"Paul" wrote in message
...
You need to loosen up, matey - get one of these:

http://www.thanko.jp/ibluetube/

and try and get a little *fun* out of the hobby....


Well, if nothing else Keith, you've given me a good laugh Thanks for
that.
What the hell is that? Second thoughts, don't tell me. There is an ipod
thingy in there somewhere - yuk.
Are they having a laugh?


Dunno, but the people who are buying them are probably having a ball......


I have absolutely no interest in Hi-Fi as a hobby.



You're in the wrong group then - this an 'audio' group (ie Ipods accepted)
for *hobbyists* (ie recreational, not 'pro').

Try rec.audio.high-end.....

Paul wrote:
I can't see how its a bodge, its a filter, that is designed to be
matched with a inverse on replay. Remember there is a similar (though for
different reasons) filter employed in the recording and replay of CD's,
again, without that filter the CD experence would be equally appalling
(maybe worst without the initial filter before the AD, and even with a DDD
disk, somewhere there will be a AD step unless you are listening to just a
digital synth).

If it gets you less upset don't think of it as a filter, think of it as a
converter from a position detection to a velocity detection system and the
reverse at playback.

--
Nick

Hold on a mo. We are drifting aware from my original purpose.
My interest is with High Fidelity and how best it can be achieved with
available technology.

snip

Am I missing something? A simple 'no' would suffice if you believe it to be sound.
On the other hand, if you consider it to be flawed then a please tell me
where I am going wrong.

Paul


Recreating what was recorded is a pretty tall order - not least because
you don't know what it sounded like.

IMO all this fiddling about with filter fixation and pure technology is
an endless and expensive pursuit. I'd be thinking about speakers and room.

Then I'd think about a turntable :-)

Rob

In article ,
Paul wrote:
I listen to music too!
I also have a turntable for the exact same reason you do!

And I'd say this applies to many here - of a certain age.

--
*Men are from Earth, women are from Earth. Deal with it.

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

In article ,
Keith G wrote:
Try rec.audio.high-end.....

I'd imagine that really would attract the loonies.

--
*On the other hand, you have different fingers*

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Keith G" wrote in message
...

"Paul" wrote in message
...

I do wonder if you've heard either at its best. I have a Revox reel to
reel with a Dolby SR unit around it which gives results as near as
dammit
to 16 bit PCM. FM radio can also be pretty good - although these days
the
dreaded optimod type devices often ruin it.

Ok, I will take your word for it being very good. No I'm not taking the
mick - Revox have made some bloody good kit. In fact I would love one for
little jobs in my home studio - but not for Hi-Fi. I don't even use tape
for acoustic instruments - I go straight to harddisk. By your own
admission it only comes close to 16 bit PCM. It therefore falls short of
what can be obtained and misses the mark for me. If you have read my
earlier posts you may understand why this has no place in my agenda.



You need to loosen up, matey - get one of these:

http://www.thanko.jp/ibluetube/

and try and get a little *fun* out of the hobby....




Hi Paul.

Are you a recording professional? You mention a home studio,
so presumably the answer to my question is "No".

Have you ever attended a CD mastering session, and wondered
why the analogue quarter inch recorder is so prominently placed?
These days only a tiny percentage of material is mastered from
analogue tape - not enough to justify such a costly machine.

Many many clients ask for an "analogue pass" I leave it to you to
work out why.

The mastering facility at which I work frequently has a stereo
Studer A80/II with Dolby SR and Lexicon D/A and A/D
converters built in, and is in use on a daily basis for the purpose
I mention above.

Please make contact again when you return to Planet Earth

Regards
Iain

In article , Paul

wrote:


If you are referring to the format in which data is represented on the
audio disc:

It is not correct to say that the information recorded onto audio CDs
is "simply streamed". Audio CD employes quite a complex and powerful
set of systems for redundancy and error detection and correction. If
you don't understand CIRC then you may not know the details of this,
but it is present. Indeed, this is why you can drill a 'small hole' in
the information layer, yet then be able to read the audio information
with no actual errors or loss to the audio data.

No actual errors or data loss????? Clearly there are errors and data
loss. I assume you are suggesting that the loss can be 'rebuilt' to be
100% as the original?

You may be confusing two distinct issues.

1) Random and unrepeatable errors - e.g. due to noise in the reading system
- always lead to a non-zero chance of there being some errors at the
channel bit level which are either undetected by the correction processes,
or can't be corrected.

2) Systematic errors - e.g. a hole in the information layer - do *not*
always have a non-zero chance of producing undetected or uncorrectable
errors. They either will, or will not, depending on the specific details of
the systematic error.

Thus if a a hole has lost data which means that the original information
cannot be recovered correctly, then no amount of re-tries will help. The
data is lost. But if the hole has *not* lost data in this way, then the
hole does not prevent a single read from recovering the orginal
information.

Type (1) can lead to data loss regardless of if any type (2) problem is
present or not.


I feel if this were indeed possible the computer industry would be using
it. What may be possible is interpolation. This may be acceptable for
audio but disaster for computer data.

Accordng to the Red Book standards you can expect interpolation for burst
errors (e.g. holes) which extend over more than 2.5 mm of the information
layer. But for shorter burst errors, no interpolation is needed to correct
for the hole.

Interpolation may be needed to deal with random errors. However if you look
at the Red Book standards this should be very rare. Here 'rare' can be
quantified as follows:

For the sake of example, assume a channel bit error rate (BER) of 0.0001.

This means that interpolations will tend to arise only at the rate of 1
sample value per 10 CDs. In practice it is likely that these will pass
unnoticd when they occur.

It means that undetected errors (a 'click') will occur at a rate Philips
described as 'negligable'. This may seem vague, but the reason was that it
is a rate of 1 sample per many hundreds of thousands of CDs. Even a channel
bit BER of 0.001 only produces a 'click' for one sample per 750 CDs.

The snag, of course, is that not all CDs are well produced. :-)


In the case of audio, we are still left with corrupt, inaccurate
information. Clearly then, this is of no help in the search for High
Fidelity. It is interesting to read the CRC from an audio CD. Play a
track and note the CRC value. Play the same track again and see if the
CRC is consistent. I use Audiograbber to do this little test.

Well, I have in the past done the test of playing a CD, and recording the
output via SPDIF using a CD audio recorder. I did this a few times for a
few different tracks. Then loaded the copies onto my computer. They were
all bit-for-bit identical to each other, and the original.

I have also read the same track repeatedly onto the computer. Same results.

There will be occasions when this does not occur. No real system can
totally exclude the chance that random non-systematic errors will corrupt
the result. But in reality this seems rare. In practice, you may find that
faint clicks and pops caused by next door's fridge are a worse problem.



Hence even though most domestic audio players read the disc at x1 rate
with no 're-tries', they still do not have to actually read every
single channel bit from the disc. They can accidentally 'miss' bursts
of discs *and the result following error detection and correction will
generally be the intended audio data with no errors.* This is the
purpose of the systems Philips/Sony built into the Red Book specs.

'generally be the intended audio'? Not good.

Depends on your definition of "not good". Is not a rate of audible errors
of well below one sample per 1000 CDs not good enough? If so, then I am
afraid that no system anyone is using would suffice for your purposes.

Engineering isn't about making systems 'perfect'. That is left to
theologians. I don't know if they have made any better audio systems than
engineers, though... :-)

Slainte,

Jim

--
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Audio Misc http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/AudioMisc/index.html
Armstrong Audio http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/Audio/armstrong.html
Barbirolli Soc. http://www.st-and.demon.co.uk/JBSoc/JBSoc.html

Hi Paul.

Are you a recording professional? You mention a home studio,
so presumably the answer to my question is "No".

Have you ever attended a CD mastering session, and wondered
why the analogue quarter inch recorder is so prominently placed?
These days only a tiny percentage of material is mastered from
analogue tape - not enough to justify such a costly machine.

Many many clients ask for an "analogue pass" I leave it to you to
work out why.

The mastering facility at which I work frequently has a stereo
Studer A80/II with Dolby SR and Lexicon D/A and A/D
converters built in, and is in use on a daily basis for the purpose
I mention above.

Please make contact again when you return to Planet Earth

Regards
Iain

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hi Ian,
Ok, I'm out of retirement as your post takes the thread in another direction
and hopefully I may benefit from your experience!
However, your final infantile remark was unnecessary - can we keep any
correspondence both adult and civil please?

History:
You are correct, I am not a professional. However, if memory serves, I made
my first 'serious' home recording in 1974.
Do I know it all? Of course not (does anybody?) but with 30+ recording
years behind me (albeit as an amateur) I must know at least a little about
it! Certainly I know what I like regardless of whether others,
professional or not, agreed.

Once captured, the audio data remains in the digital domain. I'm sure you
know as well as I (probably more so) just what can be achieved (and at no
sonic cost), and with such ease, when working in the digital domain. Perhaps
not so good for those who dislike digital but for me - manna from heaven! I
rarely use analogue at all now. I use Fishman pickups (mostly) for my
acoustic guitars. I do have mikes available if required but I honestly can't
remember the last time they were used. Heresy maybe but I never use a mike
for the electric guitars either as DI does it for me and I can tailor to
suit once it's in. I don't have the best kit I'm sure but fortunately noise
levels etc etc are more than acceptable to me so I'm happy.

No, I've never been fortunate enough to get inside a pro studio and I simply
could not afford the expense of one of the excellent courses available. As
for the analogue tape being there, well, you would need to ask that question
of the people who elect to use it but I have heard many say they prefer the
sound of analogue so I would guess that's why. On the other hand there are
many who prefer digital as I do. Clearly, many of your clients are of the
same mind. As my recording are largely for my enjoyment only it seems
sensible to me to do without one. Any unnecessary box in the line must be
detrimental wouldn't you agree? Without in anyway being funny, can I leave
it to you to work out why many of your clients *don't* ask for an "analogue
pass"?

It would seem not unreasonable to suppose your customers know what they
prefer and want. Would you wish to tell them otherwise if you didn't agree?
I know what I like prefer and want so I guess I'm not any different (with
the exception that they may well have the additional requirement of selling
the product!).

As an aside, have a listen to any of Dave Grusin's excellent recordings on
LP. Then have a listen to the CD - WOW!!!!
You may or may not agree. All it proves is that we are not all the same
(thank God)!
I'd love to look over the studio he uses

Regards,
Paul

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On Tue, 1 Aug 2006 19:46:12 +0100, "Paul" wrote:


snip

Why are you only using 16 bit PCM? Surely your sound card can manage
24/96 - that is pretty much the standard these days.


I thought we were talking about a comparison with CD.
For my studio I use an M-Audio 2496 Pro audio card (no sound generating
capability). I'm very pleased with it.
No doubt I could do better but funds wont allow and I don't feel a need to
change. It does a fine job though and I would recommend it to anyone
involved with home recording etc.
PC sound cards are inadequate but then, to be fair, they are not designed
for it.


Not designed for what?

And as for PC sound cards being inadequate, you are very, very far
from the truth. Many PC sound cards these days offer unbelievable
levels of audio performance, which aren't effectively bettered by even
the best stand-alone boxes. The big differences between pro and am
gear are in facilities and numbers of simultaneous record/replay
channels.

d

--
Pearce Consulting
http://www.pearce.uk.com

In article ,
Iain Churches wrote:
The mastering facility at which I work frequently has a stereo
Studer A80/II with Dolby SR and Lexicon D/A and A/D
converters built in, and is in use on a daily basis for the purpose
I mention above.

Why such an old machine, Ian? The Studer A812 is the finest 1/4" I've ever
used. Far more stable transport than the A80, and better performance in
general.

--
*There's no place like www.home.com *

Dave Plowman London SW
To e-mail, change noise into sound.

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote in message
...

Absolutely not. *Mastering* to both CD and LP invariably involves changing
the master.

Sorry Dave, but that is incorrect. Do you have practical experience in
either disc cutting or CD mastering?

Iain