, often also induced by acoustic noise (room reflections not found in live venues) and electronic noise.



See my signature.

You don't part with Tim on that subject at all. I agree completely.

Tim

 

[JackD201]

No contradiction. Avid worked fine for 24 bit with an internal 32 bit architecture, with more than enough headroom. The reason they switched to 64 bit is that modern processors work faster with 64 bit full words rather that 32 bit half words.

Remember this sub-thread started from you statement:



They didn't go 64 bit to preserve anything, but to run faster.

Ugh. I'm a kind of guy quick to admit when I'm wrong Julf. This may be a matter of semantics but I ain't wrong this time. I'm PT certified and I know from experience and not googling what happens when a session runs out of bits. A practicing PT user just described above the exact same thing. It is not all about alacrity and the resulting workflow efficiency.

Now I think you are just playing with me by sniping. Avid's promotional literature is heavy on the speed aspect because the majority of prospective users will not use that many tracks, use that many virtual instruments and pile on that much processing. Not surprising that it's the number one selling point. Being able to do so however is given just few lines. The sound designer and film and tv editor communit, including our own SDs and editors, have been asking for it and, well, they got it.

 

[microstrip]

(...)

Rather, I would say that reproduction should be about believability. And preferences do decide about what one person may find believable over another. Let's say, someone is an avid listener to live classical music, and his hometown hall, where he listens to most performances, is rather light and airy in tonal balance. This may reasonably have this person be inclined to a stereo system that is also rather light and airy in tonal balance. For myself, I prefer the more earthy sound that I hear at home (which now does have sufficient air as well after my last system changes) since it jibes well with both my average concert experiences and my favored live sounds.

There are many flavors to how live can sound, but the believable timbral palettes are all within certain boundaries. For a more general look at believability, I think we can all agree, a system should enhance the aspects that bring it closer to live sound, e.g., resolution, and should avoid aspects that are absent in live sound, i.e. sonic artefacts, often also induced by acoustic noise (room reflections not found in live venues) and electronic noise.

See my signature.

Al M.,

We all agree that in general way nasty sonic artifacts should be avoided in sound reproduction, but IMHO room reflections are needed to recreate a more believable reproduction of the recording. Surely most of the time they are inaccurate, but they will complement the information existing the in the recording.

We all look for a believable sound - expressing what technically creates a believable sound is not a simple task. Most of all it must be a pleasant sound - no one listens for suffering. I am happy that you seem very pleased with the sound quality of your system. Although I really enjoy my system and its sound quality, I have listened to far better sound quality from other systems and these systems are my reference for achievable sound quality. Also every time a friend comes to listen to my system and comments on it I learn from him - IMHO we always risk becoming too biased by our own actions if our system is our reference. Just comparing to our memories of the real thing is not enough.

BTW I could not find any turntable in your signature.

 

[esldude]

Al M.,

We all agree that in general way nasty sonic artifacts should be avoided in sound reproduction, but IMHO room reflections are needed to recreate a more believable reproduction of the recording. Surely most of the time they are inaccurate, but they will complement the information existing the in the recording.

We all look for a believable sound - expressing what technically creates a believable sound is not a simple task. Most of all it must be a pleasant sound - no one listens for suffering. I am happy that you seem very pleased with the sound quality of your system. Although I really enjoy my system and its sound quality, I have listened to far better sound quality from other systems and these systems are my reference for achievable sound quality. Also every time a friend comes to listen to my system and comments on it I learn from him - IMHO we always risk becoming too biased by our own actions if our system is our reference. Just comparing to our memories of the real thing is not enough.

BTW I could not find any turntable in your signature.

I believe I have read of O'toole's research saying that when they fully damped first reflections listeners in blind testing preferred it with reflections. Apparently at least some reflections enhance the illusion compared to killing them all off.

 

[thedudeabides]

I took it as is it sufficient for capturing the dynamic range that is being recorded today for the music we listen to and purchase.

Thank you mep for answering the question in a simple / non-technical / concise manner.

I assume the OP's initial question includes the DSD based SACD format.

GG

 

[Al M.]

You don't part with Tim on that subject at all. I agree completely.

Tim

Oh, that's great!

 

[Al M.]

Al M.,

We all agree that in general way nasty sonic artifacts should be avoided in sound reproduction, but IMHO room reflections are needed to recreate a more believable reproduction of the recording. Surely most of the time they are inaccurate, but they will complement the information existing the in the recording.

Microstrip,

Alright, let me rephrase: while room reflections may be needed, there should be no types of room reflection that unnecessarily mask acoustic information about the recorded venue. I assume you can agree with that.

We all look for a believable sound - expressing what technically creates a believable sound is not a simple task. Most of all it must be a pleasant sound - no one listens for suffering.

Depends on how you define 'sufffering'. I love that my system can reproduce natural hardness of sound (e.g., that heard from brass in all but the smoothest sounding venues). This hardness of course should not be confused with artificial harshness (which inferior digital is often guilty of), but even so, I would not say that it is a 'pleasant' sound. It's exciting to me nonetheless. In a similar way, if a shrill dissonance is what I hear live in a piece, and is part of the musical expression of the piece, I want that reproduced with full incisiveness in my system as well -- no smoothing over desired.

I am happy that you seem very pleased with the sound quality of your system. Although I really enjoy my system and its sound quality, I have listened to far better sound quality from other systems and these systems are my reference for achievable sound quality. Also every time a friend comes to listen to my system and comments on it I learn from him - IMHO we always risk becoming too biased by our own actions if our system is our reference. Just comparing to our memories of the real thing is not enough.

Oh certainly, hearing live music is always a big wake-up call as to how far my system (and any system I've heard, for that matter) lags behind reality. I have no illusions about that. Yet I thoroughly enjoy the aspects of sound from my system that do come quite close to reality. The thing that always lags in the most obvious way behind reality is sheer scale. I did hear systems that can reproduce scale much better than mine, yet even though these come in relative terms much closer to the real thing, they are still rather far away from it -- but yes, what they can do in terms of scale is quite amazing and satisfying.

I know that my system, like everyone's system, is a compromise, tailored to my own priorities in sound reproduction at the expense of the full expression of some other aspects, and I am at peace with that.

BTW I could not find any turntable in your signature.

Well, I guess that's the point then...

 

[Don Hills]

J. Robert Stuart (Meridian Audio) did some number crunching on the thread topic. He wrote a paper:

https://www.meridian-audio.com/ara/coding2.pdf

In summary, he says 16 bits may not be enough for some signals, assuming that 0dBFS is set to a room SPL of 120dB. At that gain setting, the noise level of CD "silence" is above the hearing threshold in an extremely quiet room. He stops short of suggesting that any real world music approaches such dynamic range.

One interesting factoid, assuming that 0dBFS = 120dB SPL:

Properly noise shaped, you can fit everything audible to the average human ear into 11 bits / 52 KHz. Without noise shaping, you need 18.2 bits at 58 KHz. These are absolute minimums. He sees 24/96 as more than enough, but likely to become the standard (the paper was written a few years ago).

The paper is 38 pages including figures and references. I strongly recommend taking the time to read it in full. It's very clear and does not contain complex math. Note that the figures are at the end of the paper, I recommend opening two copies side-by-side so you can see the figures as you read the text.

 

[rbbert]

That paper has been brought up earlier in this thread as well