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Howdy! Hope everybody is doing well!
Here is some info I came across that Jmur is likely to find interesting as well as any other audio enthusiasts ... at least I know I did.
After audio CD's came out in the early 80's, I was immediately impressed by the technology and equally disappointed in its audio quality. The disappointment was in their cold, harsh sound they have. Vinyl records were much warmer and the sound much smoother. Today, they have increased the bitrate that they use with digital audio and are now better than they once were, but they still don't match what you hear with a vinyl record.
If you are wondering why... here is a graphic of a sine wave that should help explain it. Please note, that this exaggerates the "pixelization" of the audio so you can "see" it...
Because of this, record players have become popular again, at least in the more enthusiast and audiophile communities. Which bring me to the interesting part of the post.
While watching an interview with a tone arm engineer about record players and where they are going today. He mentioned that much of today's audio is now recorded digitally. This seems to lead to the conclusion, that the days of warm smooth audio may be past us. Perhaps this is true to some extent, but what he mentioned next sort of blew me away for a moment. He mentioned that when they remaster the audio to create and master a vinyl record from these digital recordings and then play them back... they are once again warm and smooth sounding. At that point in the interview, they again, changed subjects, leaving me wanting more info.
As I sat there thinking about it a bit... it sort of just came to me and seemed pretty obvious what was likely happening, at least this is my interpretation. When they are "cutting" the new master... the needle they use is an analog device. It doesn't move digitally, it moves in straight lines and curves. The digital signal may stair step but the needle can't move that way... it will move in a smooth line from one signal to the next. No doubt some of the nuance will have been lost during the digitizing and then return to analog, but analog recording and playback always had losses before also so I suspect the differences are minimal. At least we are able to get back some of the warmth and smooth sound.
After audio CD's came out in the early 80's, I was immediately impressed by the technology and equally disappointed in its audio quality. The disappointment was in their cold, harsh sound they have. Vinyl records were much warmer and the sound much smoother. Today, they have increased the bitrate that they use with digital audio and are now better than they once were, but they still don't match what you hear with a vinyl record.
If you are wondering why... here is a graphic of a sine wave that should help explain it. Please note, that this exaggerates the "pixelization" of the audio so you can "see" it...
Because of this, record players have become popular again, at least in the more enthusiast and audiophile communities. Which bring me to the interesting part of the post.
While watching an interview with a tone arm engineer about record players and where they are going today. He mentioned that much of today's audio is now recorded digitally. This seems to lead to the conclusion, that the days of warm smooth audio may be past us. Perhaps this is true to some extent, but what he mentioned next sort of blew me away for a moment. He mentioned that when they remaster the audio to create and master a vinyl record from these digital recordings and then play them back... they are once again warm and smooth sounding. At that point in the interview, they again, changed subjects, leaving me wanting more info.
As I sat there thinking about it a bit... it sort of just came to me and seemed pretty obvious what was likely happening, at least this is my interpretation. When they are "cutting" the new master... the needle they use is an analog device. It doesn't move digitally, it moves in straight lines and curves. The digital signal may stair step but the needle can't move that way... it will move in a smooth line from one signal to the next. No doubt some of the nuance will have been lost during the digitizing and then return to analog, but analog recording and playback always had losses before also so I suspect the differences are minimal. At least we are able to get back some of the warmth and smooth sound.
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