Divide By Zero said:
Tapes and vinyl strip frequencies, and they are also not fully accurate even in the mid range, depending on the condition of the media. How would they capture more than digital?
Also, keep in mind that there is an encoding process with analog too, it's never like the true sound is direct to tape/vinyl.
With digital, let's say 44,100 hz (samples per second), a mid range tone of 5000 hz would have 10 samples... lower the frequency, even more samples. Between the samples of the wave, yes you miss out info. The dac would just average out in between to make a smooth line. But I really doubt that a normal physical instrument would have jumps within those 2 samples anyway.
In terms of the acoustics of the room, I do find that the music of the 70s most interesting with that. When stereo became big, they manged to make the sound surround you. It felt like you were "in the song" sometimes.
Stereo these days is more tweaked around to create effects instead. Sometimes they get lazy and put a single instrument on one channel, to sound "cool". It feels imbalanced, because in a real performance, while the guitar may be on one side, it still has a sound that echoes through the room. I guess the mastering is key when it comes to the issues of digital these days.
It's like comparing old school movie special effects to computer graphics (cgi). The old school effects sometimes looked almost real, where CGI looks "too real" (I think they could make it better but they try too hard to make it perfect, which reality is not).
Indeed vinyl and tape strips out the higher frequencies, often rolling off around 13kHz. What I've found though is that they capture the interaction of the instrument with the acoustics of the room, as well as the various distortions of the signal along an analog signal path, the parts which create the content within the waveform that the interpolating digital sample points do not capture.
There is a lot more research that needs to be done in this area, but audio researchers have largely moved on from this topic. Besides, if we can even agree that more research needs to be done, that is likely enough (as it is a very mysterious topic where digital audio theorists say one thing, but many many people still inherently say they can feel a difference in analog music, even if they can't prove why). The real intention was to simply use this as a starting point to provide some insight into what the C's may have meant by that point, something which is fascinating to me - and something I have been spending the weeks contemplating.
Analog reflects the real world with all of its imperfections - the signal degradation, the seeming infinite resolution of the real world. Digital seems like it is another world entirely, the seeming perfection of smooth waveforms by simply making the rules about which points a waveform should travel between - and how this provides the gateway to beyond.
There is a particular way of combining the "best" aspects of both analog and digital waveform generation and reproduction in order to affect a kind of bridge between these two worlds. Rather than opposing them against one another "analog is better! no, digital is better!", instead, combine them in a way that takes the best aspects of each.
It is part of a great mystery of solving a long standing question that was envisioned even 100 years ago, but could not have been solved with the technology available at the time. Now we can do it.
While I suppose the transcript thread is not the best place to initiate such a discussion, the topic will be transferred over to its own thread soon when an initial introduction to the topic has been constructed. A little more preparatory thought is needed in the meantime.
It will be a kind of summary of the research I do and how it will make fairly deliberate use of the C's advice!
