Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater SaCds!! I will never buy another regular cd again…

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I just don't buy that analog naturally has higher resolution, or that that higher resolution would result in audible change.

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There is really no "resolution" as such to analog audio. It's like the difference between a painting and a scan of the painting. No matter how high a resolution you scan the original at, it could still be a closer representation at a higher resolution. But the longer you wait, the more the analog source deteriorates (paint goes back to the earth, analog tape does too) so there's a tradeoff there as well.

Bren R.

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I just don't buy that analog naturally has higher resolution, or that that higher resolution would result in audible change.

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Neither do I...especially when you know how the album and needle work together.

Point, point... I just thing there's a bit of diminishing returns happening here.

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Point, point... I just thing there's a bit of diminishing returns happening here.

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Of course... I just like pointing out how far CD audio and especially DVD video have missed the mark by. People treat this stuff like it's gold, and that you need the newest best and brightest to get the most of out it.

Bren R.

The painting analogy is perfect, the higher the resolution of the scanner, the more accurate the digital image will be to the analog original.

Music works the same way, the less the compression, the more accurate to the original recording the digital product is likely to be.

And at some point, you just can't tell the difference. I contend that that point comes at the CD level, but I admit I have no hard data to back that up at the moment.

Ken, you may have already read this, since I've cited it a couple of times before, but my reply in this thread links to an explanation by "soundhound"(now uses "Hal 9000")who's highly qualified to dispel some of the hogwash floating around about "higher resolution".

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Music works the same way, the less the compression, the more accurate to the original recording the digital product is likely to be.

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Well, not even the compression - to take the analogy further, the compression (MP3, etc) is like having a JPG of Starry Night.

Sample rate and number of levels (bits) are more the issue here... the Nyquist limit says effective high frequency is half sample rate... 44100 samples per sec for CDs - nominally 22.05KHz, but that's really a bit misleading. A 22KHz sample will not be lost and will not "beat" or "flutter" if at least two samples are taken each spike, but it hardly approximates the waveform.

Take the samples below:

^12000 Hz sine wave sampled at 16 bit, 44.1 kilosamples per sec ^


^12000 Hz sine wave sampled at 16 bit, 132.3 kilosamples (3x CD) per sec ^

Which more closely approximates the original sine wave?

Bren R.

Hmmm... Given the choice between the first graph or the second graph... Uhhhh, the box! I'll take the box!

Let's see whats IN the box!

Nothing! Absolutely nothing!

Stupid! You're so stupid!