What makes analog so analog?

[McLilith]

The Ensoinq ESQ1 - it came out in about 1986, it was 8 part polyphonic/multitimbral, it had an 8 track sequencer, it had a choice of many digital waves plus an analogue filter chip for each voice, plus a really good modulation matrix. It sounded great, but unfortunately mine has died because the patch memory battery ran out...

Technically, even the lowly Ensoniq Mirage is an anlog/digital hybrid.

As for your ESQ1 problem, wouldn't that be a fairly easy problem to fix? Did the battery also leak corrosive gunk onto the circuitry?


take care,
McLilith

[McLilith]

My understanding is that this is more to do with the requirement for a lowpass filter to be placed at the cutoff frequency inside the CD Player than the theoretic nature of 44.1k sound.

Hmmm... What I'm hearing is grittiness, which is the presence of higer frequency inharmonic overtones (distortion). A steep low-pass filter should just make things sound a bit muted, shouldn't it?


take care,
McLilith

[no_signal]

Once I posted a long post about this a few mounths ago, but I'm bored to post every 2'nd week about the same thing...
Search the forum.

[valley]

My understanding is that this is more to do with the requirement for a lowpass filter to be placed at the cutoff frequency inside the CD Player than the theoretic nature of 44.1k sound.

Hmmm... What I'm hearing is grittiness, which is the presence of higer frequency inharmonic overtones (distortion). A steep low-pass filter should just make things sound a bit muted, shouldn't it?

Steep filters tend to bring with them peaks at the cutoff. Could you not be hearing a resonant peak at around 22k?

Inharmonic overtones should not be present in professionally recorded CDs as at all stages of the digital mastering process, care should have been taken to filter before sampling.

I wish my ears were up to the job of hearing for myself though.

[Lunch Money]

Of course, I don't know what "creamier" means where it comes to sound, either.

As near as I can tell, it has to do with the attenuation of frequencies. This is also referred to sometimes as "warmth". Replicating sound in its entirety including crystalline high frequencies is seen as 'clinical' and a god-awful artifact of digital processing.

The secret to analog... attenuate your high frequencies. That muffled sound you get? That's analog.



(I'm just taking the piss... but there ARE some people out there who associate lack of sparkly highs with 'warmth')

Greg

[McLilith]

Once I posted a long post about this a few mounths ago, but I'm bored to post every 2'nd week about the same thing...
Search the forum.

I searched the forum, but I couldn't find the post you refer to. I did however find this message of yours:

"I use 44.1/16 but if it comes to mixdown using VSTi's i switch to 96KHz, 32 bit. Don't forget that a bigger bandwitch has less harmonic distortion."

It would seem that in practice you actually do agree with me that there is audible distortion in the 44.1 kHz, 16-bit format.


later,
McLilith

[Z3R0T0N1N]

Okay, I guess it was stupid of me to think that I could start a thread that mentions both analog and digital in the same sentence.

You didn't.
Gol said you did, but that (strangely enough) doesn't make it so.

Your thread said why does analogue sound so analogue? or somehting like that. He just misquoted you in order to shift the blame away from himself. I am shocked.

[Robert Randolph]

Hrm...

[valley]

Okay, I guess it was stupid of me to think that I could start a thread that mentions both analog and digital in the same sentence.

You didn't.
Gol said you did, but that (strangely enough) doesn't make it so.

Your thread said why does analogue sound so analogue? or somehting like that. He just misquoted you in order to shift the blame away from himself. I am shocked.

Doesn't the question pretty much necessitate the comparison with digital? It doesn't make a shit lot of sense otherwise does it? "why does analogue sound so analogue?" Analogue in comparison to what?

[Rabid]

To continue the game of picking peoples statements apart. …

Rabid
The Moire effect is relevant when you consider that digital music is forced into a two dimensional grid with resolution of bit rate and bit size.

Firstly, and with no intention to piss you off, surely its not actually 'bit size' but 'bit depth'.
Secondly, it is not really 'forced into' a grid with certain resolutions. It is composed of discrete numeric values, a certain number per timeframe, with limits on the accuracy of transition between one amplitude value and the next possible amplitude value. But those numeric values have to be converted into an analogue signal to be observed as audio.

It is not really “composed” but actually “computed” at specific points in time, the frequency of those points being the rate, and to a degree of accuracy determined by bit size, or depth as you prefer. How ever you choose to say it, it still is not a smooth transition, but plotted points.

Morie effect can be demonstrated by overlaying two screens (each a two dimensional grid) and moving one of those screens around.

It can be demonstrated that way, yes. However it is not an effect that occurs solely with grids, but in any repeating patterns.

I did not say “only”, I was giving an example. Thus the statement “can be demonstrated by”.

The same works with pictures made up of pixels.

Not just with pixels...

Again, this was an example.

We have all seen what happens to someone on TV when they wear a pin strip suit. You might consider this an illusion, but when that picture is captured then the pin stripe suit is no longer a picture of a pin stripe suit.

Firstly, TV is (still mostly) not a digital system, so you've just proven that the Moire effect is not an artefact of 'grids' but becomes visible in analogue systems as well. In which case, it isnt really an explanation of 'what can happen to digital music'. Its an explanation of what can happen to any physical phenomena with repeating patterns.

Have you ever stuck your nose to a TV screen? Try it. You can see the pixels and scan lines. While the scanner may be analog, the screen is made up of tiny dots that are excited and glow. So when the pattern of the suit overlays with the grid of the television screen you do get a Moire effect.

The same thing happens to digital music, to some extent.

And any electronic system, and therefore analogue music, to some extent.

But of course, an electric system has a much, much higher rate and depth than popular digital music. Digital music is more tied to processor speed than electro mechanics.

I presume you mean spreadsheets, not spreedsheets.

No, I meant spreedsheets, honest.

The company I work for has a 20 million dollar annual budget, has 200 cost centers, serves 14,000 clients and performs 350,000 services each year. Inject service codes, program codes, locations, guarantors, cost, reimbursement rates, etc… You have quite a lot going on inside Excel. We have one auditor that insists the spreadsheets be printed in dollar and cents format, and then he cannot understand why pennies are off.

I really think your company should invest in software designed to handle currency properly.

Although if I were auditing a 20-million dollar company which used Excel for its financial operations, I'd be bloody surprised if there were only a few pennies off.

Of course, if you were auditing companies you would know that financial programs like Great Plains and reporting programs like Crystal easily export to Microsoft Excel format, and that Excel usage is standard when doing things like merging financial and service data from separate systems.

Some people may not think it amounts to much, but one sly programmer managed to skim millions from a large banking system by diverting those fractions of cents into a bank account before he was caught.

I've heard that story so often that it either occurs regularly or is purely apocryphal. Richard Prior's character did the same thing in Superman III, I believe.

So if you hear it once, it is true, but if you hear it twice it is false? You may hear it frequently because that case is discussed both in computer ethics and in law school. As far as I know, it only happened once in the US, but it is discussed often in school. Maybe one of the writers for Superman III watched the news when Dan Rather told the world.

I guess audio is not different. Some people cannot hear digital artifacts and so to them, it does not exist. Some people can hear it, and it does exist.

I'll stick with that blind test idea in the meantme, though.

That also works well. And again, some can hear the difference and some cannot.

The two people can either argue about whether or not the artifacts exist, or they can listen to the music.

Very true.

[Robert Randolph]

Rabid, Im sure someone else will elaborate... but your understanding of digital audio is very incomplete...

just thought I'd mention it before the wolves come out to prey...

[Rabid]

... (sorry for this OT post, but as a scientist I just had to reply to this)

You do realize that scientists once argued that the world was flat, man would never fly, etc…

I’m not saying this to pick at you, but also myself. I have a Batchelor of Science degree, also known as a BS degree.

Robert

[Robert Randolph]

I have a Batchelor of Science degree,

Obviously not an english degree

[McLilith]

Rabid, Im sure someone else will elaborate... but your understanding of digital audio is very incomplete...

I tend to think of it as a creative dramatization of the truth.

He's actually closer to reality than some people are giving him credit for. He's looking at things from a different perspective and using a different vocabulary to describe what he sees.


take care,
McLilith

[Rabid]

... He's actually closer to reality than some people are giving him credit for. He's looking at things from a different perspective and using a different vocabulary to describe what he sees.


take care,
McLilith

heh heh. I used to drive my physics and computer language professors crazy in college, but they gave me A's and made me captain of the programming team.

And no, my degree is not in English. While math and science comes natural, and even creative writing was fun and easy, spelling and grammar were quite frustrating. I did just enough to get by in those classes, and hated every minute. There is no logic or creativity to English syntax. Maybe that is why I fell in love with computer programming. A science that allows creativity. No wonder so many musicians are computer programmers.

Robert