evm1024 said:
RawDepth has a number of very good points in this comment. I have specifically extracted the one below. (actually 2 quotes)
I think that the point made is that the distortion artifacts of digital are more grating on human audio preception. I hope that we can agree that if you drive digital to a non linear region that the resultant waveform is harsh. This is not a defect but rather an observation of how we hear.
I have contended in the past that humans have millions of years of listening to faint sounds that are masked by the sound of the wind and so on. Out brains have significant capabilities to recover the sounds form this backgrouund noise.
I postulate that analog recordings artifacts are of a form that our brains are comfortable dealing with and are (for the most part) handled with out stress. And that digital recording artifacts are "new" to our brains and we have not found a way to deal with them without stress.
I clear example of this is in digital TV vs Analog TV. When the frame rate in digital tv fails we get bars and pixilation and in general a "harsh" image that is annoying while the introduction of noise to analog tv produces "snow" which is easily ignored. We still see the picture. (apples and oranges of course. Don't look at the details but rather look at the relationships)
Clearly from my viewpoint there will be a day when the bit depth and sampling rate of digital will be great enough (along with the supporting circuitry) to present to the human ear recorded sounds that retain ALL the information in the original sound without adding a "digital" sound.
In the early days of CD I thought that DDD recordings would be the height of recording clarity. I quickly found that ADD sounded better and that AAD was even better. But still not up to AAA even with the clicks and pops.
For the most part a recording type is judged not by what you capture but what you recover.... Be it a CD or an ipod. With that in mind it is easy to see that CD quality is lacking. THis is clearly obvious if we were to take a high quality master analog recording and burn it onto a cd that in A/B testing the two are easily distinguishable. Were cd "quality" to live up to the marketing then we would not be able to hear a difference.
So what is "digital" sound? I really do not know. It does go back to how humans process what they hear not what they actually hear. Hearing in interperated. As an example picture the face of someone you don't know. It may b e dirty or of low resolution (due to dirt on their face or whatever) and you will have some "feeling" about them. Now take that same face and add a few small oozing open sores. And now think about your feelings again. Quite a difference. the point being that in sight as well as hearing we make judgements of the rightness of what we see and hear. Does this apply to the digital/analog debate? Who knows. But we do make those judgements without regard to our awareness.
Just a thought or five....
A lot of good input there EVM… as I expected.
One thing in particular that has been a point of interest to me for a few years now is how digitized sound affects the listener emotionally. Of most interest to me are segments of the population that are unable to identify the source of the stress, but feel stress nonetheless.
It appears there are others that are more sensitive and are able to identify digitized sound as unpleasant.
However, both groups are negatively affected by the sound. The difference is that one group knows what it is and the other does not.
There may be a third group that really does not perceive anything objectionable in digitized sound, but I think the larger population falls into the first two groups. I’m basing this observation on the state of popular music, or rather its decline, as I perceive it… more on that later.
I do not believe it is all physiological, but rather as you mentioned… interpretation or processing beyond the mechanical function of the ear. I’m drawing from other areas of human perception and experience to try to conceptualize it. For example, those that are emotionally in tune with themselves and those that are not. Some individuals are better at sensing their emotional state and the reasons for it than others.
For example, a person with chronic back pain may feel he is surrounded by annoying people and annoying circumstances. Another person with the same chronic condition is able to identify the pain in his back as the source of his world seeming “out of sorts.”
I began jotting down a few ideas, and it’s now slowing turning into a thesis. The general premise is that people are being more or less forced to create music that is limited and molded by subtle, but very real aural pain. (Imagine a bad Star Trek episode… first season)
Thus the emphasis on thumping bass in rap and hip-hop, the rise of the sub-woofer, etc. is because digital reproduces a harsh high end.
Basically, artists and producers are unconsciously avoiding the offending frequencies and consumers are masking them with accentuated bass.
My working tile is “The Death of Beautiful Music.” IMO, what western culture has traditional defined as aurally complex and beautiful is heavily dependant on the purity of upper-mid and high frequencies. Some may assume I’m talking about classical music in particular, but that isn’t the case. Complex music runs through many genres.
I thought I might have invented the concept and the phenomenon would be named after me, but I ran across a book by Mark Katz while doing research.
I think some members here would find Katz’s book interesting. There is another book by Michael Chanan that I haven’t read, but it looks promising as well. Here are the links:
Capturing Sound: How Technology Has Changed Music
http://www.amazon.com/Capturing-Sound-Technology-Changed-Foundation/dp/0520243803
Repeated Takes: A Short History of Recording and Its Effects on Music
http://www.amazon.com/Repeated-Takes-History-Recording-Effects/dp/1859840124
Katz doesn’t specifically address my observation that rap/hip-hop and digital technology have symbiotically risen to dominance, but he does address the interaction between recording technology and the way music has evolved.
Well there you go… much more to chew on than most people are ready for, but only a small portion of what’s on my mind regarding the issue.
~Tim
