What does it mean when people describe Digital as Sounding like "Analog"? Best term?

[Mike Lavigne]

when you guys come up with the access to this separate dimension where digital has more information than analog send me a link to that.

in my dimension it's just not like that.

and i keep trying to listen to measurements but somehow they can't really make music. so they are besides the point.



i suppose my 30,000 albums of music are all lying too. my 7.1.4 channels of Dolby Atmos high rez in my home theater can't compete with my 2 channels of analog either.

maybe there is an alternate definition of "information"?

Definition of information. 1a(1) : knowledge obtained from investigation, study, or instruction. (2) : intelligence, news. (3) : facts, data.

appears to indicate what tells you more about what happened would be more information. yep, thought so.

 

[Al M.]

when you guys come up with the access to this separate dimension where digital has more information than analog send me a link to that.

in my dimension it's just not like that.

and i keep trying to listen to measurements but somehow they can't really make music. so they are besides the point.



i suppose my 30,000 albums of music are all lying too.

Ask the recording engineer who said that, not me. I gave the link in #178. He calls analog tape and vinyl more "crude", again his opinion.

I guess as a recording engineer he has been around analog tape quite a bit, so it would be interesting to know how he arrived at his opinion.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

Ask the recording engineer who said that, not me. I gave the link in #178. He calls analog tape and vinyl more "crude", again his opinion.

the last time i had a pro audio engineer in my room his mouth was wide open saying "aw shit, i never knew vinyl could do that!"

not all pro audio guys are created equal. and most don't have access to systems to hear analog done well. some do, of course. and we are talking about the end product given to consumers......maybe there are skunkworks pro audio digital tools that are completely foreign to our digital playback media. i guess that is possible, which is the only way they could be right. i certainly have plenty of the highest rez digital files out there, and my best vinyl is far closer to 'more information' than that.

 

[Al M.]

the last time i had a pro audio engineer in my room his mouth was wide open saying "aw shit, i never knew vinyl could do that!"

not all pro audio guys are created equal. and most don't have access to systems to hear analog done well. some do, of course. and we are talking about the end product given to consumers......maybe there are skunkworks pro audio digital tools that are completely foreign to our digital playback media. i guess that is possible, which is the only way they could be right.

Well perhaps the recording engineer in that interview hasn't heard top vinyl playback, but I suppose he has compared analog tape and digital in his studio system, i.e., under identical conditions.

Regardless, the interview is an interesting read.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

and i think where the disconnect happens is the musical nuance and continuousness/completeness of analog, which digital misses a significant amount of. it's the part our senses get that measurements simply cannot. so the engineers among us might have trouble resolving that conflict......knowing it on one level, but not believing it (their ears) on another. it's this aspect of the whole picture that is maybe the most important 'information'.

 

[Al M.]

and i think where the disconnect happens is the musical nuance and continuousness/completeness of analog, which digital misses a significant amount of. it's the part our senses get that measurements simply cannot. so the engineers among us might have trouble resolving that conflict......knowing it on one level, but not believing it (their ears) on another. it's this aspect of the whole picture that is maybe the most important 'information'.

That engineer claims that analog misses nuance. Again, his opinion, but you really should read the interview. He does not talk about measurements, and he does appear to work with the musical score.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

That engineer claims that analog misses nuance. Again, his opinion, but you really should read the interview. He does not talk about measurements, and he does appear to work with the musical score.

i have over 50 of Bert's Challenge Classic dxd recordings. Bert is a friend of our member Audiocrack. i like his recordings a lot; they are possibly my most often visited pieces of music overall.....so i know them intimately. i'm fully satisfied going forward to a steady diet of this quality of classical digital. i applaud Bert and wish him success. i'm invested in his success and expect to continue to acquire his recordings. full orchestral high rez digital is my main diet of music.....what he does.

OTOH none of his recordings stand up to my best vinyl or tape......and i seriously doubt he has any clue about that nor should he have. he is not an authority on what is possible with analog. and his success is based on people seeing his product as a superior one sonically, so he is hardly neutral on the matter.

 

[the sound of Tao]

Tao, that is a thought-provoking post with some important questions, none of which I know how to answer. However, I will note that I have been reading from one member how he assesses a system and it is really quite elegant in its simplicity. DDK judges components and systems by how "natural" they sound. That is all. He has also written that music is not about bits and pieces but rather the whole. I take this to mean that it is about the gestalt, it is not about individual attributes.

Perhaps we don't need a new way of describing sound as systems become more resolving. Perhaps we just need to stop describing things in the way we were taught by certain magazine editors who changed the language and convinced us to dissect sound into parts.

Peter for me natural is the key also and is one of the things that if we could better understand how that is achieved would be for me the fundamental design parameter.

It is essentially a holistic subjective assessment and for me a starting and ending point in the inquiry process also.

It goes something like this... I’m harmlessly sitting there listening to music as we do and something is heard which is either noticeably or strikingly natural or unnatural... or better still has moments of realness and is essentially sounding right or essentially sounding not right.

If it’s sounding natural and there are moments of realness and it essentially sounds right then the process largely often halts there.

If something is at odds then I may question it in a more particular ways ie is the issue about a not rightness of say tonal balance or coherence, dynamics, presence etc.

If I see a pattern emerging where the system (through time) is sounding less natural I’ll go into analysis (system analysis rather than analysis with my therapist... though if it all persists long enough the latter might be an option as well).

So I have noted I tend to start with holistic assessment then switch if necessary to particular assessment then run again with a holistic assessment. So it is a cycle that can become then a sweep.

 

[Al M.]

i have over 50 of Bert's Challenge Classic dxd recordings. Bert is a friend of our member Audiocrack. i like his recordings a lot; they are possibly my most often visited pieces of music overall.....so i know them intimately. i'm fully satisfied going forward to a steady diet of this quality of classical digital. i applaud Bert and wish him success.

OTOH none of his recordings stand up to my best vinyl or tape......and i seriously doubt he has any clue about that nor should he have. he is not an authority on what is possible with analog. and his success is based on people seeing his product as a superior one sonically, so he is hardly neutral on the matter.

So you think as a recording engineer he has less experience with analog tape and what is possible with it sonically than you do?

I'd not make such an assumption easily.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

So you think as a recording engineer he has less experience with analog tape and what is possible with it sonically than you do?

I'd not make such an assumption easily.

he is too young to have been around for the golden age of analog recording. has he been around tape recorders? likely he has. has he been personally involved in lots of analog recording projects? none i have noticed.

it's been 40+ years since classical had much analog recording.

so my assumption has some basis.

and i only listen to the finished product. and i likely have much more analog finished product than he does.

 

[BlueFox]

While analog is trying, I doubt it will ever catch up to digital. Even now, it costs a ridiculous amount of money, and effort, for analog to come close to digital. Obviously, as technology marches on the gap between digital and analog will just get bigger.

 

[the sound of Tao]

when you guys come up with the access to this separate dimension where digital has more information than analog send me a link to that.

in my dimension it's just not like that.

and i keep trying to listen to measurements but somehow they can't really make music. so they are besides the point.



i suppose my 30,000 albums of music are all lying too. my 7.1.4 channels of Dolby Atmos high rez in my home theater can't compete with my 2 channels of analog either.

maybe there is an alternate definition of "information"?


appears to indicate what tells you more about what happened would be more information. yep, thought so.

Mike I wasn’t going into there being more or less information available in the digital or analogue format.

I was more trying to grasp myself an understanding of whether the issue is about the amount of information in any system or more about how that information is then organised in replay. A bit like the tasks of data and metadata.

Mostly I’m really trying to just understand that position rather than positing any of these thoughts as fact.

Starting by asking if the information in the recording hasn’t been gathered in an attempt to capture a representation of a listening position reflective of the way we might normally hear that music (maybe done as a way of highlighting or compensating for the way many systems then replay information) or maybe just purely as a producers artistic call then do we need to question how much information is coming through in replay and do we need to amend against some benchmarks to maybe make the sound more reflective of normal listening experiences which is what those who use the notion of aiming for a system that sounds natural are probably seeking to do.

If this was actually a direct transcription process and the data was just relayed unchanged by the system then that notion that more information would be more reflective of the truth would likely hold. But if the original signal isn’t exact and everything is being changed, modified, added to and subtracted from all along the chain so in the end are we hearing things in perspective of the real and coherent or is the information coming through as exaggerated detail in the organisation of all the information harmonically, spatially and or temporally.

When we refine our systems we tailor make what is there at the end so for me it is about our discernment on what is needed from all that potential information and then how it is modified or arranged in the replay process.

That is why clearly there is no one right solution other than perhaps things sounding essentially right (which may be for me about it sounding natural or having moments of realness) or alternatively essentially sounding not right... and I suppose that can be if there is not enough or indeed if there is too much information... and especially if that information isn’t necessarily reflective of all the truth in the first place.

 

[Tango]

While analog is trying, I doubt it will ever catch up to digital. Even now, it costs a ridiculous amount of money, and effort, for analog to come close to digital. Obviously, as technology marches on the gap between digital and analog will just get bigger.

On the contrary, I hope today's analog can go backward to where it was in the past and certainly hope it does not even think of catching up with digital. Advancement in digital should very much be welcoming and goes on its own path so that we could choose how we want to listen.

Tang

 

[kodomo]

I had a very similar experience with a well know record producer. This guy is working at a multi million dollar facility. He is, here in my country, one of the most respected guys and he records all the stars and all.

He was shocked to hear how good tape and vinyl was sounding. He said he never heard them sounding this good. Still, he admitted they were ran away from tape when they found digital and saw how convenient things were with digital. They are recording a lot with lots of artists. The speed of recording and later the ease of recall of a digital recording session is godsend for them. The second part is very costly and hard with completely analog recording chain.

Still he was so impressed that he said, for special boutique projects they should consider having a side rig that is completely analog. He also said, no one from the new generation has any idea on how to operate the old machinery and keep them running. He will join me on my event at April for a recording with both analog and hi-res digital at the same time.

 

[tima]

The human physiology is constructed in a certain way and the way we perceive sound is a function of how we're built. We hear with the body and ears we have. A successful sound reproduction mechanism for music must be congruent with how we hear. It doesn't seem to me that "quantity of information" has anything to do with that. Maybe digital can never sound more like analog because it isn't analog.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Tim, some of the most complex explanations are the simplest ones.

 

[bonzo75]

Tim, some of the most complex explanations are the simplest ones.

For our entertainment, discussions need to be complex. Explanations can be simple

 

[microstrip]

(...) OTOH none of his recordings stand up to my best vinyl or tape......and i seriously doubt he has any clue about that nor should he have. he is not an authority on what is possible with analog. and his success is based on people seeing his product as a superior one sonically, so he is hardly neutral on the matter.[/QUOTE]

Mike,

No one says he his neutral - it is impossible to be neutral in these subjects. As any one should know in psycho-acoustics affairs the only consensus of neutrality is statistical, something that is not possible as we are a too small community. His points are clearly explained, we should be able to debate them without questioning his expertise.

Going to facts - although I asked several times, no one ever referred to an LP having the quality and complexity of my favorite Savall "Routes de l'Esclavage" or an LP of Shostakovitch 5th or 8th carrying the same unadulterated information as for example, the Haitink digital versions.

 

[microstrip]

For our entertainment, discussions need to be complex. Explanations can be simple

Once we enter a stereo debate, no explanation can be simple. Too many variables to consider and too many gray zones.

 

[microstrip]

The human physiology is constructed in a certain way and the way we perceive sound is a function of how we're built. We hear with the body and ears we have. A successful sound reproduction mechanism for music must be congruent with how we hear. It doesn't seem to me that "quantity of information" has anything to do with that. Maybe digital can never sound more like analog because it isn't analog.

We must accept that nothing can officially sound equal to anything in an hobby where people report enormous changes just because they switched off all the devices having SMPS at home or going from average to a lifetime experience raising the tonearm by 1/4 of a millimeter.

Stereo is not congruent with what we hear - it asks for plenty of work of our brain to carry the strong decoding of cues that gives us spatial information. But as we have been trained listening to stereo we love it, in spite that this decoding is carried in a completely different way from what is done listening to live music.

Considering quantity of information, theoretically digital can sound like analog, analog can never sound like digital.