R/E/P Community

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  

Pages: 1 ... 18 19 [20] 21 22 23   Go Down

Author Topic: George....what's the resolution of analog?  (Read 131329 times)

Sjoko

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 26
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #285 on: September 09, 2005, 08:29:15 PM »

Ronny wrote on Mon, 05 September 2005 19:21

Sjoko wrote on Mon, 05 September 2005 11:22

Yup Ronny, you're right, but it ain't no recording gear, just something lacking a decent clock Smile





It's mainly an FOH board, but many, many live recordings have been made off of them. The tower can run 8 MY8-AT's which gives 64 channels of ADAT. Clock is excellent.


Not arguing with you - but, just for fun, homor me, do what I did, and clock it with a good external clock. I think you would be in severe shock about the difference....
Logged
Sjoerd (Sjoko) Koppert
http://www.tantrumrecords.org

Ronny

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2739
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #286 on: September 09, 2005, 09:52:45 PM »



Infinity.
Logged
------Ronny Morris - Digitak Mastering------
---------http://digitakmastering.com---------
----------Powered By Experience-------------
-------------Driven To Perfection---------------

dongle

  • Full Member
  • ***
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 119
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #287 on: September 10, 2005, 01:12:45 AM »

Nika Aldrich wrote on Thu, 24 June 2004 16:40

lucey wrote on Thu, 24 June 2004 16:31

It's as basic as asking yourself this ... if you were a kid which waterslide would you rather ride?

a) the smoothe and wet one with some friction and a few slight turns, or

b) the one with tiny stair steps and perfectly even friction, straight down?



Scientific minds are of great help to many aspects of music, but the scientific ear does not hear the subtleties of the stair steps as the catastophic loss of integrity that musicians hear.


Why are you ignoring the role of the reconstruction filter at the end of the D/A converter?

Digital does NOT have all of the stair-steps that you describe.  Digital is only a representation of the waveform - NOT the waveform itself.  The original waveform still has to be reconstructed from the sample points.  Simply doing a "dot to dot" or sample-hold reconstruction is clearly inadequate, as neither of those re-create the original waveform.  When proper reconstruction filtering is done there is no  "stair-stepping," and continuing to refer to such obfuscates the way in which digital actually works and confuses the questions.

Nika.



I love this man, and his comments, its hard to argue with him, because he speak only of facts.
Logged

dcollins

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2815
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #288 on: September 10, 2005, 03:30:38 PM »

Ronny wrote on Fri, 09 September 2005 18:52



Infinity.


Bzzzzzt!

DC

jfrigo

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1029
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #289 on: September 10, 2005, 11:13:15 PM »

dcollins wrote on Sat, 10 September 2005 12:30

Ronny wrote on Fri, 09 September 2005 18:52



Infinity.


Bzzzzzt!

DC


C'mon Dave... don't let reality get in the way. Talk of stairsteps and infinite resolution is way too much fun to let the facts stop you. Now where did I put my $400 wooden volume knob?
Logged

skygod

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 35
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #290 on: January 04, 2009, 06:58:15 PM »

Reality? Nineteen pages later to determine the resolution of analog lol. Hmmmm ... are we rapidly approaching a society of having our analog ears replaced by pcm 16->24 bit digital listening receptors instead? Imagine that will you, and all this time I thought the resolution of analog was the tomcat boinging the in-heat shreiking female cat back behind the building in the alley somewhere waking up the dead.  Maybe I need to get out there with a 1-bit recorder and capture that? Who knows ... maybe that'll lend some light on the true nature of analog resolution or will there be a problem differntiating between 1-bit recording made on the Korg MR-2000 or should I just stick to current PCM audio format @ 24/96 my sweet musical zone? Decisions decisions decisions ... Yup, yessiree Happy New Year everybody. I want you to be the first to send Happy New Year greetings... and as I reflect on 2008, I can say we had a great year:

Blacks are happy; Obama was elected.
Whites are happy, OJ is in jail.
Democrats are happy; George Bush is leaving office.
Republicans are happy: Democrats will finally quit saying George Bush stole the election.
And all of us are happy; The election is finally over!

2009 should be even better: Immediately after his inauguration, Obama will balance the budget, revive the economy, solve the real estate problem, solve the auto industry problem, solve our gas/alternative energy problem, stop the fires and mudslides in California, ban hurricanes and tornadoes, stop identity theft, reverse global warming, find Osama, solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, get rid of corruption in government and achieve world peace. Then on the 7th day, He will rest. Amen!

2009 has the making to become a glorious year. Best wishes for an all analog 2009!

~skygod~
Logged
"The secret of the Universe is to be able to see things in different light ..." (John Stuart Mill)

Rantings of a blithering idiot ...
Hey I resent that remark ... I am NOT a Blitherer!

 

Nick Sevilla

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 853
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #291 on: January 09, 2009, 07:23:03 PM »

jazzius wrote on Fri, 14 May 2004 09:56

George, we hear about the resolution of digital all the time.....24 bits, 44.1, 192.....2.8 million whatevers....

...do you know if anyone has ever worked out the resolution of analog?.....how many bits would it be equivelent to?.....i know this is bit of a strange question, but i'd love to be able to give my customers a smart-arse answer for why analog sounds better then digital...

...cheers.....Darius


I can give you a resolution for a 1974 8048 Neve desk I helped restore :

10 to 100,000 cycles from the line / mic inputs through to the mix buss. That's 10 Hz to 100KHz. this is better than all semi-pro and even some pro desks out there. The EQ modules in the desk specd' out to :

1066 EQ modules - 10Hz to 97500Hz (average from 18 modules). Older modules, and well within spec.

1081 EQ modules - 10Hz to 100,000 Hz (average for 36 modules).

Noise floor of -97 dB. A little better than CD quality, but not much.

THD of 0.5% using 1kHz tone at +23 dB, a little less than the original spec, but still usable headroom.

We only had a sine generator that went from 10Hz to 100,000Hz, so it could go higher and lower, but we kept referring to the original spec, and matched it.

Cheers,

Nick
Logged
-------------------------------------------------
It is quite possible, captain, that they find us grotesque and ugly and many people fear beings different from themselves.

www.nicksevilla.com

Andy Peters

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1124
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #292 on: January 11, 2009, 01:26:22 AM »

Nick Sevilla wrote on Fri, 09 January 2009 17:23

jazzius wrote on Fri, 14 May 2004 09:56

George, we hear about the resolution of digital all the time.....24 bits, 44.1, 192.....2.8 million whatevers....

...do you know if anyone has ever worked out the resolution of analog?.....how many bits would it be equivelent to?.....i know this is bit of a strange question, but i'd love to be able to give my customers a smart-arse answer for why analog sounds better then digital...

...cheers.....Darius


I can give you a resolution for a 1974 8048 Neve desk I helped restore :

10 to 100,000 cycles from the line / mic inputs through to the mix buss. That's 10 Hz to 100KHz. this is better than all semi-pro and even some pro desks out there. The EQ modules in the desk specd' out to :

1066 EQ modules - 10Hz to 97500Hz (average from 18 modules). Older modules, and well within spec.

1081 EQ modules - 10Hz to 100,000 Hz (average for 36 modules).

Noise floor of -97 dB. A little better than CD quality, but not much.

THD of 0.5% using 1kHz tone at +23 dB, a little less than the original spec, but still usable headroom.

We only had a sine generator that went from 10Hz to 100,000Hz, so it could go higher and lower, but we kept referring to the original spec, and matched it.

Cheers,

Nick


At the risk of lengthening a thread that was dormant for four years:

Frequency response is NOT resolution.

-a
Logged
"On the Internet, nobody can hear you mix a band."

compasspnt

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 16266
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #293 on: January 11, 2009, 10:13:02 AM »

Lengthen the thread.

Information needs to be further disseminated.
Logged

Fig

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1186
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #294 on: February 06, 2009, 12:51:46 PM »

Andy Peters wrote on Sun, 11 January 2009 00:26



Frequency response is NOT resolution.

-a


Hi Andy,

To be honest, I have been thinking about this topic since it was posted.  I have searched and searched for a definition of "resolution" as it pertains to audio - there is tons of BS regarding video, printers, faxes, photos, etc.

While I agree that the freq response only tells us part of the story - how WOULD someone go about determining the other aspects and coming up with an "answer" for "resolution"?

I'm picturing some kind of equation utilizing cycles-per-second (Hz) and inches per second (IPS) where maybe the "time" cancels out and perhaps cycles per inch somehow connected to the flux level, dynamic range, track width, blah-blah.

With your experience and knowledge, Andy, how would you go about generating such a spec?

Fig
Logged
The easiest thing to do is the thing most easily forgotten.

Tomas Danko

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 4733
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #295 on: February 06, 2009, 01:09:47 PM »

Fig wrote on Fri, 06 February 2009 17:51

Andy Peters wrote on Sun, 11 January 2009 00:26



Frequency response is NOT resolution.

-a


Hi Andy,

To be honest, I have been thinking about this topic since it was posted.  I have searched and searched for a definition of "resolution" as it pertains to audio - there is tons of BS regarding video, printers, faxes, photos, etc.

While I agree that the freq response only tells us part of the story - how WOULD someone go about determining the other aspects and coming up with an "answer" for "resolution"?

I'm picturing some kind of equation utilizing cycles-per-second (Hz) and inches per second (IPS) where maybe the "time" cancels out and perhaps cycles per inch somehow connected to the flux level, dynamic range, track width, blah-blah.

With your experience and knowledge, Andy, how would you go about generating such a spec?

Fig


This is a common misconception due to lack of understanding digital audio (which is often very counter-intuitive to grasp and in no small way). And this often translates into something similar when considering the analog world of audio.
Please bare with me for a while here...

When talking about digital audio one can say the following things:

Frequency response and transient/impulse response is tied together with bandwidth. (ie sample rate)
Resolution is tied together with dynamics. (ie bit depth)

Analog audio is continuous, and as such does not really conform to be measured in terms of "resolution". Just go for bandwidth instead, or when building a piece of analog audio equipment perhaps look at slew rates and technical implementation.

Then again, once the digitally recorded audio waveform has been reconstructed (ie what you hear after the DAC), it is also continuous. In other words, those individual numbers inside the DAW maybe lead one to believe that the audio has been chopped up and that it's going to affect playback. However, this is not the case. Those individual numbers are merely a middle stage for the entire process and not the final reconstructed waveform you hear.


It think we can keep continuing to refer to bandwidth and dynamic range in order to describe how much any analog carrier of sound will be able to accurately capture and reproduce.
Logged
http://www.danko.se/site-design/dankologo4s.gif
"T(Z)= (n1+n2*Z^-1+n2*Z^-2)/(1+d1*z^-1+d2*z^-2)" - Mr. Dan Lavry
"Shaw baa laa raaw, sidle' yaa doot in dee splaa" . Mr Shooby Taylor

Fig

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1186
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #296 on: February 06, 2009, 01:33:52 PM »

Tomas Danko wrote on Fri, 06 February 2009 12:09

Fig wrote on Fri, 06 February 2009 17:51

Andy Peters wrote on Sun, 11 January 2009 00:26



Frequency response is NOT resolution.

-a


Hi Andy,

<snip>

With your experience and knowledge, Andy, how would you go about generating such a spec?

Fig


<snip>
Please bare with me for a while here...


You must mean "bear" - we don't know each other that well Smile

Tomas, I fully grasp the fundamentals of digital audio (main reason I avoid it whenever possible).  I like my waveforms just the way they are, thank you very much - I mean, why chop a perfectly good sine wave into a million pieces just to try to put it back together again as closely as possible?

But the "analog resolution" inquiry remains unanswered.

I realize the concept of resolution came with the invention of digital (for better or worse).  And in my opinion, the two techniques are apples and oranges anyway, but if we WERE to put new concepts on old vehicles, what kind of "results" could we come up with?

My mind is already made up as to which I prefer and why.

Fig


Logged
The easiest thing to do is the thing most easily forgotten.

Jay Kadis

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2165
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #297 on: February 07, 2009, 12:20:59 PM »

Resolution means the ability to unambiguously discriminate between two values.  The meaning for digital (sampled) systems relates to the quantization process, where discrete measurements are derived from a continuously varying amplitude.  In this case, resolution is limited by the size of the quantization step: once the amplitude drops below that coded by the LSB we cannot resolve differences.

In the case of continuous analog systems, the resolution is limited by the noise floor.  When the signal amplitude drops into the noise, it becomes a statistical process to extract the signal from the noise.  At some point the noise swamps the signal beyond any ability to extract the signal, so that would be the lower limit of resolution.  While analog audio systems lack the same sharp limit to resolution we find in digital audio systems, the resolution is not infinite, but must be determined statistically.

Adding dither to a quantizer makes the resolution dependent on statistical analysis as well, but no system has infinite resolution.

Jon Hodgson

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 1854
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #298 on: April 01, 2009, 08:30:08 PM »

Actually analogue systems can have quantization errors too. When I met Tim De Paravicini (a man who certainly seems to know his cutting lathes) I was surprised to discover that the error caused by the fact that you can either have a vinyl molecule or not (so the resolution of a cut is +/- half a molecule) was only 90dB below full signal, I'd always assumed that the molecules were too small for that to be a consideration... it seems not.

The fact that you random variations in the matrix results in those errors being random and thus white noise.

It amused me somewhat to discover that vinyl is actually a dithered system with a quantization step size approximately equivalent to a 15 bit system.
Logged

Jay Kadis

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Offline Offline
  • Posts: 2165
Re: George....what's the resolution of analog?
« Reply #299 on: April 02, 2009, 10:55:50 AM »

Jon Hodgson wrote on Wed, 01 April 2009 17:30

Actually analogue systems can have quantization errors too. When I met Tim De Paravicini (a man who certainly seems to know his cutting lathes) I was surprised to discover that the error caused by the fact that you can either have a vinyl molecule or not (so the resolution of a cut is +/- half a molecule) was only 90dB below full signal, I'd always assumed that the molecules were too small for that to be a consideration... it seems not.

The fact that you random variations in the matrix results in those errors being random and thus white noise.

It amused me somewhat to discover that vinyl is actually a dithered system with a quantization step size approximately equivalent to a 15 bit system.
I'd like to hear more about the molecular size issue:  the 90 dB figure seems pretty high (or low?)    (The S/N of vinyl in practice falls significantly below 90 dB though.)  As I understand it "vinyl" is actually a vinyl chloride-vinyl acetate copolymer.  Wouldn't such a polymer would consist of particles of varying dimensions?

We have a similar issue in analog tape due to the finite dimensions of the individual magnetic domains.
Pages: 1 ... 18 19 [20] 21 22 23   Go Up
 

Site Hosted By Ashdown Technologies, Inc.

Page created in 0.042 seconds with 17 queries.