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True. And it certainly doesn't explain "better" or "worse". But it explains why music recorded on tape sounds different from music recorded digitally. And it pu
by beat 9y ago
True. And it certainly doesn't explain "better" or "worse". But it explains why music recorded on tape sounds different from music recorded digitally. And it puts a torch to the claims that digital is somehow "accurate", and all we like about analog is just evil bad naughty distortion.
- astrange 9y agoSquare waves are impossible to reproduce because they have infinite numbers of frequencies, but you don't listen to square waves. You listen to music with all its content below 20KHz and anything above that doesn't matter. The only non-ideal thing about music is that it's not band-limited because time matters - that's why compressing music with a lot of cymbals etc smears it across time.
- jjgreen 9y agoMore simply, square waves are impossible to reproduce since they would require infinite velocities
- evilDagmar 9y agoWhat, you don't like it when your speakers cones blow a hole through the wall and possibly the neighbor's roof on their way to Saturn?
- aidenn0 9y agoThis is why you low-pass audio before quantizing. If you put the square-wave through a low-pass filter before recording it digital and on high-quality tape, the digital recording will be more accurate than the tape.
- beat 9y agoThis was a digital recording onto a professional digital system. It was put through a Nyquist filter. Then again, is "accurate" in some mathematical sense the right term? Which one sounds more like music? Among audio professionals, there's a broad consensus that tape sounds better - enough so that there is a strong market for digital plug-ins that emulate the (mis)behavior of tape.
- aidenn0 9y agoIf a pure-digital master can emulate tape, then isn't it superior to tape? (I know that many analog systems have soft-rolloff allowing you more leeway in setting your headroom, but modern ADCs have so much dynamic range that it's a poor operator who doesn't allocate themselves sufficient headroom).