14 ms·

I'm probably the only one with this opinion...but I sure miss the old days of tube amps that weren't able to be highly accurate. They would roll-off the on the

I'm probably the only one with this opinion...but I sure miss the old days of tube amps that weren't able to be highly accurate. They would roll-off the on the high end, distort a bit all over, and gave a very warm and relaxing feel to the albums I played obsessively. Now I've owned high-end tube and solid-state gear, and the music hasn't sounded good for decades. Combine that with the very limited bits provided by CDs, preventing any possibility of good playback, and music has been completely destroyed. Old timers like me are dying off, and most of the people who remember good music will be dead. Kind of makes me sad.

mrob 8y ago
>Combine that with the very limited bits provided by CDs, preventing any possibility of good playback 16 bits gives you 96dB SNR (and subjectively more with dithering), which is plenty at non-deafening listening volumes. It's more than even the highest quality vinyl ever had. High bit depth is mostly useful so you've got some headroom during editing.
- MrTonyD 8y ago
  That is absurd. Anybody who has read about the history of CD bit depth would know just how absurd that is. And I even personally investigated CD accuracy in burning using an electron microscope to understand how the laser burning process worked on the plastic media. It was absurdly inaccurate. All these claims about how great digital is are just crazy - claims made by people who are relying on old data about hearing accuracy and a religious faith in technology. Anybody who has actually designed instruments using the known laws of physics understands the incredible limitations - and those limitations apply to both characterizing hearing as well as reproducing sound digitally.
  - mrob 8y ago
    >I even personally investigated CD accuracy in burning using an electron microscope to understand how the laser burning process worked on the plastic media. It was absurdly inaccurate. I can believe that, but the standard was designed to tolerate high bit error rates. 25% of the bits are redundant, as part of a error correction code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-interleaved_Reed%E2%80%93Solomon_coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-interleaved_Reed%E2%80%9... This scheme works very well, as proved by people consistently ripping bit-for-bit identical copies of CDs pressed or burned with the same audio.
- pps43 8y ago
  16 bits give you 96 dB SNR only if your signal is one-bit. In a quiet room with decent headphones set to comfortable level I can easily hear one-bit flips in otherwise silent WAV file. Not a problem for popular music that's consistently loud, but a real problem for classical music with wide dynamic range.
  - mrob 8y ago
    I tried it and I couldn't hear it. Are you sure you got the endianness right and it was really a least significant bit?
    - pps43 8y ago
      Yes, pretty sure. Had to zoom in a lot in audio editor to even see it. Could hear it nevertheless. It's important for the room to be quiet, as the sound is very faint and easily masked, but it's there. It's possible that Bluetooth headphones could lose it because of compression, or cheap DAC in the sound card simply ignores least-significant bits.
brokenmachine 8y ago
You can get tube preamps that are supposedly good, which might give you the distortion you crave even when paired with a low-distortion Class-D power amplifier. CDs are still 1000x better than records with all their hiss and distortion in my humble opinion. Not saying you're one of these people, but I think lots of old-timers who complain about the quality of CD's or anything digital don't really understand how they work - Even though the bits are "limited", they do not actually output a staircase as shown in the explanations, the signal is interpolated between samples by analog filtering on the output. So it's actually outputting a smooth line that goes through the sample points. Also lots of stuff is available in 96k and above FLAC now if the limited bits are a problem. I get any music I care about in that quality but it's often because the mastering is better on those releases than the actual quality of the reproduction. Sometimes there's a SACD, Bluray or DVDA release if there's no hi-res digital download available. Anecdotally I'm happy if I can get anything at 48k 24bit or more. It's really the loudness war that has ruined music. That's the only thing about records that I consider better than digital - because of the limitations of the medium, they can't brickwall compress everything or the needle will physically jump off the record. Genuine question: what was so good about music before that is missing in your opinion now? Also, do you enjoy digital re-releases of records you previously enjoyed as much as before? Why or why not?
lelandbatey 8y ago
Your statement that CDs have a very limited number of bits is false by every known objective measure (compared to any prior consumer analog medium). CDs afford a bit depth of 16, while tape provides at most 6, and vinyl at most 12. See this great video by signal engineers for more info: https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml I suspect this is a classic case of "you think you want X, but what you actually want is your youth."
- TylerE 8y ago
  Your statements about tape and vinyl are ludicrous and unsourced. What do you think most of your CDs were recorded on in the first place? (Hint: tape)
  - mrob 8y ago
    The 6 bits worth of SNR (36dB) for tape does sound implausibly low, even for consumer grade compact cassettes. And professional 1/2" reel-to-reel could do substantially better, although still worse than CD quality.
  - function_seven 8y ago
    Not defending the bit depths in parent comment, but the tape a professional recording is made on and a cassette tape (which I assume parent meant by "tape") are a lot different, right? In any case, I've heard some great sound from Type II and Type IV cassette tapes in the past. The worst part was that tapes I made myself from CD sounded way better than a store-bought cassette of the same album. That's when I learned they really cheaped out on those cassettes (brown-colored Type I tapes)
    - TylerE 8y ago
      It’s not that different. Usually 1/2” or 1” wide and run at a faster speed but the chemistry is the same.
      - function_seven 8y ago

mrob 8y ago

>Combine that with the very limited bits provided by CDs, preventing any possibility of good playback 16 bits gives you 96dB SNR (and subjectively more with dithering), which is plenty at non-deafening listening volumes. It's more than even the highest quality vinyl ever had. High bit depth is mostly useful so you've got some headroom during editing.

MrTonyD 8y ago
That is absurd. Anybody who has read about the history of CD bit depth would know just how absurd that is. And I even personally investigated CD accuracy in burning using an electron microscope to understand how the laser burning process worked on the plastic media. It was absurdly inaccurate. All these claims about how great digital is are just crazy - claims made by people who are relying on old data about hearing accuracy and a religious faith in technology. Anybody who has actually designed instruments using the known laws of physics understands the incredible limitations - and those limitations apply to both characterizing hearing as well as reproducing sound digitally.
- mrob 8y ago
  >I even personally investigated CD accuracy in burning using an electron microscope to understand how the laser burning process worked on the plastic media. It was absurdly inaccurate. I can believe that, but the standard was designed to tolerate high bit error rates. 25% of the bits are redundant, as part of a error correction code: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-interleaved_Reed%E2%80%93Solomon_coding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-interleaved_Reed%E2%80%9... This scheme works very well, as proved by people consistently ripping bit-for-bit identical copies of CDs pressed or burned with the same audio.
pps43 8y ago
16 bits give you 96 dB SNR only if your signal is one-bit. In a quiet room with decent headphones set to comfortable level I can easily hear one-bit flips in otherwise silent WAV file. Not a problem for popular music that's consistently loud, but a real problem for classical music with wide dynamic range.
- mrob 8y ago
  I tried it and I couldn't hear it. Are you sure you got the endianness right and it was really a least significant bit?
  - pps43 8y ago
    Yes, pretty sure. Had to zoom in a lot in audio editor to even see it. Could hear it nevertheless. It's important for the room to be quiet, as the sound is very faint and easily masked, but it's there. It's possible that Bluetooth headphones could lose it because of compression, or cheap DAC in the sound card simply ignores least-significant bits.

brokenmachine 8y ago

You can get tube preamps that are supposedly good, which might give you the distortion you crave even when paired with a low-distortion Class-D power amplifier. CDs are still 1000x better than records with all their hiss and distortion in my humble opinion. Not saying you're one of these people, but I think lots of old-timers who complain about the quality of CD's or anything digital don't really understand how they work - Even though the bits are "limited", they do not actually output a staircase as shown in the explanations, the signal is interpolated between samples by analog filtering on the output. So it's actually outputting a smooth line that goes through the sample points. Also lots of stuff is available in 96k and above FLAC now if the limited bits are a problem. I get any music I care about in that quality but it's often because the mastering is better on those releases than the actual quality of the reproduction. Sometimes there's a SACD, Bluray or DVDA release if there's no hi-res digital download available. Anecdotally I'm happy if I can get anything at 48k 24bit or more. It's really the loudness war that has ruined music. That's the only thing about records that I consider better than digital - because of the limitations of the medium, they can't brickwall compress everything or the needle will physically jump off the record. Genuine question: what was so good about music before that is missing in your opinion now? Also, do you enjoy digital re-releases of records you previously enjoyed as much as before? Why or why not?

lelandbatey 8y ago

Your statement that CDs have a very limited number of bits is false by every known objective measure (compared to any prior consumer analog medium). CDs afford a bit depth of 16, while tape provides at most 6, and vinyl at most 12. See this great video by signal engineers for more info: https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml I suspect this is a classic case of "you think you want X, but what you actually want is your youth."

TylerE 8y ago
Your statements about tape and vinyl are ludicrous and unsourced. What do you think most of your CDs were recorded on in the first place? (Hint: tape)
- mrob 8y ago
  The 6 bits worth of SNR (36dB) for tape does sound implausibly low, even for consumer grade compact cassettes. And professional 1/2" reel-to-reel could do substantially better, although still worse than CD quality.
- function_seven 8y ago
  Not defending the bit depths in parent comment, but the tape a professional recording is made on and a cassette tape (which I assume parent meant by "tape") are a lot different, right? In any case, I've heard some great sound from Type II and Type IV cassette tapes in the past. The worst part was that tapes I made myself from CD sounded way better than a store-bought cassette of the same album. That's when I learned they really cheaped out on those cassettes (brown-colored Type I tapes)
  - TylerE 8y ago
    It’s not that different. Usually 1/2” or 1” wide and run at a faster speed but the chemistry is the same.
    - function_seven 8y ago