On Tue, 8 Apr 2008 19:33:16 -0700, bob wrote
(in article <fth9tc025a9@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>):
> On Apr 8, 6:15 pm, Sonnova <sonn...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Actually, I doubt that the OP meant ANY of the negative analog
"artifacts"
>> that you mentioned. When one listens THROUGH or AROUND those things
there is
>> a certain "alive" character to analog that many people prefer. And who
is to
>> say that their preferences are wrong? Wrong for you, maybe . Wrong for
many
>> people, I'm sure.
>
> Agreed, absolutely.
>
>> If one gets down to absolutes, there is only one absolute
>> "right" and that is the sound of real acoustic music played in real
space.
>
> My sense of what "real acoustic music played in real space" sounds
> like is based on my experiences of it, which are very different from
> your experiences of it. So this is hardly an absolute at all.
Except that it has never been proven that people with normal hearing hear
music all that differently. Anyway, it doesn't really matter whether it
sounds different to each of us. The point is that the sound of real, live
music played in real space will always sound the same way to YOU. That it
might sound different to me doesn't matter because it also always sounds
the
same way to ME too.
>
>> The only thing that I find destructive to the sound of real music is
lossy
>> compression.
>
> Seriously, you find that more destructive than, say, multiple
> generations of analog tape?
It depends upon how many generations. I certainly prefer tape hiss to
compression artifacts.
Case in point about lossy compression. I've never been much of an iTunes
music store downloader, but recently, I downloaded two "albums" from them.
One was the soundtrack to "The Mummy 2" and secondly, was a large album of
the Music of Miklos Rozsa. Both were standard downloads, done at 128 kbps,
and both were UNLISTENABLE. Veiled, homogenized, lacking in real dynamics,
musical mush is my best description. I've never heard any muti-generaltion
analog audio tape that bad. I've also heard (heard, hell, I own them) some
pretty nasty sounding LPs in my time as well, but again, nothing this bad.
A
friend loaned me his CD copy of "The Mummy 2" soundtrack and I ripped it
using Apple Lossless Compression. The difference is so great that its
ludicrous. It's hard to believe that the two versions were both from the
same
source material. I ordered the Rozsa from Amazon, and it sounds very good
too
(although much of that compilation is from analog source material recorded
in
the 1970's and 1980's). I ripped it using ALC as well. I connect my Apple
TV
box to my stereo via a long TOSLINK cable to my outboard D/A converter,
and
now when I play these two albums they sound at least as good as the CD.
(I'll leave vinyl out of this discussion.)
> I'd say you have a very odd notion of "the sound of real music," then.
Then, I'd say that you don't have a lot of experience with analog. The
kinds
of distortion that build up mult-generational with analog tape aren't that
audible until one gets at least 4 generations away from the master. Also,
most records were cut with master tapes no more than two generations down
from the master. Since pro recording was always done at at least 15 ips,
and
more likely 30 ips, the hiss isn't that bad in the first place.
But if you grew-up listening to tape and LP as I did, you learn to listen
around those obstacles because the music is STILL there. With MP3 and
other
lossy schemes, I find that the music sounds like its been put in a blender
and reduced to mush. Mush that has nasty artifacts riding on it. In other
words I find that I cannot listen around MP3 nastiness because the music
ISN'T still there. While I realize that it's possible for one to use a
higher
bit-rate when one is ripping their own CDs, and at 320 kbps, MP3 doesn't
sound all that bad, Apple is the largest online music store in the world
and
they only give one the option of 128 kbps. I always thought that Sony's
Mini-Disc compression scheme sounded much better than MP3 and the
downloads
available on Sony's on-line music store (now defunct) Sounded MUCH more
listenable than did the MP3s available from Apple and other on-line music
sources.
And, finally, I don't see what my tolerance for canned music sins,
whether
they be analog or digital has to do with my notion of "real music". Live
music has none of the drawbacks of recording and storage schemes past or
present.
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