Digital Downloads or The CD

[brent]

This is where music needs to go:

https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file ... 2527486345

[bakersfieldpethead]

I wish DVD audio could really take off as big as CDs have. Of course not every album can be remixed into Surround sound because of Tape Master issues over the years; not every album's multi-track masters has been converted to a digital format.

[ErioL]

This is where music needs to go:

https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file ... 2527486345

Cost doesn't justify the reward to me. 96/24bit audio is nice, but the difference is slim. According to the Nyquist principle 96 khz can represent frequencies up to 48k...unless elephants become the principle listeners, this isn't really necessary. Plus file sizes are much larger at that high resolution.

[imc]

According to the Nyquist principle 96 khz can represent frequencies up to 48k...unless elephants become the principle listeners, this isn't really necessary. Plus file sizes are much larger at that high resolution.

Only a triangle wave can be accurately represented at the nyquist frequency. So 44.1KHz can reproduce the full frequency spectrum of the human ear, but not accurately - the closer you get to the Nyquist frequency, the less accurate the reproduction. That's the point of recording at 96/192 KHz, it means that sounds covering the full range of the human ear are accurately reproduced. Plus 24 bit gives the potential for greater dynamic range, if the mastering engineer gives affords you that luxury!

I agree though that in most cases this kind of recording format is a bit pointless, especially when I hear teenagers playing playing their music through a mobile phone speaker!

[ErioL]

According to the Nyquist principle 96 khz can represent frequencies up to 48k...unless elephants become the principle listeners, this isn't really necessary. Plus file sizes are much larger at that high resolution.

Only a triangle wave can be accurately represented at the nyquist frequency. So 44.1KHz can reproduce the full frequency spectrum of the human ear, but not accurately - the closer you get to the Nyquist frequency, the less accurate the reproduction. That's the point of recording at 96/192 KHz, it means that sounds covering the full range of the human ear are accurately reproduced. Plus 24 bit gives the potential for greater dynamic range, if the mastering engineer gives affords you that luxury!

I agree though that in most cases this kind of recording format is a bit pointless, especially when I hear teenagers playing playing their music through a mobile phone speaker!

You can also track at 24 and just dither to 16 during the bounce. I feel that the loudness, brickwall limiting is more damaging than some of the debates regarding sample and bit rate. Its like polishing a turd. If the original source is a squished turd, all you can end up with is a nice sounding squished turd...which is a bit oxymoronical to me.

[bakersfieldpethead]

I agree, in some cases Technology has taken us all the way back to the old AM Radio and 2" Car Speaker.

[Timbo]

Why would I just flat out make a copy of a cd? What if I want to have different songs from different cd's one disc? Also If I don't like the quality of some songs, like most of Farewell, why would I just make a copy. I ran almost every song from farewell thru audacity and ramped up the gain so Bob's guitar is really crunchy and not muffled. Also I took "think twice" out of the rock medley because I hate that song. I also don't like the vertical expressions version of Judas kiss, so I took the Norway farewell mp3 and did some big time editing in audacity, cutting out John's vocal dificulties in parts and pasting in good vocals from other places in the song. It took a lot of hours but I like the guitar solo in that version way better so it was worth it. Also on my "greatest hits" cd that I made, I increased the tempo on the original 1982 Judas Kiss to match the speed of the farewell version. I did not increase the speed, but the tempo so Greg does not sound like a chipmunk. I took the backmasking off the front too. It sounds good. I increased the tempo of No Doubt a tad too.
So before you all call me an idiot for not just copying a cd, just ask why I would make an audio cd from mp3's.

[Boray]

Why would I just flat out make a copy of a cd?

Exactly! In your previous post, its sounded like you just made mp3s and then back to audio CD of the same songs. But, that really doesn't matter; it would be better for you to never go to mp3 if you want to make an audio CD, and especially if you do things like trying to remaster Farewell (which I actually think is a good idea).

[bakersfieldpethead]

wanting to make you own CD mix is one thing, trying to re-master an album or edit the track list. Better to rip the tracks as wav files and do your editing as a wav file and burn it from wav to CD.

[Preacherman777]

I ran almost every song from farewell thru audacity and ramped up the gain so Bob's guitar is really crunchy and not muffled.

Ok, I had no idea you could do that with Audacity. Would love to hear the This Means War album tweeked like that to bring the guitar work up front.

[Boray]

I would recommend Reaper for things like that:
http://www.reaper.fm/

It isn't free, but the demo version has no limitations. The built in plugin "ReaXComp" is a nice multiband compressor.

[brent]

This is where music needs to go:

https://www.hdtracks.com/index.php?file ... 2527486345

Cost doesn't justify the reward to me. 96/24bit audio is nice, but the difference is slim. According to the Nyquist principle 96 khz can represent frequencies up to 48k...unless elephants become the principle listeners, this isn't really necessary. Plus file sizes are much larger at that high resolution.

Nyquist's "theory" is not believed by all. Aside from that, the benefits of sampling at 96k or 192k or higher are not to hear more top end information. The reason is to push the filters away from the audio and it's harmonics. Most mics and front end electronics are capped at 25kHz to block RF. Yes, consoles and components will have resolution up to 200kHz, which DOES have an audible effect. The reason we upsample CDs is not to get something that is not and hear it. We upsample to remove the filters, which does make a difference. In some cases it is a huge difference.

The higher bit depth makes sense, because we get more dynamic range with 24 bit. It's more than we will ever need. 16-bit is not really 16-bit. The last two bits are eaten up with noise. So 24 gets us over 16-bit, gives moves the noise required to make digitsal work further downward, and hopefully encourages mixers and mastering engineers to use the dynamic range that they could not have before.

[rexreed]

I was talking to a guy at a Stryper show who said he could take his old cassettes and remaster them in his pc and they would sound better than a cd. Didn't sound likely.

[bakersfieldpethead]

From time to time, I do take some cassettes and do some digital restore on them. But it's important to take it for what it is. Cassettes are 1/8" tape and is a copy of a copy of the master and each copy is just a generation of the original.

So it is not a good source to do remasters from a duplicated cassette and in no way can it ever be as good or better than a CD.

[brent]

I was talking to a guy at a Stryper show who said he could take his old cassettes and remaster them in his pc and they would sound better than a cd. Didn't sound likely.

That guy may be smoking some really good crack. Impossible.

Cassettes have wow and flutter to deal with, high distortion, hiss, limited frequency response (on mass produced tapes), cassette shell noise, etc.

Recording onto cassette can sound good. Heck, the head gap is about the same as the track head gap on a 2" multi-track recorder. There were about four really good machines that did well. One of them was by Nakamichi, one by Sony, Tandberg and I forget the other. What made these great were the transports they shared, the ability to adjust the azimuth, and calibrate bias circuits. They were as pro and you could buy in home audio.

Mass produced tapes never had full bandwidth, 20Hz to 20kHz because they were not recorded. How does that work? Well, the tape duplicators actually had a copy of a copy of a production master that basically smashed against the tape you listened to. There weren't record heads hitting the tape. You will notice that if you leave your tapes rewound, that you will hear a faint copy of your music playing before it actually plays at full volume. This is called the "pint through effect". It is the same principle. It is for this reason that you should never rewind your tapes and you should never wind them tightly. You may remember the better decks would slow down when FF or RW tape. This is why.