2. digital
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Wide bandwidth = necessary?

Hi folks, there is one paradigm that bothers me a bit: many experts and audiophiles are stating that Red Book technology is outdated because of it's bandwidth limited function. I've read the human ear is capable of perception of frequencies beyond the normal human hearing, up to 40kHz. But this is only with live music! When listening to recorded music there is a restricted bandwidth because many microphones can only pick up frequencies up to 20kHz. So why the need for more and more bandwidth with regard to digital sound reproduction technology? What is not present in the recording can't be heard either, even with very wide bandwidth music reproduction gear.
What is also laughable is that many vinyl adepts say that phono playback gear can reproduce tones as high as 40kHz and that is one of the reasons phono playback sounds more "natural" than digital playback. This is a bit of a contradictio in terminis because most LP's are very band limited (30Hz to 16kHz is quite common). Your comments please.

Chris
dazzdax
eldartford
4,262 posts
 
The oft-quoted sampling rate of twice the highest frequency of interest applies to regeneration of a continuous analog sine wave. That ain't music. In practice, even for non-musical signals at least a four to one ratio is desirable.
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eldartford
4,262 posts
 
Viridian...I have long believed that our sense of hearing includes a "waveform steepness" factor quite independent of frequency response. I came up with this idea a couple of decades ago when I found out that I could hear the introduction/removal of a low pass filter at a frequency well above the frequency at which I became stone-deaf to a sine wave (the usual test signal). This would also explain why a supertweeter operating above 20KHz makes an audible difference.
dazzdax OP
599 posts
 
Eldartford: that is an interesting phenomenon. Do you think we humans can appreciate more of the sound if the gear is capable of reproducing frequencies above 20kHz even if the recording itself doesn't contain any frequency above 16kHz? With other words: would the music sound more "natural"? If that is the case, then I have to have this super tweeter also --> it will superficially create naturalness (sounds like contradictio in terminis).

Chris
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