The poor old CD is going to disappear soon; so we are told. They are going to be replaced by "digital" sales. But CDs store digital representations of music they are "digital" so are they going to replace themselves?
A CD is really only a means to store a digital file. A digital file can be held on a hard drive or a flash drive as well. The digital music held on a CD is in CD Audio red book format; these files can easily be converted to WAV files with almost exactly the same format but stored on a Hard Drive, a Flash Drive, a DVD, an SD card or even a BluRay Disk.
The press perpetrates so many myths and exaggerations about recorded music that I wonder if any form rationality remains.
The so called great vinyl revival has not really happened and LPs represent an almost insignificant proportion of the market. None of my friends who possess a record deck ever use it or buy records. I limit myself to buying LPs in second hand shops and all the music has been converted to digital files and ends up on a CD for playing in a car.
Our little silver friend is very versatile and a prerecorded CD maintains an almost indestructible copy of the music under every day conditions. This is more than can be said for LPs, audio cassettes and hard drives.
I have bought lots of albums from "download sites" in WAV, FLAC and MP3 format. All of this music has been backed up to CD. MP3 albums can be converted to CD audio for playing in the car.
I can envisage a time when the CD as a form of backup storage will disappear, especially when flash and cloud storage becomes cheaper. I rather like the idea of the CD, however, as I can read the sleeve notes.
I am surprised that music is not being sold in read only SD card format. It is light and easy to post or carry and could come along with a nicely prepared booklet for album information.
There are now claims that audio cassettes will make a big comeback. For me they never disappeared as I still play them in the car. I have digitised all of my audio cassettes which cannot be easily replaced by pre-recorded CD for archive purposes.
Digital music will not disappear and the CD is just as much a member of the digital family as the download - journalists please take note.
http://www.musicweek.com/news/read/bpi-2012-figures-album-sales-fall-11-2-as-singles-hit-record-high/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-18278037
Monday 14 October 2013
Tuesday 8 October 2013
The HI FI Numbers game
Have you ever considered what a numbers game the HI FI industry has become? Sound engineering has come on in leaps and bounds in the last 50 years. We now have consumer products which are far in advance of the record players we were using in the 1960s. We have now hit the point where improvements to stereo sound are really coming under the law of diminishing returns.
Take the turn table, cartridge and stylus industry for an example. During the 1970s belt driven turn tables became popular; they replaced rim or idler drive record players as a consumer product. They almost eliminated deck rumble.
Moving Magnet cartridges and their Moving Coil cousins replaced ceramic cartridges to completely improve frequency response.
Diamond styluses replaced sapphire ones to improve the longevity and frequency performance of the turntable cartridge.
Electronic speed control almost eliminated wow and flutter speed variations.
Even the most humble deck has all these features nowadays. So where do improvements come from? They are difficult to come by.
The human ear when perfect and under ideal conditions can hear frequencies from about 20 hz to 20 khz. But from the age of about 8 or 9 the ability to hear higher frequencies declines, so that many men above the age of 70 can no longer hear frequencies above 8 khz. Women's hearing fails more slowly. Most adult men cannot hear frequencies above 15khz.
Stylus manufactures are now making elliptical styluses which can reproduce sound frequencies up to 55 khz. You may ask why bother to make them and why bother to buy them when most adults cannot hear sounds above about 15 or 16 khz? It is part of a numbers game.
The top C note on a grand piano is 4.186khz and middle C is 261.6 hz. Top C is rarely played but when it is there are harmonics which are of a higher frequency but you may want to consider why there is a need to reproduce sounds above 16 khz when most people cannot hear them.
The maximum frequency which can be played on FM radio in the UK is 15 khz. No-one ever complains about this.
A soprano uses primary frequencies in the range of 250 to 1500 hz but can produce harmonics in the range of 3,000 to 4000 hz. You may be wondering again why we need to reproduce frequencies far higher than the human voice can sing. We don't, but of course it is desirable to have some redundancy built into the system.
This is why when sound engineers designed the CD audio system they did it to cater for a frequency response of 20 hz to 22khz. This is far beyond the range of most musical instruments and the ability of our ears to hear or perceive such high or low frequencies.
They also designed the CD to have a dynamic range of about 96 decibels, which is far beyond the range of an orchestra from its softest sound to its loudest sound. Pop records rarely exceed a dynamic range of 20 decibels which is far narrower than the dynamic range of an orchestra which can be up to 80 decibels.
LPs can reproduce a similar frequency range as CDs but their dynamic range is nowhere near as wide but even so an LP is good enough for most peoples ears. So they can easily compete in the numbers game.
HIRES music is completely redundant and unnecessary. A 24 bit 192 khz digital resolution file can provide a dynamic range of about 144 decibels, and if you add this to the noise floor in your living room which is about 40 decibels you would be able to reproduce the sound of the space shuttle taking off in your living room, but only if your sound equipment was strong enough. This is ridiculous.
192 khz digital files can reproduce frequencies up to 96 khz; not even your cat can hear this high but of course a bat can. So your 24 bit 192 khz HIRES file can knock bats out of the sky 20 miles away if your amp and speakers were powerful enough - but they never will be. This is a preposterous musical proposition and a preposterous and absurd numbers game.
At normal and safe listening levels no one has been proven by scientific testing to hear the difference between CD quality and HIRES listening quality when all other parameters are equal. HIRES is completely redundant technology.
Technology has brought us to the point where the potential performance of the equipment is much greater than the actual performance of our ears and our hearing perception. We have been at this point since the invention of the CD.
Do not be fooled by so called sonic improvements as part of a numbers game unless you want to waste prodigious sums of money.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=expert-opera-singer
Take the turn table, cartridge and stylus industry for an example. During the 1970s belt driven turn tables became popular; they replaced rim or idler drive record players as a consumer product. They almost eliminated deck rumble.
Moving Magnet cartridges and their Moving Coil cousins replaced ceramic cartridges to completely improve frequency response.
Diamond styluses replaced sapphire ones to improve the longevity and frequency performance of the turntable cartridge.
Electronic speed control almost eliminated wow and flutter speed variations.
Even the most humble deck has all these features nowadays. So where do improvements come from? They are difficult to come by.
The human ear when perfect and under ideal conditions can hear frequencies from about 20 hz to 20 khz. But from the age of about 8 or 9 the ability to hear higher frequencies declines, so that many men above the age of 70 can no longer hear frequencies above 8 khz. Women's hearing fails more slowly. Most adult men cannot hear frequencies above 15khz.
Stylus manufactures are now making elliptical styluses which can reproduce sound frequencies up to 55 khz. You may ask why bother to make them and why bother to buy them when most adults cannot hear sounds above about 15 or 16 khz? It is part of a numbers game.
The top C note on a grand piano is 4.186khz and middle C is 261.6 hz. Top C is rarely played but when it is there are harmonics which are of a higher frequency but you may want to consider why there is a need to reproduce sounds above 16 khz when most people cannot hear them.
The maximum frequency which can be played on FM radio in the UK is 15 khz. No-one ever complains about this.
A soprano uses primary frequencies in the range of 250 to 1500 hz but can produce harmonics in the range of 3,000 to 4000 hz. You may be wondering again why we need to reproduce frequencies far higher than the human voice can sing. We don't, but of course it is desirable to have some redundancy built into the system.
This is why when sound engineers designed the CD audio system they did it to cater for a frequency response of 20 hz to 22khz. This is far beyond the range of most musical instruments and the ability of our ears to hear or perceive such high or low frequencies.
They also designed the CD to have a dynamic range of about 96 decibels, which is far beyond the range of an orchestra from its softest sound to its loudest sound. Pop records rarely exceed a dynamic range of 20 decibels which is far narrower than the dynamic range of an orchestra which can be up to 80 decibels.
LPs can reproduce a similar frequency range as CDs but their dynamic range is nowhere near as wide but even so an LP is good enough for most peoples ears. So they can easily compete in the numbers game.
HIRES music is completely redundant and unnecessary. A 24 bit 192 khz digital resolution file can provide a dynamic range of about 144 decibels, and if you add this to the noise floor in your living room which is about 40 decibels you would be able to reproduce the sound of the space shuttle taking off in your living room, but only if your sound equipment was strong enough. This is ridiculous.
192 khz digital files can reproduce frequencies up to 96 khz; not even your cat can hear this high but of course a bat can. So your 24 bit 192 khz HIRES file can knock bats out of the sky 20 miles away if your amp and speakers were powerful enough - but they never will be. This is a preposterous musical proposition and a preposterous and absurd numbers game.
At normal and safe listening levels no one has been proven by scientific testing to hear the difference between CD quality and HIRES listening quality when all other parameters are equal. HIRES is completely redundant technology.
Technology has brought us to the point where the potential performance of the equipment is much greater than the actual performance of our ears and our hearing perception. We have been at this point since the invention of the CD.
Do not be fooled by so called sonic improvements as part of a numbers game unless you want to waste prodigious sums of money.
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=expert-opera-singer
Tuesday 1 October 2013
Audio Cassette Revival
Audio cassettes never bit the dust for me. I have used them for a long long time. I have learnt German and French from them and a little Japanese, Russian, Serbo-Croat , Spanish and Italian.I have still got Tony Hancock and Goon show tapes. One of my Australian friends sent me Kevin "Bloody" Wilson comedy tapes - very risque and they would probably be banned nowadays.
I was never one for recording my LPs onto tape but I did a lot of help recording party tapes in the 1970s. I can remember lots of discussion about what should be recorded on a tape and in what order.
In the last thirty years or so I have travelled widely with my job. The cassette tape kept me sane on long plane journeys and long stays in hotel rooms. I could take the, classical, folk, jazz and rock music of my choice with me. This was mainly during the 1980s and 1990s.
I had a really snazzy Sony Walkman DC2 it sounded great as good as an LP record deck without the clicks and pops and static hiss and it still works. In 2000 my wife bought me an Archos MP3 player and all of a sudden I had much more room in my brief case.
But, I have put equal use to playing cassettes in the car and taping CDs was the best thing since sliced bread for me. The tape of a CD always sounded better than the tape of an LP record and often it sounded so much better than the same music on a manufactured cassette.
This is the advantage of digital music when the tape got bust or stretched you could easily make another one.
I still make tapes for my rather aging car which has got a tape player but no CD. I cannot bring myself to use my adapter and source the music from a Tablet computer or MP3 player; somehow it does not seem right.
All of my LPs and tapes have been digitised to WAV and MP3 files for convenience and for archiving. When the car is pensioned off I will probably never use an audio cassette player again. But wait a minute I have still got a record player and even though the digitised versions sound exactly like the original LP I still like to spin some vinyl. So maybe some life will remain for the audio cassette player yet.
The audio cassette was one of the most practical inventions regarding music reproduction; it paved the way for MP3 players and private music on the go. It gave me hours and hours of musical enjoyment, education and entertainment. It was a superb invention from Philips who also were prominent in the development of the CD. I can remember when the first recorder and player came onto the market in 1963 but they were only used widely by music fans from the 1970s when they slowly started to replace the LP.
I was never one for recording my LPs onto tape but I did a lot of help recording party tapes in the 1970s. I can remember lots of discussion about what should be recorded on a tape and in what order.
In the last thirty years or so I have travelled widely with my job. The cassette tape kept me sane on long plane journeys and long stays in hotel rooms. I could take the, classical, folk, jazz and rock music of my choice with me. This was mainly during the 1980s and 1990s.
I had a really snazzy Sony Walkman DC2 it sounded great as good as an LP record deck without the clicks and pops and static hiss and it still works. In 2000 my wife bought me an Archos MP3 player and all of a sudden I had much more room in my brief case.
But, I have put equal use to playing cassettes in the car and taping CDs was the best thing since sliced bread for me. The tape of a CD always sounded better than the tape of an LP record and often it sounded so much better than the same music on a manufactured cassette.
This is the advantage of digital music when the tape got bust or stretched you could easily make another one.
I still make tapes for my rather aging car which has got a tape player but no CD. I cannot bring myself to use my adapter and source the music from a Tablet computer or MP3 player; somehow it does not seem right.
All of my LPs and tapes have been digitised to WAV and MP3 files for convenience and for archiving. When the car is pensioned off I will probably never use an audio cassette player again. But wait a minute I have still got a record player and even though the digitised versions sound exactly like the original LP I still like to spin some vinyl. So maybe some life will remain for the audio cassette player yet.
The audio cassette was one of the most practical inventions regarding music reproduction; it paved the way for MP3 players and private music on the go. It gave me hours and hours of musical enjoyment, education and entertainment. It was a superb invention from Philips who also were prominent in the development of the CD. I can remember when the first recorder and player came onto the market in 1963 but they were only used widely by music fans from the 1970s when they slowly started to replace the LP.
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