Exploding Garrmondo Weiner Interactive Swiss Army Penis

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Originally Posted by PiccoloNamek (Post 573651)

From a technical perspective, digital is far superior to analog, (if "analog" in this context is refers to vinyl records). The available dynamic range is greater,

This strikes me as intuitively wrong, but even if it's not, 99% of digital masterings/recordings have the dynamic range so compressed that it's horribly wrong in practice anyway.

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It may sound good, yes, but it isn't realistic.

And the reason I spend so much on audio isn't for a 'realistic' reproduction, it's for one that sounds good. And I don't even use vinyl. Imagine that.

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There is no reason to believe a properly recorded, mixed, and mastered CD will sound worse or somehow contain less musical information than a record.

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44,100 samples per second at 16 bits per sample is more than enough.

"More than enough"? Look, it's simple math: A continuous (i.e. analog) scale has an infintely greater amount of precision than even the most precise discrete (i.e. digital) scale. Period. If you want to claim that you can't hear a difference, that's an argument you could make. But to claim that there is no difference in information, or, worse, that there's no reason to believe that there's more information, is absolutely wrong.

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Eventually, the sampled digital waveform will have to be sent to a DAC in order to be converted into an analog electrical signal, otherwise there would be no way to play it through speakers or headphones.

Actually, there are now 100% digital amplifiers that literally amp the digital signal without a DAC. See the Panasonic XR-57 for one example.

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This strikes me as intuitively wrong, but even if it's not, 99% of digital masterings/recordings have the dynamic range so compressed that it's horribly wrong in practice anyway.
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Why does it strike you as intuitively wrong? What you say about mastering is true, though. I'm sure you've seen me mention the loudness war at least a couple of times...

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And the reason I spend so much on audio isn't for a 'realistic' reproduction, it's for one that sounds good. And I don't even use vinyl. Imagine that.

Can't we have both? That is what I aim for. My system reproduces music realistically, and also sounds excellent. Personally, I think the two are correlated.

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"More than enough"? Look, it's simple math: A continuous (i.e. analog) scale has an infintely greater amount of precision than even the most precise discrete (i.e. digital) scale. Period. If you want to claim that you can't hear a difference, that's an argument you could make. But to claim that there is no difference in information, or, worse, that there's no reason to believe that there's more information, is absolutely wrong.

Haven't you heard of the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem? If the sampling frequency is twice frequency in question, the analog waveform can be reproduced perfectly from the sampled waveform. In reality, there are aliasing effects, but these are negligible. On an absolute scale, yes, there is more information in the original continuous waveform, but how much of this information is relevant? How many instruments produce frequencies greater than 22050hz? How many vocalists? This is why I said 44100 samples per second is more than enough, because it is. More than enough to reproduce all of the audible information.

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Actually, there are now 100% digital amplifiers that literally amp the digital signal without a DAC. See the Panasonic XR-57 for one example.

I know about digital amplifiers. But the signal still has to pass through a DAC at some point. Unless you also happen to have digital speakers hooked up to your system.

Analogue for me, plz. Completely digital recordings sound cold, metallic and lifeless to my ears.