Zp 24/96

And that the sample size determines the dynamic range that is captured.

Correct, and the dynamic range is the difference between the peak (or "0 dbFS") and the noise floor.

Note that, regardless of medium, all commercially released material has had it's dynamic range artificially reduced or "compressed" simply because otherwise the lowest-level sounds wouldn't be audible under most listening conditions. This happens even with hires material.

The difference between a well mastered track and a badly mastered one is often down to how much compression is used, and how well it has been applied. Highly compressed tracks contain more energy and, therefore, sound louder but they aren't as nice to listen to in many ways as they don't have much "light and shade" variation. Obviously if you are a thrash metal band, then a "full-on" sound might be what you are after, but it doesn't suit classical or jazz where there are passages which are meant to be significantly quieter.

But dynamic range compression is pretty much always used on every recording, even if it's use is subtle. In practice, this means even the most dynamic recordings have their dynamic range limited to under 70dB, with most actually having a dynamic range of less than 50dB.

The standard resolution formats have an actual dynamic range of 96dB so are more than capable of capturing this. With dithering the effective dynamic range is nearer 120dB.

And, again, this is a slightly counter-intuitive concept. Looking at oscilloscope displays and "jaggies" will mislead you. The dynamic range scale is continuous, without any "gaps".

If you think in terms of "resolution" being "frequency response" and "dynamic range" then you won't go far wrong.

Cheers,

Keith

Unfortunately, due to implementation issues caused by inexperienced analog audio designers taking their first steps in the digital domain or digital engineers taking their first stab at analog design, there were early issues with CD audio. Some of those early CD players were rather nasty sounding. And, one could measure some really ugly things that were never discussed by reviewers, regardless of their audiophile pedigree.

I will add that some of the early problems associated with "digital" were related to the recording studio technicians lack of familiarity and understanding of it as a medium.

There are recording practices that have evolved as "best practice" over the decades of using analogue tape which absolutely should not be applied when using digital recording.

As I said before these "traditions" have been handed down and passed on within the industry and it took quite a few years for it to be widely recognised in professional circles that the old analogue practices didn't work for digital.

But even today I see bad advice, based on old tape recording practices, published in articles and books.

Cheers,

Keith

The audiophiles claimed that these difficulties were caused by "digital". When, in fact, the difficulties were caused by misunderstanding of the math and unfortunate circuit board layout.

Unlike some of the audiophiles, science welcomes a challenge. This is the heart of science. Witness the current discussions about "the big bang".
Understood. It took some time for the implementation engineering to overcome the teething troubles. But my feeling is that these solutions are now widely known and have filtered down to budget digital systems.
As to science, it only progresses by moving from one hypothesis to the next better one, to replace the one proved to be imperfect via experimental observations. Else we would still be with the Greeks of antiquity. Even non engineers understand this!
it doesn't suit classical or jazz where there are passages which are meant to be significantly quieter.
If you think in terms of "resolution" being "frequency response" and "dynamic range" then you won't go far wrong.

I remember reading is that good music is heard in the silences between the notes...
Understood about the resolution concept.

There are recording practices that have evolved as "best practice" over the decades of using analogue tape which absolutely should not be applied when using digital recording.

What this means is that we are still at the mercy of the mastering guys while the other end of the digital audio chain is now a solved problem.

What this means is that we are still at the mercy of the mastering guys while the other end of the digital audio chain is now a solved problem.

For professional studio recordings, I would say that is the case.

Cheers,

Keith

There are recording practices that have evolved as "best practice" over the decades of using analogue tape which absolutely should not be applied when using digital recording.


Yes, since there is some high frequency roll off in the analog tape and disk cutting and bass difficulty inherent in the record cutting process, the master tapes passed on to the pressing plants were overtly equalized with a "box" or clever choice of microphone or microphone placement during the recording session. This was all considered "best practice" at the time. Early transfers to CD were over bright because pressing plants were being "purest" or were bound by contracts into transferring their master tape directly to the CD master. The CD pressings did not have the high frequency losses. Some thoughtful, gentle equalization would have helped considerably. Many early CD pressers also refused to use any dithering or pre-emphasis.

Sometimes a more appropriate mix from the original multi-track sesson tape can be helpful. But, the best recordings are planned from the beginning, with every aspect being carefully handled along the way.

In the days of HDCD many of these releases sounded better than the same release using classic methods -- even when played on a non HDCD player. This was because of the more careful processing by the studio's A-Team.

Even more basic than that, the old analogue tape practice of recording "slighty hot" with the VU meters peaking into overload in order to maximise the available dynamic range of the media. Analogue tape has a natural compression characteristic which handles this and it can actually sound quite nice.

But if you overload an analogue to digital converter, it is a brick wall. You clip the peaks off your signal which sounds awful. And, in any case, digital media has ample dynamic range capability and no generational loss to worry about, so it's not necessary.

The equivalent practice for digital is to record so that your highest peaks are well down from 0dbFS, with -6dBFS or below being a good maximum to aim for.

However, I still see books and articles aimed at home recording which refer to the old analogue practices when recording on digital systems. This is bad advice!

Cheers,

Keith

Although I am not an engineer, I have a lot of respect for the discipline and its practitioners. This learning has raised that respect by another notch.
For the moderators here as well.

Even more basic than that, the old analogue tape practice of recording "slighty hot" with the VU meters peaking into overload in order to maximise the available dynamic range of the media. Analogue tape has a natural compression characteristic which handles this and it can actually sound quite nice.


I always hated that. I was notorious for not running "hot". My tapes were a little noisy as a result, but they were remarkably free from distortion and high frequency compression. I always had to check out the deck's setup before I made a recording because each manufacturer used a slightly different strategy for its meter calibration. And I had to setup the deck for the tape that I was using.

A question:
If one was to use a tuning fork vibrating under the influence of a steady impulse, with a frequency of 1 unit and amplitude of 1 unit, that is all one needs to know to have the fork reproduce an identical vibration/sound from a digital recording of that impulse using Nyquist.
Representing this as a sound wave on paper, where both axes have the same scale for each unit, one just has to plot the data points as dots, and then connect the dots via straight lines. No other information is needed to do this, there is only one way to join two dots using straight lines.
Why then are curved lines used? These mislead people into thinking that more information is needed to plot the curves, and the more the information, the closer one gets to the actual curve.

Hi res audio reminds me of Supertweeters that were in the market about ten years ago. They were as expensive as most speakers they were supposed to be added to, by placing them on top of any full range speaker and appropriately wiring them in.
When it was pointed out that the 30khz they supposedly reproduced had very little energy in most music, and was inaudible even if it did, the marketing spiel went as follows:
By taking away the load of trying to produce higher frequencies than the main speakers are capable of, the main speakers are left free to concentrate their efforts on what they are capable of doing, thereby improving the sound of the main speakers in the audible range, even if there is no audible output from the super tweeter.
Ingenious?!
They died a natural death. I think.