Idea: The ultimate CD/DVD auditing tool

[Trei, Peter]

> Tyler Durden[SMTP:camera_lumina at hotmail.com] 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