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Nyquist Theorem - learn it, love it, live it. I'm a musician and my mates and I have been going round and round on this issue for years. They swear analog is "w
by taylodl 4y ago
Nyquist Theorem - learn it, love it, live it. I'm a musician and my mates and I have been going round and round on this issue for years. They swear analog is "warm" and "captures the whole wave." It's all BS. It's always been BS.
What the vinyl lovers never stop to realize is the audio signal has to be modified to record on vinyl - you're not listening to the music as recorded on the master tape, you're listening to an altered copy of it. Why is that? Because of limitations of the playback mechanism - you can't impart too much kinetic energy into the needle. So, the bass gets rolled off, pop filters and transient filters are employed, and high hats get dialed back. All to keep that stupid needle in its groove. Bottom line - the music is altered, the dynamics have been diminished, and it all sounds muddier, i.e. "warm", as a result.
The problem is a couple of generations grew up listening to this and thinking it was what music sounded like. The musicians making the music always complained that it never sounded right, but had to accept the limitations of the playback medium. I grew up in a musical family. All my friends played music. We always knew, and thought everybody else knew, that the music on records didn't sound right, it sounded muddy and compressed.
Then CD Audio came out in the 80's and what a difference! The bass was punchy instead of muddy, the high-hats and riding cymbals rang, the dynamic range was breathtaking and the stereo separation was unreal! I was elated the first time I heard an audio CD.
Then the critics came. It sounds "harsh" or "cold", it lost that "warmth", computers can't capture the actual analog waveform. That's when I began to realize that these audiophiles and critics didn't know what they were talking about. They obviously weren't musicians.
Fast forward 30 years and the only people still debating this topic are the rock & metal guys. The Jazz and Classical musicians quickly recognized the superiority of digital audio. But the masses don't listen to Jazz and Classical music, they listen to rock and metal (and pop - but the pop world doesn't seem to care one way or the other). I don't even know what to say to the rock and metal guys anymore (full disclosure - I'm a guitarist primarily playing rock, metal, prog and folk - they're pretty much all in the same camp on this issue). Rare is the guitarist that isn't using a pedal board. Extremely rare is the guitarist using an all-analog pedal board. Many guitarists are using SS (solid-state) amps now. They're recording into a DAW (digital audio workstation). Then they claim that somehow distributing the end result of vinyl is somehow pure? It's nuts, it's simply nuts. Add to that almost none of us are playing our amps clean and pristine, so what - you think it matters how accurately you capture our harmonic distortion?
Yet I see people lining up paying $40-$50 to get these albums thinking they're getting something different. Which I guess they are, they're getting an altered recording. This only reinforces what I've been saying for decades - vinyl is a scam and these people are laughing all the way to the bank.
I'm hoping now we can finally put this issue to rest and get everyone on board with digital audio. Now if we can talk to the recording engineers about these stupid "loudness wars"...
- GuB-42 4y ago> Fast forward 30 years and the only people still debating this topic are the rock & metal guys. An it makes sense. Rock and metal are played with electric guitars, and electric guitars are not much unless they are plugged into an amplifier. What it means is that the amp is not just part of sound reproduction, it is actually part of the instrument. It is especially true in metal, where amps are frequently overdriven for that characteristic sound, here the idea of sound reproduction completely goes out of the window, the sound characteristics come as much from the amp as they come from the guitar itself, if not more. And if you look closely during rock/metal concerts, guitars are almost never plugged directly into the PA system, the band come with their own amps and if necessary, the sound is picked up using microphones and then sent to the PA system. So it make as much sense for guitarists to want a specific kind of tube amp as it is for a violinist to care about the wood their instrument is made of.
- netr0ute 4y agoThat all goes out the window if you use a DSP effects box, where you can "have your cake and eat it too" by having pedals (regular and expression types), amps, cabinets, and a mic for that cabinet all in one package. I use one because it's a lot cheaper than getting the individual parts and it fits in the palm of my hand!
- conqueso 4y agoI get your frustration at the popular misconceptions around sound quality, but see no need to evangelize this issue. If people enjoy spending money on records, good for them, and good for the industry.