Analogue Versus Digital

#21

just a small addendum. your ears are only part of your senses when it comes to music. go to a church with a big organ, and let the organist play the highest and lowest notes for you. probably you won't hear them, shouldn't really. but boy you can feel them. anything from very unpleasant to warm is possible. this has been used in church for centuries to "guide" people into the right emotional path :slight_smile:

#22

Probably true for low frequencies, which you can feel in your guts, but high frequencies are a different story. You simply can't hear them.

If you listen to music at home your stereo is also another resonating object. If you want to feel deep low frequencies you'll need a decent subwoofer. Same thing with tweeters for extra clear high frequencies..

#23

you did not get my point really. you cannot hear it!!! yet you can feel it. it makes you uncomfortable, been there, felt it.

i'm aware of the limits of a stereo or any loudspeaker in fact. that does of course not make your statement about high frequencies true. you can definitely feel them. don't ask me how.

#24

Again, that's my lazy side coming out, not bothering to make sure I used the correct terminology. That's what I was getting at though, quantization noise.

What you hear then, quantization noise, must be the direct result of the quantized digital system, right?
This is why I don't like the idea behind digital in a 'technical' sense, it specifically goes against natural.

Like anything, analogue technology has it's limits, it's limited by real-world physical properties. Sure, one stylus will have a different result on the sound to another stylus. Just as one circuit topology will have a different result to another, and one formulation of vinyl will have a different result to another. And with analogue tape, one formulation of tape will result in different sound reproduction than the other (something I really enjoy playing around with). But guess what, the reason for this is because it's a "real" system, it's technically organic in nature. I completely expect one system to sound different to another system, just as I would expect one tree in nature to be different to another even though it's the same species.

Agreed, analogue audio does not sound warmer because it's on vinyl (not completely because of that, anyway). It mainly sounds warmer because it's smoother, and it sounds smoother because it is smoother. The vinyl itself does have an effect on the sound, but again, it's all handled in the analogue domain and is therefore a direct result of natural interaction between the various components in the system. Same with tape, the formulation of the tape comes into it, and with age, tape recordings actually improve in solidity and thickness due to magnetic leakage across the tape surface.

It's all natural, it's all beautiful - because it's analogue.

I am emotionally at peace, for I followed the analogue signal :heart_eyes:

#25

Sorry, i intended to say "feel", not "hear" in that sentence.

What if your being uncomfortable was related to something else? There are several factors associated with human discomfort, and i've never heard ultrasonic frequencies among them (sorry for the joke).. Also, as a professional musician you should know better than me that music is an exceptional way to convey emotions.

Also, how are you so sure there actually were ultrasonic frequencies in the room since you can't hear them? Did you have a frequency spectrum analyzer with you to at least prove their existence?
Another consideration: an organ is a very expensive instrument, and additional pipes are required to provide additional registers. Additional pipes means additional money. Why would a customer spend money on a musical instrument that can't be heard, just to let people feel uncomfortable?
Why don't i feel uncomfortable when there are bats flapping around, or when someone uses one of those dog whistles?

Stating something requires evidence or at least a very reasonable explanation, "trust me, been there" being neither of those.
(Fiy: the existence of air was proven way before mass spectrometers were invented, and we can't see air. If we really could feel ultrasounds there should be a damn good explanation around, right?)

#26

I made you an example of something that's quantized in nature (radiation). Therefore your quantized = not natural equation does not hold.

#27

Also, electricity comes with electrons, which are particles. They're as natural as nature can get, and still, they are discrete entities.

#28

well, i can relate to what you are saying and i perfectly understand that i cannot prove it in the scientific sense. i can only tell you that i was there, saw the organist play the high notes on his keyboard and felt the discomfort. of course, other factors could be there. i could also have imagined things. but you see, it's the same with those marten sound installations in cars. you can sometimes hear/feel them even when they are at 24khz. it could be that they are all failing or the battery is dying and the frequency goes down, whatever. it's the same feeling as in the church though. you just don't want to be there.

of course music is an exceptional way for emotions. what makes you so sure that no other frequencies are involved in that part other than those you hear? why is a live concert more exciting than the recording? is it just because it is live (as in i was there)? or is there some other sensation missing on the recording?

btw. i'm not trying to be esoteric, being a scientific mind is of course great, and i am that for most of the time. but still seeing the world only through your scientific eyes could be limiting your experience.

and i hope i don't have to explain why the church could be interested in scaring people. (or at least why they were interested)

#29

I can't speak for his scientific mind limiting his experience, but it's definitely effecting his judgement over even the simplest of details. He just pointed out radiation and electrons in an attempt to claim that we're quantized.

I am not quantized, and neither is analogue audio.

Pointing out something like that shows that he's dismissing the difference between something that is natural, and something that is man-made. Digital is a man-made 'system', it's the language of computers, not humans. Electrons, radiation, particles etc, all that professor-like stuff is completely irrelevant to what I was saying in so far as we're comparing an audio system that uses a constant signal to one that uses a very intentional, by design, man-made quantization.

In other words, natural Vs fake. Of course, an analogue audio system is man-made, but what it's based on is not (the turntable proves this). It's based on physics, electricity etc whereas digital is based on a man-made calculation system which needs to make use of analogue technology before we can even hear it. There is no getting away from this.

Analogue is the daddy :heart_eyes:

Anyway, I just looked out of the window and spotted a bunch of women in long dresses carrying fruit baskets. Usually that only happens when they're about to start throwing fruit at someone in the stocks.

Oh yes, the amount of professors those stocks have helped out over the years - hehehe :grin:

But like I said, I don't say these things to bash digital. I'd hate to be without digital technology, but I count myself lucky in that I'm well aware of what it is and isn't good at, and what it is and isn't best at.

#30

So, a circuit that's made of several metals extracted from minerals from several places of the world, silicon that's been purified at more than 4000 degrees Celsius in a magnetic induction oven, plolymers made in very nasty chemical plants (hehe :3 ) that will probably last in the environment way longer than any human is more natural or organic than another circuit that's made of the same exact things but processes signals in a slightly different way....
Ok, go on!

#31

That's odd, I can't see the technobear post Sputnki is replying to.

#32

here about infrasound: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3087674.stm

infra and ultra, but ultra is not tested... https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/07/150710123506.htm

#33

Regards the infrasound, I think it all boils down to it triggering your senses. When you feel vibration you do kinda hear it, but you hear it using your body rather than your ears. So I suppose basically, what's going on is that the mind is tricked into thinking those ultra-low frequencies are being picked up by the ear even though they're being picked up by the body.

Organs were the first synthesizers, they were completely analogue too of course!

Here's a video showing a fully polyphonic multitimbral analogue synthesizer. It's a bit big for your house, but he does go through how it can be used to imitate various orchestral instruments, how sensitive it is, how soft and how loud it can be played etc.

The guy has one of the strangest accents I've ever heard, but it's a great video, fun to watch:

Now here is someting for Sputnki to think over. So you watch that video and realise at least two things. The first being that he's using analogue technology. That technology results in mind-blowing real-world analogue audio that your analogue ears understand and pick-up. But you know what's even more special about it? It's that those analogue soundwaves it makes can be captured to an analogue record in the form of vibration. That analogue-captured performance can then be played back, completely in analogue, into your analogue ears at a later date.

That is a beautiful system. It's why digital fanatics will never win the debate. It's real - it's honest - it's no-nonsense purity. It's the very best you can get, no matter whether you sing, pluck real strings, or fire-up the electrons - because you cannot get better than "real".

I shall now take a well-deserved bow and leave the stage :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

#34

I had no doubt about being able to detect some infrasound, but as you can read in the article ultrasound is not tested and their goal is to determine if a very loud ultrasound can be harmful, and not detectable. That's much more reasonable, but still does not have to do with scaring people at the church.

#35

Man, you're listening to that organ in a digitally encoded video on youtube. And organs are not even electronic instruments, but you use them as another example in this train of falsehood and nonsense...

Please, tell me where do you plug a moog synthesizer in your body to achieve a direct conversion of the electronic signal

#36

Unless you have a canyon outside your recording studio to make the echo, a big room, plate or spring for reverb, you play live only or only to tape, don't use any modern effect boxes, and release your music only on LP or tape, there will be digital involved. Kind of hard to not have digital somewhere in the flow nowadays.

#37

As Magritte would say "ceci n est pas un orgue"

#38

ok let me try a different approach:

the human ear does not hear linear, i think we can agree on that. at the low and high ends much more volume is needed so that you can perceive sound. the cutoff to where you actually don't hear anything any more is also volume dependent, so at a higher volume you will hear lower and higher notes. try this:

sweep your favourite signal generator to a frequency you can barely hear (17.5khz in my case). now turn up the volume and voila i can already hear a little higher. i move past those 17.8khz or similar, i don't hear it anymore. but i get a strange feeling in my ear. want to clean my ears or something. it is not very comfortable.. could it now be, that even higher frequencies somehow also trigger something in my ear, if they are loud enough? well, for the organ case maybe that high frequency is indeed only little higher than my cutoff of hearing. (i don't know what the actual frequency is)

or to put it in other words:

in a system where audio is sampled at a rate, frequencies above nyquist are not saved correctly, there are not enough points to determine the frequency hence you get aliasing. your ear does not alias, but the point where it does not hear anymore is also not constant and is also not absolute. it fades out slowly.

#39

@Sputnki
Organs (and I mean "real" organs), are completely analogue, they're mechanical analogue instruments that produce sound that is completely in the analogue domain. A real clock is an analogue mechanical instrument designed for time-keeping, whereas a real organ is a mechanical analogue instrument designed for producing sound completely in the analogue domain.

You don't see the beauty in what I said?

No, you don't, cause you mentioned YouTube. The whole point of what I said about being able to capture and replay the sound completely in analogue, completey flew past you. This is why you will never convince analogue followers that there's a better system. But there isn't one, the real world is analogue, the real world is not digital. A real guitar is analogue, a real piano is analogue, a human is analogue as is the voice produced by one. They all do the same thing, produce sound that is completely in the analogue domain, not needing conversion in order for you to hear it.

As for a Moog synthesizer, well, being an electronic analogue instrument, not a mechanical analogue one, I would simply amplify the analogue output it produces in order to hear it. But that's not conversion, that's just basic amplification (again, completely analogue). Amplifying an analogue signal using analogue amplification is a completely different thing to what digital is doing, where it's converting computer language to something humans can hear (a process that requires analogue technology in order for the end result to work, btw).

So I'm still waiting for you to explain why, if digital were the daddy, how come it can't exist without analogue?

See, digital is not the daddy after all. You cannot answer that question without losing the Analogue Vs Digital debate, which is why no one ever answers it if they're on the digital bandwagon. Doing so would surely bring instantaneous death to the digital myth.

So I tried to save you, but man, you won't accept that real is better than fake. We both know the reason is that if you do, then you have to accept that analogue is superior to digital.

It is, but that's not what I'm getting at. The Analogue Vs Digital debate is about which is the superior technology. I don't need any of those things to enjoy analogue. I buy on vinyl and record to tape using a three-head cassette deck. I even get to enjoy those analogue recordings in the car and on the move, thanks to a car cassette deck and a personal cassette walkman that fits in my pocket. I jumped on the CD bandwagon just like others did, but I knew from the first time I heared one that it was no match for a vinyl record, or indeed the sound I was getting from my cassettes. I only ever purchased one CD player for a car. It was in there less than a week before I ripped it out and put the cassette system back in.

I'm also rest assured that my format of choice cannot be taken away. I don't do digital downloads or any of that DRM nonsense. When I buy a record, I own it, I do what I want with it and record it to whatever I want. So there you go, all those years after CD almost killed off vinyl, it is back and is outselling "digital" CD. It's what the analogue guys knew all along, and one of the reasons they continued to buy vinyl while the majority were out purchasing CDs and digital downloads. Like I said, you cannot beat real.

Anyway, I just want to point out that this thread was split from another thread. It's important I point that out otherwise people might think I started an Analogue Vs Digital debate thread. These debates ultimately always end the same way. Analogue being superior, but digital lovers refusing to accept it. It also ends up looking like the one in favour of analogue is against digital, even though that is often not the case (and is certainly not the case here). So for me, digital is truly awesome, but analogue is the superior technology.

Analogue is the daddy.

#40

Arguments about superiority will most likely not turn out well... for either one.