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Audio Files - best quality
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<blockquote data-quote="John Roberts" data-source="post: 92319" data-attributes="member: 126"><p>Re: Audio Files - best quality</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>This is all about trading off different sonic compromises. </p><p></p><p>The vinyl mastering system had physical constraints based on the mass of the cutting head, so slowing down a master tape and cutting lathe to half speed, effectively doubled the frequency response of the cutter (20kHz original sound information gets printed at a lethargic 10kHz). Of course you were still limited to the quality of the master tape... around the same time another audiophile theme was recording direct to disc at full speed but without the intermediate tracking and mix-down tape generations. There were fans of both approaches that addressed two very different performance constraints (in other words "better" is subjective). </p><p></p><p>This is all academic at this point with digital media that "can" be arbitrarily accurate (ignoring GIGO). Consumers have long been satisfied with lower fidelity than is possible. That is the nature of free markets, where consumers spend their own money. The lowly cassette persisted long past it's time because consumers liked it. </p><p></p><p>JR</p><p></p><p>PS: Not to get all audiophile on you, but at best recordings are an illusion. Sometimes a studio creation of a performance that never existed as an actual acoustic event. Even simple stereo is trickery to provide the illusion of spatial information from the two fixed sound sources. You can go crazy trying to pursue realism, in a system based on illusion. Relax and just enjoy the songs (magic is more fun if you don't know how the tricks work). I sometimes find myself listening to old juke box hits on satellite and the sound quality of some recordings is abysmal, but the songs still sound good.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="John Roberts, post: 92319, member: 126"] Re: Audio Files - best quality This is all about trading off different sonic compromises. The vinyl mastering system had physical constraints based on the mass of the cutting head, so slowing down a master tape and cutting lathe to half speed, effectively doubled the frequency response of the cutter (20kHz original sound information gets printed at a lethargic 10kHz). Of course you were still limited to the quality of the master tape... around the same time another audiophile theme was recording direct to disc at full speed but without the intermediate tracking and mix-down tape generations. There were fans of both approaches that addressed two very different performance constraints (in other words "better" is subjective). This is all academic at this point with digital media that "can" be arbitrarily accurate (ignoring GIGO). Consumers have long been satisfied with lower fidelity than is possible. That is the nature of free markets, where consumers spend their own money. The lowly cassette persisted long past it's time because consumers liked it. JR PS: Not to get all audiophile on you, but at best recordings are an illusion. Sometimes a studio creation of a performance that never existed as an actual acoustic event. Even simple stereo is trickery to provide the illusion of spatial information from the two fixed sound sources. You can go crazy trying to pursue realism, in a system based on illusion. Relax and just enjoy the songs (magic is more fun if you don't know how the tricks work). I sometimes find myself listening to old juke box hits on satellite and the sound quality of some recordings is abysmal, but the songs still sound good. [/QUOTE]
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