> Tyler Durden[SMTP:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > Nobody wrote... > > "There is a loss of quality if you go through an analog stage. Real and > wannabe audiophiles will prefer the real thing, pure and undiluted by > a reconversion phase. These are the people who are already swallowing > the marketing line that the CD bandwidth limit of 22KHz is too low for > good fidelity, despite being higher than they can hear." > > I'm in that category. And as someone who basically grew up in Carnegie > Hall > and the Metropolitan Opera, I trust my ears (I saw the opera Wozzeck twice > > by the time I was 17). > > There are engineering reasons for this that I'm willing to discuss, though > > the discussion will be tedious for engineers, and impossible to understand > > for non-engineers. Far easier will be for you to go and listen > to a CD player that can upsample standard CD to 24bits/196kHz. The > difference is not by any means subtle. > > As an audiophile (Krell+Levinson+Thiel gear at home), I definitely don't > want to grab an analog signal. Doing that the signal is sure to retain > characteristics of the extracting gear. But the vast majority of P2P kids > won't care one iota that their file was analog for half a second. > > -TD > I'll ditto that - my brother is an extremist audiophile - he writes reviews for the high-end stuff (google "Mike Trei"). Many (by no means all) top end audophiles prefer all-analog equipment, and direct-cut vinyl records (ie, the master disk was cut directly at the performance, without a magtape master). I've listened to some of this stuff, and it just blows digital away.
The general attitude is that while low-end digital beats low-end analog, high-end analog beats high-end digital. Digital places a distinct floor on how bad the quality can be, but it also puts a ceiling on it. The data capacity of a vinyl groove is a lot higher than a CD pit-track, but you need very good equipment to use it. While the ear can't hear above 22KHz, signal above that *can* effect the perceived sound, by heterodyne effects. For example, if you play a single tone of 28KHz, or a single tone of 30 KHz, you can't hear them. Play them together, however, and you *can* hear a beat frequency of 2KHz. Peter Trei
