When is digital going to get the soul of music?

Kijanki, thanks for the info, and Albertporter, it was a feeble attempt at humor. I went to the live versus recorded event hosted by BAAS on Saturday. It was held at Cookie's studio(She formerly worked for Windham Hill.). A wonderful musician played acoustic guitar. Unfortunately, we didn't compare digital versus analog recording as I had hoped for. Cookie records to 2-inch analog tape. 5 microphones were used, and it was pointed out that using just 2 microphones has some problems(room, other instruments, etc.). The highs were the area that really stood out, as far as losses are concerned. The complexity of the highs was lost even on the best speaker we had in reproducing the highs( A Lowther cone with a ribbon tweeter. I still don't care for most ribbon tweeters, even after this demonstration.). It was also pointed out that many people in the recording chain may change the sound of the final product. It has me wondering if this is why Linn says it's the beat(foot tapping) we should look for when evaluating audio equipment. For those that are looking for the absolute sound, I would suggest that you only use perfectionist recordings, or ones where you were there, to determine the "absolute sound". After you've done this, let the chips fall where they may. In other words, don't try to optimize your system based on other recordings, because those other recordings may be wrong. I don't know if this technique will work, but theoretically that is what should be done.

It's the best you can do if that is the sound you want, but I would agree with Albert that it will never completely equal or surpass the detail possible with analog source, at least technically on paper.

On purely "technical grounds" or "on paper" - the CD is extremely good - far superior - perhaps it just doesn't sound as pleasant or as detailed.

FWIW - Dither is used to reduce/randomise "quantization errors" - it is especialy important when taking a 20 or 24 bit master and converting it to 16 bit. It is most important for the least significant bits where quantization error becomes important. Quantization error is due to the fact that the least significant bit (LSB) is only known to an accuracy of half of the LSB (the maximum digital resolution). When these errors are correlated with an input signal you can get some unwanted harmonics which dither eliminates by "randomizing" this resolution error to become white noise (raises the noise floor slightly rather than create an unwanted harmonic which might be audible).

For sure - if a studio makes some errors in the mixing and mastering they can create these unwanted harmonics and it can get onto your CD. A possible explanation for bad CD sound is that "sound engineers" are anything but "engineers" (most often they have a musical background rather than math and science) - it is very rare that they have a degree in time series analysis and signal processing. They may not fully understand what they are doing and generally learn by trial and error (sound engineers often start out in the tape room as a "gopher" and eventually work their way up to the mixing console).

Kijanki,

The generalizations of 1 bit versus multi-bit are kind of correct - but they make it sound awful - remember most of these DACS are achieving very low distortion levels (way way way lower than your speakers) - even the old multi-bits (and dynamic range way way beyond Vinyl, which is limited to about 60 db SPL on a good day with an ideal setup).

Initially, high clock speeds were difficult to achieve - so the resitor network DAC's were popular. These have been mostly replaced by delta sigma one bit DAC designs which became possible with higher clock speeds. (eventually higher speeds led to the concept of DSD and SACD technology being possible - essentially SACD is like a one bit DAC in a mathematical sense) The bleeding edge is now pushing the limits of clock speeds/circuit design and there is once again interest in a resitor network type DAC solutions (or a combination of both by a reduced rsitor network AND a high delta sigma clock speed) to improve S/N ratios above 110 db SPL (bear in mind that 110 db SPL S/N is stupendous already)

The ring DAC does sound like a form of variation on the latest DAC designs (astounding 120 db SPL S/N ratios are now becoming possible). AKM makes chips like this but they don't call them "ring DAC's", but they do use a "random" selection from a resistor network in order to solve the issues of non-linearities in resitor network DAC designs.

One thing to bear in mind is that digital technology is so extremely accurate that it is pushing the limits of both clock speeds and circuit design. The nice thing is that designers are now able to use clever mathematics to overcome even the limitations of both analog resitor network accuracy AND clock speeds to create extremely linear devices through a "random selection" which eliminates 'systematic errors' from real world devices by employing mathematical solutions.

Shadorne,

I'd quality my statement you quoted by stating that both analog and digital are capable of great things and each have their issues to address t get it right.

Sound is inherently analog, but the recoding and playback process for both analog and digital each face distinct and different challenges that must be met to reproduce this accurately.

Each introduces their own distinct artifacts to the sound that will lead different people with different listening preferences to prefer either depending.

I do think that the vinyl playback process is harder to do really well but is very good when done right.

There have always been a lot of really crappy record players out there and still are, right?

I believe digital payback can be achieved more cost effectively by the average Joe today than vinyl. The issues are more subtle but less severe when things are not going well overall.

Although I think players like the DCS do sound very good, but I do not think it should cost $20000 + up to achieve these results. This is out of line with most other applications of digital that have been around for a while today from what I can see, so that raises a red flag for me.

Still, if you can afford it and you want no compromise sound delivered by a no compromise approach, it may well be worth the entry price.

Sound is inherently analog, but the recoding and playback process for both analog and digital each face distinct and different challenges that must be met to reproduce this accurately.

Exactly. And for that reason it makes sense to say you prefer the sound of one or the other (as they are quite different and have quite different qualities). I much prefer your more measured response in this last post - pros and cons of each if you like. To me this is a better way to judge the two. I guess I object to dismissing digital as something that will never ever sound good on "trumped up technical" grounds as without merit - that is all. Digital is progress on pure technical measures - but that it sounds worse of less preferable to many ears is undeniable - IMHO, there is no need to prove it is "bad" from a technical angle - leave that to lab intruments and technicians.

BTW - Our ear and hearng system is a copmbination of analog AND digital!! I bet you did not know that - if you research it you will be surprised to find this fact. Hairs in the ear trigger bundles of nerves sening impulses to the brain. These nerves have a finite recorvery time before they can be reactivated - in essence there is a whole level of detail in music that we CANNOT hear precisely because of the digital or "sampled" way in which our hearing works. (One of the effects of this behaviour is called "masking" - we can't hear certain sounds when they are masked by others (no matter that our analog ear membrane may actually sense the air vibarations and hairs may move in the inner ear) - it is the basis for MP3 and other compression algorithms)