arsclist Tubes will not die

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>From the Transhuman news list:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 17:40:20 +0100 (CET)
From: Eugen Leitl <eugen@xxxxxxxxx>
Reply-To: transhumantech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
To: transhumantech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [>Htech] Re: Tubes will not die (fwd)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: 13 Nov 2002 08:56:29 -0800
From: James Rogers <jamesr@xxxxxxxx>
To: fork@xxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Tubes will not die

On Tue, 2002-11-12 at 20:07, Jon O. wrote:
> 
> James, this is a JOKE! Perfect CD reproduction? 
> 
> How can you say this -- one is bits and one is vibration. They both have 
> their limitations, but a CD sampling rate is similar to a Mega Pixel 
> rating on a digital camera. It isn't the thing, but a representation 
> of the thing. So is a CD. I suppose you can tell me that a 20 mega pixel
> digital camera is just like "seeing" photo and 512 bit sample of music on a
> CD is equivalent to the live production. 


The best analog recording formats (which are actually digital when you
get down to it) have less signal fidelity than an ordinary Red Book CD. 
You can record Red Book audio that maintains perfect fidelity WELL below
the noise floor and beyond the frequency range of vinyl, so a perfect
reproduction of any signal there is trivial.  I would humbly suggest
that you study up on sampling theory, signal processing, and other bits
of relevant trivia.  You are seem to be demonstrating a classic
misunderstanding of how sampling actually works.

That said, it is quite possible to record the full 3D sound stage that
humans hear in a live performance setting and deliver it on two tracks
of audio with no meaningful loss of information.  For practical
engineering purposes we don't generally maintain this level of
correctness in a recording because the benefit isn't worth the effort,
but it has been possible to do with relative ease for at least a decade.

Human audio range maxes out at about 24-bits, and for practical purposes
doesn't extend below 20-bits. It doesn't take that many bits before you
essentially hit the noise floor of the universe and the reasonable limit
is a fair number of bits fewer.  Analog audio systems max out at about
12-bits.  In the average environment that hasn't been acoustically
engineered, you'd be lucky to get 10 honest bits in playback.  It is
simple to measure and calculate the number of bits equivalent that are
required to equal the fidelity of an analog system.  Note that with a
few exceptions, most popular genres of music are intentionally mastered
into 8-12 bits of real resolution, so even the resolution of Red Book
audio isn't being fully used in most cases.

There was a time many, many years ago when A/D converter design was
sufficiently bad that your average 16-bit CD audio converter had lower
fidelity than high-end analog.  These days even the crap consumer gear
has converters that approach the theoretical limits for 16-bit signals,
which is far beyond anything analog can do (by a few orders of
magnitude).  There are a few good reasons to RECORD with analog media,
but for playback there isn't any good reasons.

-James Rogers
 jamesr@xxxxxxxx



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