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Analog vs. digital segment on PBS

The show "Wired Science" on PBS this week has a good segment on analog vs. digital with a relatively quick blind panel test on analog vs. digital. I think they replay the show during the week if you can catch it. Nice to see some of the hobby getting some primetime attention, if PBS can be considered primetime of course! They have a couple recording engineers speaking about the merits of each and a blind listening test between a recording group (whose music they use for the test) and some unbiased recording engineers.
Also some info on frozen brains... either way it's a great show for general technology every week.
jimmy2615
shadorne's avatar
shadorne
7,477 posts
 
No one mentions that Pro Tools (the digital company) set up the test for PBS.

Interesting. Perhaps the whole thing was faked and the band who claimed they could not tell were all paid to do so (or more likely the music was all from the good sounding analog).

PBS relies very heavily on sponsorship....so you never know!

Sure, digital can sound great at "master" level, I've been fortunate enough to hear direct digital masters against the same release on CD.

Another good point. CD's are often a lot worse than studio masters due to the mastering process where they are compressed horribly to sound "hot" or "loud" (no dynamics left after this process and very prevalent with pop music).
electroid
283 posts
 
I don't think they said what the final playback was from. They did an A/B on the fly "probably" from a digital platform. This would mean it was AAD vs DDD. Did they say what playback was from? Did I miss that? For true A/D comparison playback would have had to have been from the R/R recorder they used vs a digital platform .

ET
chadnliz's avatar
chadnliz
3,737 posts
 
Saturday 4am....... VIVA DVR!
bdgregory
1,723 posts
 
Interresting but the test was between masters in a studio, not between the end products of CD and LP, which is what the average and above average listener would be using respectively. :D
I too found this disappointing . . .
albertporter's avatar
albertporter
4,949 posts
 
Shadorne
Perhaps the whole thing was faked and the band who claimed they could not tell were all paid to do so (or more likely the music was all from the good sounding analog).
I think the test was performed exactly as portrayed on TV. Electroid took the words out of my mouth as to how things were likely done for the "test."

Another good point. CD's are often a lot worse than studio masters due to the mastering process where they are compressed horribly to sound "hot" or "loud" (no dynamics left after this process and very prevalent with pop music).

ABSOLUTELY correct, right in the bulls eye.

Add to that, lots of playback equipment is not happy at 0 DB (maxed out all the time). The chip sets are designed to swing and take advantage of digitals great dynamic range.........then the engineers "loudness wars" the format and destroy it's advantage.
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