3 ms·

How? Serious question, I'm not challenging! This work reminds me of what 'analogue' means. There is no coding of the sound, each stage in the analogue process

How? Serious question, I'm not challenging! This work reminds me of what 'analogue' means. There is no coding of the sound, each stage in the analogue process represents the varying intensities of the various pitches as some variation in a property of the storage medium. Any form of digital representation (CD, mp3 whatever) requires a convention to interpret the raw stream of numbers. If you don't know the convention then you have a string of numbers.

justincormack 14y ago
There is a character who enjoys his vinyl records by hanging them on the wall. He says they have the same information as playing them.
- boomlinde 14y ago
  I guess this guy isn't a fan of b-sides.
klodolph 14y ago
Analogue signals do have encodings and conventions, and the information is incorrect or possibly mangled unless you decode in the same way. So you're recording on a record. How fast does the record spin? Do you want a constant angular velocity or constant linear velocity? At what angle does the stylus move? Is there equalization that must be removed afterwards? Is there some kind of modulation? The convention for LP is 33⅓ RPM constant angular velocity, with two channels each cut at 45° from vertical, the groove moving from the outside in, and the RIAA equalization curve. If you don't know that the audio modulates the groove position, then you just have an oversized coaster. Digital conventions are just a little more demanding. However, PCM is quite simple and you can dig it out of unknown file formats with relative ease.
- keithpeter 14y ago
  "So you're recording on a record. How fast does the record spin? Do you want a constant angular velocity or constant linear velocity? At what angle does the stylus move? Is there equalization that must be removed afterwards? Is there some kind of modulation?" Fair points. A possible elaboration is that analogue encoding is discoverable from the medium. If we know that a recording is of a voice, then we can recover the amplitude signal and speed up/slow down until it sounds right or until the spectrum matches what we know of the source. Digital encoding is not discoverable from the medium in quite the same way...
  - klodolph 14y ago
    Well, no, it's not that easy. You can't always just speed things up or slow them down. For example, try to extract audio from a CD-4 / Quadradisc record. Two of the channels are modulated with a 30 kHz carrier using something called FM-PM-SSBFM, and they won't be audible unless you demodulate them properly. You won't get anything resembling music unless you know exactly what you're doing. By comparison, I've recovered audio from undocumented proprietary PCM-based formats from video games made in the 90s. It was no problem. So I think the distinction between analogue and digital is not as important as the distinction between simple formats (mono/stereo records, linear PCM) and complex formats (FM-PM-SSBFM, MP3).

justincormack 14y ago

There is a character who enjoys his vinyl records by hanging them on the wall. He says they have the same information as playing them.

boomlinde 14y ago
I guess this guy isn't a fan of b-sides.

klodolph 14y ago

Analogue signals do have encodings and conventions, and the information is incorrect or possibly mangled unless you decode in the same way. So you're recording on a record. How fast does the record spin? Do you want a constant angular velocity or constant linear velocity? At what angle does the stylus move? Is there equalization that must be removed afterwards? Is there some kind of modulation? The convention for LP is 33⅓ RPM constant angular velocity, with two channels each cut at 45° from vertical, the groove moving from the outside in, and the RIAA equalization curve. If you don't know that the audio modulates the groove position, then you just have an oversized coaster. Digital conventions are just a little more demanding. However, PCM is quite simple and you can dig it out of unknown file formats with relative ease.

keithpeter 14y ago
"So you're recording on a record. How fast does the record spin? Do you want a constant angular velocity or constant linear velocity? At what angle does the stylus move? Is there equalization that must be removed afterwards? Is there some kind of modulation?" Fair points. A possible elaboration is that analogue encoding is discoverable from the medium. If we know that a recording is of a voice, then we can recover the amplitude signal and speed up/slow down until it sounds right or until the spectrum matches what we know of the source. Digital encoding is not discoverable from the medium in quite the same way...
- klodolph 14y ago
  Well, no, it's not that easy. You can't always just speed things up or slow them down. For example, try to extract audio from a CD-4 / Quadradisc record. Two of the channels are modulated with a 30 kHz carrier using something called FM-PM-SSBFM, and they won't be audible unless you demodulate them properly. You won't get anything resembling music unless you know exactly what you're doing. By comparison, I've recovered audio from undocumented proprietary PCM-based formats from video games made in the 90s. It was no problem. So I think the distinction between analogue and digital is not as important as the distinction between simple formats (mono/stereo records, linear PCM) and complex formats (FM-PM-SSBFM, MP3).