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Bula Vinaka posted:I remember when CD's were the future, because with digital sound, analog noise was a thing of the past. Everyone was always writing about how music listened to via tape or vinyl was "mostly noise" so eliminating it would be a great thing. This post means well, but you're mostly wrong. At least, you're conflating some terms incorrectly, using some others in a strange way, and not getting the history correct. Noise is not the same thing as distortion. Noise is a usually-random external signal added to the original signal. Distortion is any change in an audio waveform from its input to its output. I suppose in this way you could argue that noise is a form of distortion, but any audio professional would say this is an incorrect and disingenuous application of the term. Just about every system and device we use for turning acoustic waves into electrical signal, or electrical signal into magnetized regions or ones and zeroes, or vice-versa, imparts both noise and distortion to the original signal. Any attempts to improve fidelity, historically, have been in the realm of minimizing both of these things. Digital is very good at this. Noise is what you hear when the signal is very quiet, usually manifested as a present static 'hiss' sound. We strive for greater signal-to-noise ratio, expressed in decibels. The wider the SNR, generally the better fidelity. CDs have a SNR of 96dB due to their 16-bit depth (higher resolution systems in recording studios, like 24-bit, affords about a 150dB SNR), and tape is only about 70dB at its best. Distortion is not noise, it's when an output signal is changed in any way from its input signal - like I said, everything imparts distortion, it's just a matter of what kind and how much. A simple way to think about distortion, at least the kind most people think about when they hear the term, is that you're basically 'overloading' the capacity of an electrical system. A circuit can only handle so much gain. The term 'clipping' as a form of distortion generally refers to digital systems, and it's very literal: When the amplitude of a waveform tries to be higher than the system can handle, the top/bottom parts of the waveform are literally 'clipped' off, flattened. This changes the harmonic structure of the signal in a way that is generally considered unpleasant. Analog systems, be they tube, transistor or tape, tend to handle amplitude a little bit differently. You did use the word 'saturation' in your post but as well as incorrectly combining it with the term noise, you seem to think it's some kind of buzzword. It's not. Saturation, in tape, is when the magnetic domains of the recording medium get hit with such a strong magnetic field (a high amplitude signal) that they become stuck and cannot have their poles re-aligned. They are 'saturated' with voltage and cannot record any higher amplitude. On playback, these saturated domains impart new harmonic content that was not present in the original input signal. That's all any kind of distortion or saturation is - introduction of new harmonics or changes to the existing harmonic structure of a signal (because that's all of sound, fundamentals and harmonic series). Audio professionals tend to be fond of the saturation characteristics of analog systems like tube amplifiers or tape machines, for creative purposes, but not for fidelity. We like the sound of an electric guitar through a tube amp because it imparts a characteristic 'warm' harmonic series to the signal, but you would not run a singer's voice through the same device and expect it to sound better. In addition to all of this stuff about dynamic range, SNR and the qualities of distortion imparted by different recording media, the frequency response of a system is an important consideration when discussing fidelity. We know that our hearing goes from about 20Hz to 20kHz; I won't go into this in much detail but this is essentially why Shannon-Nyquist theorem has the ideal sampling rate at 44.1kHz for an accurate representation of a signal; it's twice the range of our hearing (plus a little extra for the roll-offs of anti-aliasing filters and additional information). The frequency response of tape is, in a word, abysmal. Some tape machines - the kind of reel-to-reel devices you'd see in recording studios - have frequency response up to 20kHz, but only at low recording levels, meaning a compromise between ideal SNR and frequency response is necessary. Tape in recording studios can be run at different speeds (usually measured in inches-per-second or IPS); a higher tape speed yields better frequency response but obviously uses twice the amount of tape for a recording. Cassette tapes, you're usually looking at a frequency response upper limit of 15kHz, which is, like I said, dogshit. The reason digital systems were so quickly poo-poo'd by audiophiles on their introduction in the 1980s, was because the converters that took electrical signal and turned it into binary data or vice-versa (called Digital-Analog Converters or Analog-Digital Converters, DACs or ADCs), at the time, were in their infancy and generally considered poor quality. This was the bottleneck that made digital sound "cold and sterile" (not "flat and dull") at the time, but engineers have been working on it for a while and DACs/ADCs are basically perfect now. You might hear some analog purists going on about "staircases instead of waves" - referring to the fact that digital systems use discrete sampling values that, if you were disingenuous, you could plot onto a graph that looks like a staircase instead of a smooth waveform. This betrays a lack of understanding of the anti-aliasing filters present in digital systems, which smooth things back out. In CD quality resolution or higher, the output waveform of the digital system will look (and sound) exactly like its input; smooth waves. CD quality; 44.1kHz/16-bit, is basically perfect. This is a mote controversial, but I would even go so far as to say that for the vast majority of music produced and consumed today, MP3 is all you need. A properly-encoded 320kbps MP3 - ripped from a 44.1kHz/16-bit file, of a pop/EDM/metal/hip-hop tune that you're listening to on iPhone earbuds or your car stereo or the sound system in a nightclub - is functionally identical to its CD-quality counterpart. Some DJs consider themselves audiophiles, but I'm very adamant that anyone who tells you they can tell whether a DJ in a crowded club is playing WAVs or MP3s, is lying through their teeth. With all of that said, there is something to be said for the listening experience of an analog medium. This goes way beyond the simple fidelity of the system though, because we've had decades of proven research that digital systems are orders of magnitude more 'true' than the litany of ways analog systems can introduce distortion and noise. The experience of sitting down with a vinyl LP, physically removing it from the sleeve and admiring the large album artwork as you take in the recording, definitely is something that's been lost in the digital age. Additionally, some do prefer the 'warm' and 'punchy' characteristics of the actual recording medium. But to conflate this with actual audio quality is wrong. Digital is perfect. Even those plug-in tape saturation emulators you talked about are getting pretty bang-on, in TYOOL 2023. There's basically no reason anymore to own an actual tape machine unless you really like the workflow of recording to it and the distortion it imparts. Basically, go ahead and enjoy listening to your vinyl, or even the noisy-rear end cassette tape that your garage band recorded to on a TASCAM four-track (honestly, these things are dope). But don't try to spin it like you're listening to a better-quality medium. You like it because of its distortion. To be reductive, you like it because it sounds bad. Since I'm totally harshing on this thread's buzz with this reply, I'll close with this interesting quote from Brian Eno about distortion: quote:Whatever you now find weird, ugly, uncomfortable and nasty about a new medium will surely become its signature. CD distortion, the jitteriness of digital video, the crap sound of 8-bit - all of these will be cherished and emulated as soon as they can be avoided. It’s the sound of failure: so much modern art is the sound of things going out of control, of a medium pushing to its limits and breaking apart. The distorted guitar sound is the sound of something too loud for the medium supposed to carry it. The blues singer with the cracked voice is the sound of an emotional cry too powerful for the throat that releases it. The excitement of grainy film, of bleached-out black and white, is the excitement of witnessing events too momentous for the medium assigned to record them. Mister Speaker fucked around with this message at 23:17 on Apr 27, 2023 |
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Apr 27, 2023 22:37
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Earwicker posted:[quote]sometimes something that originally was a flaw can turn around and become something good. there's a legend that blue cheese was invented when a shepherd left a hunk of cheese in a cave and came back to find it moldy. he was so hungry he ate it anyway and it turned out to be delicious, and now people love it all over the world. even if physical tape ends up going away eventually, artists will be using various tools to simulate the sound of tape (and vinyl) distortion and saturation for decades or maybe even centuries to come, because to them it sounds good. I already addressed this with my comment about plugging a guitar into an amp vs. running a voice through the same amp. Obviously we still use loads of old recording techniques and devices because we find the distortion they impart to sound pleasing, on parts of a recording. But with amp and tape emulations, we have a significantly higher degree of control over that distortion than ever before. We can choose exactly when and how to apply it, instead of being limited by the medium itself because it's the only way to record our entire mixdown. Do you think recording engineers in the 1960s wouldn't have jumped at digital if they had the opportunity? It's not wrong to say "you like it because it sounds bad." Like I said, it's reductive of the qualities that make a recording to tape what it is, but it's entirely correct that what you actually find pleasing about the sound of vinyl or tape is its distortion. You don't have pops and clicks and tape hiss when you listen to a band play live.
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Apr 28, 2023 20:38
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Deep Glove Bruno posted:A few decades of tech press has made it hard for most people to view devices through any kind of lens other than like... technical specifications. Fidelity, accuracy, precision, and maybe most of all, convenience, as if those are the objective priorities of all people in all matters. With a lot of stuff I like, those aren't my priority. Why should they be? I'm a human being. drat. There's nothing objective about how we like to experience music anyway. I don't know what you're talking about. I use my loving ears.
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Apr 28, 2023 22:50
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Earwicker posted:that depends on the genre and simulation. for example the mellotron is a highly valued instrument in many musical circles specifically because of it's distinct tape-based sound and the elements of distortion and warble that are often part of it. The Mellotron is an interesting example, for sure, because IIRC even at its time it was pretty expensive. Obviously artists like the Beatles could have afforded the even-more-expensive route of hiring session musicians and recording them but they chose to use the instrument instead, probably because they were weird little guys who liked experimenting. That said, it's still just a sampler. Again, do you think that the inventors of the Mellotron wouldn't have jumped at the chance to use pristine DACs and HDD recorders instead of tape if they were around in the 1960s? Do you think the guys in Pink Floyd weren't simultaneously a little bit frustrated that "it's a bit warbly and you can hear where the tape loops back innit" at the same time as impressed with the novel technology? And again it's not really the same thing. It's a sampling instrument, not a recording medium for an entire performance. My whole point of contention ITT is with posters who think that we 'lost something' by moving everything to digital. We used analog recording media at the time because it was what we had, and when digital came along and (took a few years to) blow it out of the water in every objective metric by which you can measure 'fidelity', everyone who mattered got on board. And some people said "hey I miss that dirty thing that tape/vinyl had," so we figured out exactly what caused that, and recreated it digitally. One more time, there's nothing wrong with enjoying inherently-flawed media like tape or vinyl, or even preferring that listening experience to digital. But conflating your preference with 'fidelity' is objectively wrong.
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Apr 28, 2023 22:59
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Earwicker posted:. a low fidelity recording is less faithful to the original sound of what was recorded. that is not at all the same thing as "bad". Yes, it is exactly the same thing.
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Apr 29, 2023 04:41
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That's absolutely a false equivalency and you know it. A more fair comparison would be film vs. digital photography, and guess who wins that one.
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Apr 29, 2023 08:19
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BigBadSteve posted:I was with you up until you said this. But if the quality of streamed music satisfies you, you might as well just listen to the sound of your own farts instead. Most of the major streaming services use 320kbps MP3, IIRC. Unless you're listening on a really nice stereo with a quality DAC, and the material is jazz or classical or something else with a really wide dynamic range, honestly that's more than fine for most music produced in the last 20 years. This is probably even more controversial than my "you like it because it's bad" assertions that seem to be going over a few peoples' heads, but the vast majority of music produced and released these days does not have the dynamic range to necessitate a higher-resolution file. Dynamic range is arguably a more easily-noticeable factor in determining the fidelity of a medium (compared to frequency response), and so much music these days is limited in the mastering stage so heavily that it's sitting north of -12LUFS, which is really loving loud. Of course, people don't just stream modern music, so to an extent I agree with you about the quality of streaming services. But if you're paying for TIDAL's high-resolution audio just to listen to contemporary pop tunes (or buying 96kHz EDM tracks to DJ, lmao), you're wasting your money.
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Apr 29, 2023 08:30
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Nah, you're wrong.
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Apr 29, 2023 13:46
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LimaBiker posted:Depends which things you're comparing. We're comparing the fidelity of a medium designed to capture or record a reproduction of what our senses perceive. Digital wins that battle every drat time. quote:In almost all other cases, film is obsolete. quote:i don't shoot film for perfection. I shoot it for a specific look without having to edit my pictures on the computer (a job i hate). See, this exactly. There are pretty objective things about the quality of 'fidelity'; you used the term 'perfection' which is something we strive for in capturing sensory experiences and something that has only improved in both aural and optical media with the advent of digital. To repeat myself again, fine, use your Pentax 35mm or your TASCAM cassette recorder, nobody is saying you can't enjoy the specific look or sound you're chasing by committing yourself to that level of quality and workflow. But that's why you enjoy it; the imperfection, relative to more accurate media that entire industries have embraced for capturing moments in time and space. Certain people ITT are getting it twisted, and waxing philosophical nonsense, making false equivalencies and moving goalposts like this: In some crusade to defend the analog medium and their own personal definition of the word 'quality'. Remember that this cat even thought Brian loving Eno's treatise on the charm of imperfection in old recording media was "short sighted." This was in the same reply over on page 3 where they demonstrated a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between using a distorted medium as a creative element within an audio mix, and using the same medium to capture an entire performance when you have the option not to. Those are two different things, which I already addressed with my example of using a driven tube guitar amp because the instrument can sound cool through it, whereas you would not run your entire song through that same driven amp at the mastering stage and expect it to increase the fidelity of the mix. It wouldn't even sound subjectively 'good,' and there isn't a mastering engineer alive who would disagree with me. There's nothing wrong with throwing a tape sim on the master of a mix, or abusing the hell out of a pair of 1176s, All-Buttons-In through a back bus to crunch up some drum or guitar tracks and add perceived loudness without actually eating up headroom, or telling your singer to record the second verse through a loving megaphone; all of these things sound pretty drat cool when done right. But you would not do such aggressive things every single time to every single recording you mix, because sometimes they're the wrong choice in capturing the nature of a performance. I don't want to hear Josh Groban through a megaphone, or even a Buddy Rich drum solo slammed through some back-bus compression like you'd treat a Dave Grohl drum track. The information loss in those cases would be extremely unpleasant. Entire industries moved over to digital, and I'm not just talking about music. We archive court proceedings and public address speeches from politicians with digital recorders (and the old ones that were recorded to tape? It's someone's job to improve them by using spectral and de-noising tools to remove the distortion and noise that the analog medium imparted). We capture the voices of radio DJs and news anchors and interviews using systems that are virtually entirely digital right from the preamp onwards. In fact these digital media are so perfect, that if you do decide you want to make a creative change later and you want it to sound 'like analog' (by adding noise and distortion and reducing the frequency response), you can do that with plug-ins that simulate the varieties of possible tape distortion better than you could get with actual tape. I produced, AD'd and location recorded a friend's short film last summer, and while we shot it in 4K, he used some After-Effects plug-ins to make it look like wobbly Super-8. He also added camera motor noise and tape hiss to the audio tracks I painstakingly de-noised and carved out the sounds of cicadas and airplanes that we couldn't avoid in iZoTope. Am I mad that he did that? gently caress no, because we went in knowing that his creative vision for the project was he wanted it to look and sound like a home movie shot on a crappy Super-8. We record dialogue and background noise and sound effects on film sets, and nobody is doing that with reel-to-reel location recorders anymore. You wouldn't record a scene of dialogue in a room with a ground loop and a buzzing air conditioner and tons of standing waves if you could avoid it (and in film, you can avoid it). You'd kill that noise or wait until the helicopter finishes flying over for the quietest set possible (SNR!!!) and then use a sound effect library in post-production to see if you really wanted that room to sound lovely, because having that level of control affords you more creative options than being stuck trying to remove noise and de-reverb a space because it didn't sound as quaint as you thought it would. I suppose, in some sick way, you and I are essentially saying the same thing from different angles, Earwicker. Earwicker posted:i'm talking about people who intentionally seek out distortion to listen to or to use themselves because they enjoy the sound of it. not all of those people are doing so because they think the sound is "bad". in most cases they find the sound, in various contexts, pleasurable, or good. Mister Speaker posted:You like it because of its distortion. You even agreed with me on this. Our point of contention seems to be in the application of the word 'quality'. But to my mind, 'distortion' is antithetical to 'quality'. I'm not going to go all Webster's on your rear end here but it IS right there in the definitions. If you want to read some more folks way more qualified than me who are using the term 'quality' as a fairly objective measure, you can check out this study from the Council for Research in Music Education. Mister Speaker fucked around with this message at 21:41 on Apr 29, 2023 |
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Apr 29, 2023 21:29
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| # ¿ May 15, 2024 17:48 |
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That's really more what scares me about getting into vinyl. I own a handful of records but am kind of glad I never had the space for more than a couple of crates, because it could get out of hand easily. I actually just sold my Technics 1200 mk2s  as much as I was absolutely not using them to spin records at all, it's always sad to part ways with a prized piece of gear.Earwicker posted:
Yeah definitely, it's a semantic debate at this point and we're not going to see eye to eye about it. You've definitely made a more reasonable case than a lot of people who've gotten into this with me, so big up yourself for that. I think we just fundamentally disagree with the way the scales of objectivity and subjectivity are weighted when the word 'quality' comes up. This thread is cool, buzzkill that this debate may have been. I enjoy looking at pictures of vintage electronics and nerding out about how they work, as much as the next dweeb. What really blew my mind growing up was learning that the MiniDisc is kind of a hybrid medium; its encoding method is not fully optical or magnetic, it's kind of both. I wonder if the engineers that designed it found some efficiency there, or if it failed deservedly because simple optical PCM was more elegant. All I know is that playing around with my MD collection felt like handling the NOC list, and that's cool to a 14-year-old boy. I think the cassette tapes that got the most play from me as a kid were probably Tull's Crest of a Knave and Born To Laugh At Tornadoes by Was (Not Was). The latter is an absolute trip in 80s synthpop full of excellent guest vocalists that's still obscure enough that you can blow peoples' minds with it. Many trips in rental cars with my Dad were spent listening to those albums on repeat.
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Apr 29, 2023 22:20
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