Lou Ottens, inventor of cassette tape, has died
netherlandsnewslive.com
netherlandsnewslive.com
Although he had indeed humility about his contribution to the cassette tape and the CD, he also was frustrated what Sony did in this department. He wanted the CD to be 11,5 cm instead of 12 cm and was disappointed Sony sold the first CD and invented the concept of a walkman instead of Philips.
His opinion about cassette tapes and vinyl having a revival because of the analog experience?
"I am not a psychologist, but that music experience is of course all nonsense. Nothing can match the sound of the CD. It is absolutely noise and rumble free. That never worked with tape. But who am I to say what's better, I'm over ninety and have old ears. I have made a lot of record players and I know that the distortion with vinyl is much higher. But some people call it "warm audio." I think people mostly hear what they want to hear. But there are always madmen who want to look back to the past. There is always a market for that.”
Source: https://www.classicfm.com/discover-music/why-is-a-cd-74-minu...
"Philips engineer Kees A. Schouhamer Immink writes that Philips were pushing for the CD to be close in size to the cassette tape, whereas Sony were pushing for a slightly larger 12cm disc, partially because they knew that Philips already had a factory capable of producing 11.5cm CDs and if they could decide on 12cm as the industry standard then they would erase Philips' head start in manufacturing."
It definitely annoyed me that media cabinets that held an even number of cassette tape drawers "across" would not fit an integral number of CD drawers.
Is it the way, or merely a way, and only the way so far in our brief history? I hate to see defeatism around gross inefficiencies like these.
He claims Sony's CEO liked one particular recording of Beethoven's 9th so much, he insisted it had to fit on a CD. And this particular recording was 74mins, 33 seconds.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kytmE4mrXWM, Dutch
edit: It was not Timmer, but Kees Immink and Hans Mons @ 8:25
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322951358_Shannon_B...
[1] (pdf, dutch) http://docs.mfbfreaks.com/div/De_Ingenieur_Lou_Ottens.pdf
80’s thrash metal and tapes go together really well. The cutting, trebly sound of tapes really works with the staccato, percussive sounds of bands like Slayer, Megadeth, Metallica, etc.
There’s been a resurgence of bands putting out limited runs on cassette. I think a lot of this is nostalgia (often from people too young for much exposure to tape). Cassette sound quality is definitely inferior, but that can be adopted as part of the overall sound.
I think it makes a kind of sense, in the same way white noise can be soothing
Anyway, taste aside I can appreciate this particular artist and their work, it's a lot of midrange noise but the musical elements (mostly percussion tbh) emerge from the swamp with a good listen.
60s-era blues is another good example. The recording equipment at the time certainly wasn't bad, but it was not yet perfected. It added a certain sound to recordings from the time that I kind of miss in later recordings.
I pointed out that sound to someone who thought it was part of the song and forever cursed them with also hearing them everywhere. It's like learning about kerning ...
You may enjoy these pieces a local ceramic artist made for me:
I watched it three times on a blue-ray I bought a year later, and I loved everything about it, every time.
The problem is, you don't have access to the master - if you try to apply this filter on top of a final mix destined for CD/digital, it won't sound the same as tape, and will deteriorate the signal even more. That's why some bands still release on cassete, you actually need to mix w/ tape in mind.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZS34GN4UHpQ&ab_channel=MrAud...
This is one of the more popular tools for that job: https://www.xlnaudio.com/products/addictive_fx/effect/rc-20_...
Higher-end ones probably have some buffering.
(I have a hard time imagining that it's worse than the electric motors used to drive vinyls or cassette tapes, but if it's there it's there I suppose)
I know my old CDs very much had a weird sorta cold, almost distant sound and I felt that later CDs did not.
CDs didn't have that great dynamic range or noise floor anyway (they were copied from -usually- 2inch master tapes, so tapes were still involved, and thus noise). 24bit/48 or 96Hz, on the other hand, now we're talking (but still most people wouldn't hear much of a difference in most mixed music, and in the majority of cheap headphones/speakers).
A revolution in music portability, distribution (both licensed and DIY), home recording, you name it. All kicked off by "little boys who had fun playing".
Tape trading is still big in certain circles, especially within the punk and black metal milieus. Some albums, EPs and demos get their only physical releases ever on limited edition cassette tapes, both because it is inexpensive, easy to DIY and fits the lo-fi aesthetics.
Where vinyl has a strong presence among audiophiles (for various mostly imagined reasons) and was always a format for those with money to spend, the humble cassette tape was the format of choice for the youth, the working class and people on the go, and it still carries that down-to-earth appeal today.
I know at least for me growing up in the 80s and 90s in a family with just enough money to get by, hand-me-down cassette tapes were how I experienced music, not to mention how we experimented with recording our voices and playing them back at different speeds, and learned what happened when you play the same bit of tape over and over again because it had a really funny bit on it. Getting my first CD and CD player was exotic and felt like science fiction in comparison to the trusty old cassette tape.
I keep a drawer of a few old and obsolete physical formats that meant something special to me. My cassette tapes of Deep Purple In Rock, Machine Head, Sgt. Pepper's, and The Triumph of Death are there, next to the 3.5" floppy disks and Minidiscs.
Putting a laser into almost anything makes it feel like it's from the future.
I grew up in the era of cassettes. I’d tape songs of the radio as a kid. In high school and college I would tape my records and the new “cds” so my music would be portable (Walkman and parents car).
My brothers and I bought a really good Yamaha three head cassette player. We did some a/b testing with cds and with Dolby c it was really hard to tell the difference.
Though with Walkman you’d have to clean the rubber rollers when they got a little gummed up and there was always the danger of the tape failing and getting pulled out.
Oh Frances, how beautiful you were,
Mixed Dinosaur Jr tape I did share,
You returned another, so eclectic,
My crush on you fades electric.
I fondly remember the mix tape. Exchanging mix tapes was a huge part of both my friendships and romantic interests. Spent many hours creating them as well as my own jacket art (while the tapes were recording).
I think the big distinction, is that music collections were more personal back then too. Now if you have Spotify, you can hear any song you want. But then you only had the tapes that you had, or if you're willing to deal with lesser quality the ones that you recorded off the radio.
I don't have quite the same memories from my later days of MP3s and ripping / burning CDs.
edit: I've noticed hexagonal pencils seem to be less common than circular ones now, and I can't help but feel it's because they just aren't as useful anymore.
AMULETS is a good example of a musician making songs like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVon_9VmMEc
The r/tapeloops subreddit is a nice little community for it.
https://www.bbc.com/historyofthebbc/100-voices/pioneering-wo...
Love the cassette though. Still use it to apply warmth to audio to mix back in with my digital productions.
In the end, the final nail in the coffin of more mechanical storage of audio was rights protection and management, which is what killed R-DAT.
NetMD solved this, allowing for digital copying and titling via USB, but it came along so late (2001) as to make no meaningful difference - especially in the face of the iPod, which had its advent in the same year.
I had a few tapes, often re-recording over them with whatever CD my brother bought (he paid money for them, the fool!). Later on I had a stack of burned CDs that I accumulated over the years, once again mostly copied from my brother; during my paper rounds I would flip between the handful of CD's I had.
Then I got an iPod Mini and permanent internet, and my daily listening habits broadened a bit.
And I listen to the most and broadest range of music ever thanks to Spotify. Mind you, its algorithms do tend to steer me to the same things regularly. At least when I had all of my music in itunes I would know what I had and liked better.
I still sometimes feel like this when programming. What a great job this is..
In a Dutch eulogy I read yesterday it has the anecdote of him showing a wooden block that would fit in the inside pocket of his jacket and decided for the team: this is how small the music cassette should be. He also quickly negotiated with Sony when they started to copy the design to make Philips' design the universal standard.
Edit: Found this quote in Cassette: A Documentary Mixtape (2016): "You can credit me with a few ideas. But the designers developed the device. I haven't done anything special. "
When the team demonstrated the first CD they drilled some holes in them, and showed: "Look how robust, they even work when they are this damaged" (paraphrased).
In reality the locations of these holes were chosen very precisely. Not sure if this is true, but this is a story that my colleagues told me in the 90's...
Rest In Peace Lou Ottens.
The rule of thumb is that error correction can compensate for gaps of up to 2.4mm. So if a hole is smaller a CD should be able to cope.
This was before we had internet (it came 1991) and our local radio stations back then never played funk or R&B music so one night I listened on AM to an overseas station and heard this awesome song and I taped it and listened to it over and over despite the bad AM quality.
Later I found it was "When Doves Cry" by Prince and I became a lifelong fan.
https://nypost.com/2021/03/10/cassette-tape-and-cd-inventor-...
ps: I don't know how much an urban legend it is, but jdilla (famous in the hiphop beatmaker circles) is said to have learned his very very skanky sense of rhythm through a bare tape recorder that he used to overlay various samples by rewinding it with a pencil.
I'm really glad he managed to see 90.
If you'd asked me before this article appeared who Lou Ottens was then I'd have replied 'I'm not sure but it rings a bell'. As an audiophile, I recall reading many articles about Philips and Sony and the politics of cassette tape technology after it appeared on the market. At the time Hi-Fi and electronics magazines were full of articles about cassettes so my sense of déjà vu upon hearing his name likely came from that immersion.
The audio cassette played a very significant—even special—role in 20th Century audio recording technology and with his passing we've lost a direct link to not only cassette technology but also its history.
In those days, one of the major thrusts of Hi-Fi was to improve the signal-to-noise ratio, which, by today's standards, was pretty marginal, so like many audiophiles of the day I initially derided its introduction and considered it a scientific step backward thinking its only practical use would be for Dictaphones and other low fidelity uses. When the cassette first appeared its performance was in fact only suitable for low fidelity voice, thus reinforcing our perceptions. Music sounded terrible and its wow and flutter (W&F) specifications were woeful, so too were its noise figures, frequency response not to mention its high distortion.
That perception soon changed because the audio cassette was immensely practical compared to what was already in use—that, of course, was the reel-to-reel tape recorder. And reel-to-reels were very expensive for the home user to buy, especially so if he/she wanted a good one that could complete with the best fidelity had to offer, which for the public, was LP records. Recorders such as the Tandberg models 64 and 74 met the quality criteria but they were hellishly expensive (I could never afford to buy a new one and it was only some years after the Model 74 was released that I managed to buy one second-hand).
(As I mentioned, back then achieving a good balance between the best signal-to-noise ratio and minimum distortion in the analogue domain was a never-ending battle and about the best one could achieve was ≈60 dB at 2 to 3% THD (Total Harmonic Distortion)—even for professional tape equipment such as Ampex studio reel-to-reels this was a bit of a struggle and they required continual tweaking (head alignment, bias level adjustments, etc.) to keep them within these specs.)
Nevertheless, a sort of miracle happened; as cassettes were introduced in appliances such as car radios their quality improved dramatically even to the extent that some people started to use them to supplement their home Hi-Fi systems.
Eventually, at the pinnacle of its evolution, ca 1982—some 19 years after its introduction—the audio cassette had become a very capable recording medium to the extent that its audio fidelity had almost rivalled professional reel-to-reel recorders. This was achieved with an optimal combination of low-noise, high dynamic range [metal and similar high coercively] tapes together with very well designed cassette recorders such as the Nakamichi Dragon and Nakamichi 680. These used Dolby and other noise reduction techniques, however they never made it to true professional quality but it was a damn good effort just the same. By the mid 1970s many a home listener was very satisfied and content with fidelity available from the humble cassette.
Even I succumbed. In the mid 1970s I tried to get a Nakamichi 700 duty free when my father was visiting Asia but that failed through poor logistics. Then around 1980-81 I attended a trade demo arranged by the local Nakamichi agent and the draw card was Mr Nakamichi himself demonstrating his company's then latest product, the Nakamichi 680. Several years after that I managed to buy a little-used 680 for an excellent price. The 680's fame revolved around the fact that in addition to normal speed recording of 1 7/8"/sec it also had a half-speed mode of 15/16"/sec. At that speed and using the right high quality tape, it could achieve a very respectable bandwidth of 15kHz at ≤2% THD with a ≈60dB S/N whilst also holding a W&F of ≈0.1-0.2%. (Of course, the 680's performance at 1 7/8"/sec was considerably better; its frequency response at this speed was in excess of 20 kHz).
The fact that the humble cassette had progressed this far technically in only about 17 years was a remarkable achievement to say the least. It reached its pinnacle several years later with the Nakamichi Dragon, which has always been regarded as the best cassette tape recorder ever made. Mind you, these remarkably excellent audio specifications were only ever achieved on machines of this caliber, most others that were considered in the Hi-Fi class performed very well but never to heights of the best Nakamichi machines.
However, keeping the Nakamichi 680 in top shape and in full spec wasn't always straightforward. I broke the head azimuth alignment knob and I returned it to the local agent for repair only to receive it back in worse condition than I sent it. After whingeing loudly that the service was substandard for a machine of Nakamichi's class, the agent returned it to Japan for repair. When I received it back several months later it was still not performing up to standard (like most organizations, service usually comes a poor second to getting product out the factory door). The solution was to repair it myself which I did. Fortunately—unlike these days where service manual is an unknown term—I had the excellent Nakamichi 680 service manual to go by, so servicing it was dead easy.
I still have my Nakamichi 680 some 37 years later and it still performs to specifications.
I reckon that when Lou Ottens had gotten to see cassette machines of the 680 and Dragon class he must have been pretty pleased with what he and his team had achieved at Philips in the early 1960s.
Before cassettes were used for music in the US they and their tape recorders were a rare import, just a slick portable tape recorder like the portable battery-powered mini-reel-to-reels which were just using small reels of full-size 0.25 inch tape (you still had to thread them yourself).
But too expensive for casual or student use, these were the newest exotic office machine for dictation, monophonic only of course like the little reel-to-reels.
For music in the car the 8-track tape cartridge was well established and growing wildly, with its single endless reel of the regular 0.25 inch tape inside, but having multiple _tracks_ so you could get stereo and more music on less tape.
I was so fortunate my father got the first portable Sony cassette recorder for his business, there was only one specialty store that had unique imports like that.
He eventually let me bring it to school instead of my little reel unit one day, this was about a year before any pre-recorded music tapes were available.
I was recording off the radio, AM of course since pop music had not yet made it to FM and the FM sets and broadcasting stations, though not many were very powerful or stereo yet, basically had an insignificant fraction of listenership compared to AM.
Remember Woodstock came out on stereo LP's, 8-tracks and cassettes, but on the radio (which is about the only way stuff got popular) almost everyone was listening to things in monophonic for years to come. This was before FM stereo pop stations began to prevail, followed by home consoles and AM/FM car stereos.
Only 5 years before Woodstock, most people were still buying mono vinyl since stereo cost extra and few had stereo players. By 1969 mono vinyl was not for any major releases.
Even after FM stereo took over at home, most second-hand cars only had mono AM radios left over from just a few years earlier, but did slowly get replaced by newer vehicles. But FM still cost extra for years to come so plenty of cars were still shipped with the tradtitonal stock AM radio only.
Music lovers who wanted no commercials all had 8-tracks already. Nothing in-dash was found, still under-dash like a CB radio.
Anyway, at school it was still the point where no other businessmen, teachers, or students had seen anything like a cassette, so it was a curiosity but not completely unexpected due to such great familiarity with other dictating machines and 8-tracks too.
People thought the tape was cool since it was smaller, easy to use, and worked like a tiny reel-to-reel, plus we naturally had a lot of fun recording with the microphone. 8-tracks didn't record for years to come.
By the end of the day when one of the umpteenth students to be amazed at my little recorder saw it I just naturally blurted out, "It's going to replace the 8-track".
Of course everyone laughed since there were no music tapes from record companies and no stereo.
But you could record your own, and the rest is history.
Eventually one day my father got me a Beatle tape from Capitol records, Sergeant Pepper was the only one made at the time.
Inside the little fold-out tape liner they had the entire catalog of Capitol cassettes listed, these were stereo but played perfectly on our mono player too.
All 6 titles, one Beatles, one classical, one Sinatra, one jazz, and a couple soft pop. Capitol was just testing the waters.
Eventually got one of the earliest Ampex home cassette decks, naturally with sliders to mix stereo mics together with stereo line inputs.
Then Ampex got kicked out of the consumer market on a technicality where they had supplied a non-updated schematic with a product after a single component had been changed.
By 1973, Sony had just come out with their first stereo portable cassette recorder, same size as my early mono unit but with an additional matching auxillary speaker. Also their first single hand-held stereo directional microphone, which my buddy's father had gotten for him these years later. They were expensive. And they had just invented Memorex tape, before that you could not record a live rock concert very well.
We had always tried to keep up with an interesting group of English artists who had been coming to town for 5 years beforehand, they were too different to be on the radio yet, but since the first time I saw them people had been telling me I was crazy when they heard it. "Nobody's ever going to listen to that, these guys are never going to be on the radio."
Anyway, when Pink Floyd came to town this time they had just released a little record called The Dark Side of the Moon, which was Quadrophonic in concert and also available quad on vinyl. Each year they always played a set of the earlier material, then took a long break and came back to play their new stuff, usually no opening acts. It was crowded for the first time, mainly with new fans who were very anxious for what they had heard on the radio, but there was none of that and then the band took a long break as usual.
It was almost like a riot but once they got back on stage and played the whole Dark Side everyone loved it and they've been on the radio ever since.
Got it all on tape. In stereo. Quad didn't really catch on.
On the way back from the concert we listened to it on my Sears car cassette recorder (with mic unplugged!), underdash of course, the first one they had in the catalog.
Yeah, I know it was deliberate on two counts. First, my post was pretty long and second, the topic was about Lou Ottens of Philips, 8-track was RCA and others. Besides, 8-track never achieved the large following that the cassette did. Where I saw it being used most (and that was its professional variant) was in radio and TV stations for audio inserts, etc. The number of times I saw it used in say a car was trivial when compared with cassettes. That said, the quality was much better but ultimately it was doomed because it was too big and other commercial considerations.
"<…>small reels of full-size 0.25 inch tape (you still had to thread them yourself).<…>"
I remember those, the quality was pretty terrible and most of them didn't even have electronic [RF-driven] erase head, instead they used a permanent magnet erase head for the purpose. I think everyone was pleased to see the end of them.
"Remember Woodstock came out on stereo LP's, 8-tracks and cassettes,<…>"
Didn't know that but I'm hardly knowledgeable about 8-track releases. I saw the Woodstock movie sometime in 1970 and about four or five times since. I've been meaning to get a copy but not managed to do so yet. It really is a must-own movie given that incredible performance by Hendrix.
"<…>By 1969 mono vinyl was not for any major releases.<…>"
That's my recollection too.
"<…>But FM still cost extra for years to come so plenty of cars were still shipped with the tradtitonal stock AM radio only.<…>"
I'm very familiar with that situation, in the early 1970s I had a lot to do with the transmitting side of FM broadcasting.
"<…>Capitol records, Sergeant Pepper was the only one made at the time.<…>"
There were very few pre-recorded ones around where I was at the time, they were more popular in some areas of the world than others.
"<…>Then Ampex got kicked out of the consumer market<…>"
OK, I can't recall that incident at all. All I know is that the market narrowed for 8-track pretty quickly then essentially it all but disappeared (I never owned a player so I suppose my interest wasn't there to note). Anyway, Ampex wasn’t in the domestic recorder business much after the early 1960s, essentially it had become a pro-recorder only company. My first experience of Apex was with its VR-1000A and VR2000 2" quadruplex machines and the multi-track audio recorders.
"<…>And they had just invented Memorex tape, before that you could not record a live rock concert very well.<…>"
Well, Memorex tape was better than Ampex 406/407 and especially the rotten 'melting' Ampex 456 which shedded the coating in a sticky gooey mess. It was a disaster.
"<…>The Dark Side of the Moon, which was Quadrophonic in concert and also available quad on vinyl.<…>"
Wasn’t aware of quad on vinyl on that recording. About two years ago, I went to a friend's place who has an excellent hi-fi setup, he owned the vinyl recording of The Dark Side of the Moon and I the CD one. We did a critical listening test between the two recordings (I'm not going to enter the debate about which recording sounds best).
Quad was just too much mucking about to take off.
This just reminded me of that comic strip with the hipster collecting vinyl, being asked why.
It was the high price + the inconvenience that attracted me
I love music so pay a lot of attention to stuff like speakers. One thing I notice is that when people get into vinyl, they get into the overall experience of listening to music. They spend a little more on speakers, align them with music in mind and start sitting down and listening to music. Digital is so easy that it’s background noise when we’re driving, working and living. Vinyl takes more work and in my experience, that work leads to an enhanced experience. It’s not surprising people call it ‘warm’.
After switching my entire collection over to CD, one of the bands I later got into, only as a "CD band" were The Muffs (R.I.P., Kim).
Years later, seeing their albums that I loved so much released on vinyl, I thought, why not? The instant I put the needle down I knew there was magic in vinyl that I had traded for convenience years ago. It sounded that much better.
The significance for me was that this was a band I knew digitally before I ever heard analog. Somehow, going that direction, and enjoying the vinyl better convinced me there was something there.
Explain away. I am happy when I put on my records.
Of course, it's entirely possible to master like that on CD, MP3, etc but nobody does it.
So perhaps the LP you prefer was just remastered competently.
I belong to the vinyl cult too. Pre-Dirty Sonic Youth, pre-Warner REM and first English pressings of Factory Records music make me happy too.
I don’t think there’s anything to explain. Music is a beautiful ritual. Some of us participate in the ritual and others like background noise.
The problem is that a lot of music that was originally recorded on vinyl was either never remastered for modern audio equipment, or else has been remastered in a way that makes it even worse than the original version. E.g. a lot of the early Beatles stuff is pretty painful to listen to using even just basic earbuds, and I can only imagine that it would be even worse using good headphones.
And I say this as someone who isn't an audiophile, owns no vinyl, and isn't even especially into music.
What people get wrapped up in cognitive dissonance is that they equate “pleasing” with hi fidelity... but anything likeable about vinyl is because it is low fidelity — but if you tell certain people this they take it as a pretty personal attack. Anyway, a decent digital signal chain should reproduce this low fidelity pretty well including high bitrate SBC.
(Sub is solid state - oof.)
The obvious answer for this is to release a different mastering in a digital format, but that's not cool and hipstery enough so instead vinyl made a comeback.
Do you have a source for the claim that CDs are mixed with audibility in cars as a priority? Because, to be honest, it sounds like bullshit, but I'd like to be proven wrong.
Also relevant is Lars Ulrich's famous quote defending the disastrous state of Death Magnetic, exposed in part because of how much better the tracks sounded in their Guitar Hero versions:
"Listen, there’s nothing up with the audio quality. It’s 2008, and that’s how we make records. [Producer] Rick Rubin’s whole thing is to try and get it to sound lively, to get it to sound loud, to get it to sound exciting, to get it to jump out of the speakers. Of course, I’ve heard that there are a few people complaining. But I’ve been listening to it the last couple of days in my car, and it sounds fuckin’ smokin’."
> So the recording and mastering engineers began to produce recordings with limited dynamic range that would sound "better" on iPods and car stereos that are used in areas with more ambient noise than a quiet listening room. [1]
> Today, many people listen to music primarily in the car or other noisy places, where louder music cuts through against the background noise. Record companies, especially today, tend to cater to this market of casual, “on-the-go” listeners and make heavy use of compression and limiting in order to make their album louder. [2]
[1] https://sites.google.com/site/dbremaster/home/-loudness-war-...
Vinyl releases have a different target market and are mastered with more fidelity in mind, while CD releases are mainstream, and have been mastered with small dynamic range for decades because of the loudness war.
I'm surprised I had to spell this out explicitly.
https://www.yoursoundmatters.com/vinyl-vs-cd-in-the-loudness...
Vinyl represents the analog that CDs replaced... it represents a tactical, physical romantic "thing" that has since been superseded.
Players were first made for the home, and while the first CD player for automobiles was introduced in 1984, it was not until mid to late 90s that they became mainstream.
That can be a problem sometimes :-)
Edit: fix auto-incorrected xiph.org domain
(I belong to the vinyl cult too and badly want to believe what you’re saying.)
I never said that vinyl is only analog or that that is the reason for the difference in sound between vinyl and other formats, because it’s not.
The “warmth” is cassettes and more so with better balance in vinyl is known. Digital didn’t kill music quality; it did affect waveforms, but that’s not the reason for vinyl sounding better to most.
Of course, there are many more reasons that music sounds better or worse.
One downside of the proliferation of turntables is that most don’t work with shit. It’s been happening since everyone was a DJ and is still happening now!!! :)
And no, for millionth time. Per the Nyquist theorem, the waveform being generated is identical -- the same, without any difference whatsoever -- when the sample rate is twice the frequency being reproduced. Which it is, because the sample rate of a CD is more than twice the theoretical upper range of human hearing.
You can talk about aliasing if you like. I see some people in the thread with super-human hearing can detect the buzz of CD drive motors. But this "digital is not as good because it's discrete and audio is continuous" is complete nonsense.
If you are thinking that the "digital waveforms" (?) coming out of your speakers don't sound as good because they're not continuous, or "choppy," or missing information . . . you're really not making any sense at all.
It's basically the same as iphone owners claiming their cameras are better because they get such nice crisp colorful photos. Which depends on roughly the same kind of lossy algorithms that electronics manufacturers use to make cheap hardware sound awesome. Compress, filter, boost, etc. It's a lossy process. It's intentionally losing recorded detail for the effect. The audio equivalent would be the wall of sound type sound associated with 1980s pop music. Sounds great on a cheap brand walkman ripoff (went through several in the 80s).
CD recordings have historically been optimized for cheap equipment and FM radio. The storage medium is not the problem: the sound is intentionally compromised when the master is created already. That's why remastered recordings are a big deal these days and also why a lot of LPs sound better (different master, generally better equipment used for playback). Same recording, but a better masters optimized for different purposes. One sounds better than the other but people get confused about why that is.
"Wall of Sound" recordings are primarily from the 1960s. "Pet Sounds" by The Beach Boys is the quintessential recording in the style.
I said there were differences. A lot of people putting words into my mouth.
I was actually alive and aware listening to pre-1980s vinyls, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, etc. unlike some of you. CDs added additional frequencies into the high range, which people thought sounded crisp and new, but it never had the warmth of cassettes and vinyl.
The waveform thing is true but I never said that it was the reason for the difference in warmth.
I think the thing that trips people up is that they think that a digital process can somehow fail to make something happen to an analogue speaker cone that an analog process can do effortlessly because of the nature of the process (or the medium). It's not true.
Do you like vinyl better? Or CDs better? Or reel-to-reel tape? You'll get no argument from me, because "better" is a pretty subjective thing. But the following propositions are absurd:
1. Vinyl has "higher fidelity" than CDs. 2. CDs "add treble" to recordings. 3. Digital processes can never accurately reproduce analog phenomena. 4. Analog "warmth" is only achievable with analog equipment. 5. No one ever over-compressed their tracks until CDs (or Pro Tools, or DAT tapes, or whatever) came along, and so these things are to blame.
I could go on.
I'm not accusing you of having said all of these things; they're just examples of things are absolutely not true, but which get said all the time, and which start to seem like truth because everyone is nodding.
The lies about lies are lies.
Some people can’t hear it. I can. I can hear a TV when it’s on, and I can hear harmonics of Wifi, so when I say I know it’s true- I know it’s true.
I like both digital and analog.
But there's always some analog distortion in your recording and playback process.
It's worth looking at the ocilloscope to compare the type of distortion that square waves give which does not appear from sine waves having the same amplitude.
The ideal thing about digital is the recording can be very accurately reproduced, vastly more so than analog media, and can be duplicated without degradation.
While being recorded with significant analog distortion (like intentional fuzz guitar or the occasional unintentional mic overload) or not, the signal is digitized as good as the ADC can accomplish.
But when you've got a bit of analog square wave coming in to the ADC to begin with, the overshoots are too narrow to be accurately captured by mere 44.1Khz sampling.
People who can tell the difference between different playback DAC's can also figure they could probably tell the difference between different recording ADC's if they were involved with the recording process.
While all of these digital electronics of course meets or exceeds Nyquist margins and Shannon's minimums.
But some people hear the difference between them anyway. Isn't that supposed to be theoretically impossible?
Some really clean, high-fidelity, wide-dynamic-range digital recordings (ideally material that is espcially _easy_ to record) can be good reference tracks for comparing systems.
So beautiful.
Then take not-so-clean but excellent sounding reference material having the same functional amplitude going into a particular DAC.
Sounds a bit worse as expected but in different ways than the pure analog _analog_ of this type listening test.
Because analog components like transistors are not perfect, but that's what ADC's & DAC's consist of anyway. Lots & lots more transistors in the signal path compared to simple pure analog gear.
It has always helped to carefully select vacuum tubes and audio transistors too when they came along.
Looks like the tradititon continues with different audiophiles preferring to carefullly scrutinize the DAC chips they have today.
Also, anybody else ever see audible subharmonics on the scope resulting from the beat notes generated by two different frequencies above the range of human hearing? One of the frequencies which is sometimes 44.1Khz.
Sure, there is an audible difference between digital audio and vintage analog equipment — but it has nothing to do with quality problems in digital audio. In fact, it’s exactly the opposite: vinyl and cassettes deliver low-quality, heavily distorted audio (with a dynamic range equivalent to that of 5 or 6 bit digital audio). This does create a distinctive “warm” tone, and a lot of people really like the sound (or the nostalgia) created by this distortion.
The article you linked does not demonstrate quality problems with digital audio; it is a bunch of nonsense intended to sell a product.
First of all, it compares a “digital square wave” with an “analog sine wave”, and remarks that “the digital signal does not follow the smooth flow of its analog compliment.” Of course they look different, they’re not the same wave! A square wave is “supposed” to look blocky, it’s not a digital vs. analog thing.
At least it mentions the Shannon-Nyquist theorem and gets one thing right: “there is no difference whatsoever between an analog sine wave and a digital one”
But then it totally blows it again with its comparison of a “digital” square wave to a “natural” one, observing that the “natural” square wave is more curved.
Again, this is nonsense because you’re not comparing the same wave! The “digital” image is of an ideal, mathematically pure square wave, whereas the “natural” image is bandlimited. The first mathematically pure wave cannot exist in the real world, because it would require infinite bandwidth — the voltage would have to change instantly.
In fact, a digital signal is bandlimited; it’s just a bad illustration. The digital square wave, when converted to analog, will not include any frequencies above half the sampling rate, making it match whatever our bandlimited analog signal is supposed to look like.
Then the article goes into full-on snake oil mode, trying to convince you that “technology that resolves that problem, by creating infinite phase, is currently available” if only you buy their “Sensorium™ LSV III Function Generators and Altitudinal Oscillators [that] utilize a polynomial transition region algorithm”. This is very much nonsense; by the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem, you can reproduce a bandlimited waveform exactly from a sampled signal, no matter how “complex” your waveform is.
For a more detailed overview about how and why digital audio works, I recommend this video: https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml
Definitely my favorite part. It's complete gibberish, but because it uses audio nerd words (phase, oscillator, function generator) it sounds like it might not be.
CDs didn't add anything. The treble was always there, or was added in mixing/mastering for creative reasons. Vinyl and Cassete simply didn't or couldn't reproduce those frequencies.
You could, of course, remove the frequencies on CD to match Vinyl or Cassette, but they were kept (or even added) in CD for artistic reasons.