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[OM] RE: [OT] Sticking with Film and Vinyl (was "OM to Digital")

Subject: [OM] RE: [OT] Sticking with Film and Vinyl (was "OM to Digital")
From: "Windrim, Brian" <brian@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2000 14:30:10 -0000
Cc: "'pfranklin@xxxxxxxx'" <pfranklin@xxxxxxxx>
Hi Phillip (and All),

you wrote:

>> Today I was in an audio studio installing some software (for imaging and
video) and got into
>> a conversation with an expert audio engineer.  He stated that the 24 bit,
96k sampling rate
>> will actually go beyond analog in producing sound.  So in essense DVD
audio at 24 bit will
>> be the best quality that audio has ever been recorded and played back.
Of course speakers,
>> room accoustics will play an important part in the audio experience.  But
96k audio will be
>> beyond any recording that we've ever heard.


Just to play Devil's Advocate for a moment, if you substitute 16 for 24,
44.1 for 96 and
CD for DVD, you could have been having this conversation back in 1984 :-)

That said, 24/96 is the best consumer digital audio format we can hope for,
because
it's equal to to better than what most recordings are being made at.
Unfortunately,
the prevaling forces in the industry, e.g.

- DVD audio format wars (DAD vs. DVD vs. SACD)
- Lossy compression (MP3, AC3)
- Massive investment in, and public acceptance of, Compact Disc
- A shrinking market for high-quality music

mean that anything "better than CD" (an oxymoron in the minds of 990f the
population)
is unlikely to gain more than a toehold in the mass-market.

It's also worth noting that Sony's new SACD format is bitstream based, as
opposed
to PCM, and so need to be converted from/to linear PCM for recording and
playback
in many cases. How this is supposed to be better than just copying the 24/96
PCM
datastream from the sound engineer's desk is unclear.

Sorry to go off-topic, I'll try to make this my last posting on the subject.

-Brian

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