Victory Pete
Banned
Last edited:
SteveM
New member
Analog Rules! 
I always wonder about this..
I always wonder about this..
JRSIV
JRSIV Music Ltd.
Analog Analogy
There has always been a valley between what the layman music lover will accept and what the audiophile/musician will accept when it comes to sound quality and the mediums those sounds are delivered on.
I suspect as time goes on and technology gets better there will be even more formats and choices to muddy the waters. The hope for a standard, high quality, highly portable, universally excepted format seems distant if not forever vanished.
I know for me, convenience and listening pleasure are two different animals. I like CD's for their convenience (portability, random access and the abundance of playback locales-car, PC, home stereo, etc...). But for critical listening and an audio "experience"? They fall short.
Now vinyl sounds great when you have a good turntable coupled with relatively clean, scratch free records. But for anywhere but right in front of the turntable and speakers, you are out of luck.
The newer, bigger sampling frequencies and bit rates are exciting; and from the few SACD's and 96khz/24bit Pro Tools sessions I've heard they sound much better than standard CD's. But until there are some standards for delivery and playback, the question of convenience and portability remain. It's bad enough for a 96/24 recording to be dithered down to redbook CD. But for that CD to be taken down further to 128kbs MP3 is just miserable...
I do know that for me, even after hearing the newer high quality digital stuff, analog still gives me goose bumps. A buddy of mine has a Tascam 42 two track and he played me a mix of some guitar, bass and drum rhythm tracks. They sounded so great! There was just something there that CD's just don't have. Warmth, "air", balls...I could go on and on. When digital gets to the point where it makes me feel like that, I'll be the first in line.
There has always been a valley between what the layman music lover will accept and what the audiophile/musician will accept when it comes to sound quality and the mediums those sounds are delivered on.
I suspect as time goes on and technology gets better there will be even more formats and choices to muddy the waters. The hope for a standard, high quality, highly portable, universally excepted format seems distant if not forever vanished.
I know for me, convenience and listening pleasure are two different animals. I like CD's for their convenience (portability, random access and the abundance of playback locales-car, PC, home stereo, etc...). But for critical listening and an audio "experience"? They fall short.
Now vinyl sounds great when you have a good turntable coupled with relatively clean, scratch free records. But for anywhere but right in front of the turntable and speakers, you are out of luck.
The newer, bigger sampling frequencies and bit rates are exciting; and from the few SACD's and 96khz/24bit Pro Tools sessions I've heard they sound much better than standard CD's. But until there are some standards for delivery and playback, the question of convenience and portability remain. It's bad enough for a 96/24 recording to be dithered down to redbook CD. But for that CD to be taken down further to 128kbs MP3 is just miserable...
I do know that for me, even after hearing the newer high quality digital stuff, analog still gives me goose bumps. A buddy of mine has a Tascam 42 two track and he played me a mix of some guitar, bass and drum rhythm tracks. They sounded so great! There was just something there that CD's just don't have. Warmth, "air", balls...I could go on and on. When digital gets to the point where it makes me feel like that, I'll be the first in line.