When is digital going to get the soul of music?

Ooh, Mapman, gonna have to disagree with you when you say in your last post - "Has nothing to do with getting the soul though." It has EVERYTHING to do with that, especially in large scale orchestral music, where there is such a HUGE range of different emotions expressed in say a lengthy Mahler symphony. It also has to do with the "low level detail" discussion we have been having on a different thread. A very great deal of the emotional subtleties are lost, since so much of the subtleties of the huge range of timbres are lost. That's not a well written sentence at all, LOL, but I think the point is nevertheless clear?

Metralla I'm not talking about comparing to the redbook layer in the same disc. I'm talking about comparing SACD to its RED book counterpart. The redbook layer on the SACD is never as good as the SACD of it. I have always found the redbook cd by itself is always better than the redbook of a hybrid cd.

Yeah, I was going to scratch the nothing to do with soul comment but it was too late. I was thinking classical and soul as two distinct beasts, but not really the case.

I just had a friend go to the Colorado Symphony Orchestra last night. He kind of listens to Waylon and Willie on da am radio in the pick m up if ya kno wat i mean. And that is about it. He is about 40yrs old. He said he had a cool time last night at the symphony. I feel that the symphony music is not appreciated as it could be because of the poor replication of it all the way from the recording process down to the sound systems we play it on. There is a LOT that gets lost it seems or that goes missing. Symphony music has it all. It has a ton of soul and color and emotion and expression, ect. I think the poor reproduction especially in the digital format, might be a strong reason that people don't connect to it.

Jwm, please re-read the quote, and perhaps the article too. What you said is exactly what the author IS saying. I thought the article was quite interesting because the author made a very cogent case maintaining that the redbook CD format of 16 bit/44.1 KHz is more than sufficient for excellent playback --- IF and that's a big IF -- the music was better recorded, mastered and engineered. It's not the format that's the problem. It the production process.

Well at least that's what the author said.

Best,

Bruce