Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!harpo!utah-cs!morris From: morris@utah-cs.UUCP (Richard Morris) Newsgroups: net.audio Subject: Analog vs. Digital Challenge Message-ID: <2427@utah-cs.UUCP> Date: Fri, 27-Jan-84 23:58:23 EST Article-I.D.: utah-cs.2427 Posted: Fri Jan 27 23:58:23 1984 Date-Received: Tue, 31-Jan-84 04:06:10 EST Lines: 39 I am amazed at the people who say that they can hear great problems with high quality digital audio, especially considering the kinds and types of distortion that either a good analog recorder, or the cutting stylus and associated drive equiment in the case of direct to disk, introduces; which, these "golden ears" have more or less given their seal of approval to, by saying they sound so much better than their digital counterparts. I am of the opinion that those most offended by digital audio are those who have a financial interest in analog music like some of the direct to disk companies, or someone with a small fortune tied up in esoteric audio equipment; or merely someone with a distorted view of the real world. I wonder if anyone has done a double blind test, as described below, to determine if those people with "golden ears" who claim to hear such atrocities with digital audio really hear such things, or just have an overly active imagination. I propose taking a high quality analog recording either on analog tape or audiophile disc, and recording it with a HIGH QUALITY digital recording system. Then play the two back seperately and in an A/B comparison situation. Since the record noise and/or the tape hiss and other analog recording troubles present in the analog original will also be present in the digital recording, these won't be available as clues for the "golden ears" to distinguish between the two recordings. I strongly suspect that under such conditions ANYONE would be hard pressed to correctly identify which recording was which, by the supposed problems digital music critics claim to hear; especially if the digital test system uses digital filtering and gradual slope low pass filters. If one looks at the signal processing theory of the analog-to-digital-to-analog conversion process, there is NO information loss if the rules are followed, just some noise introduced as a result of the quantization. Until the above experiment is tried several times under controlled conditions with conclusive results, I will continue to be unconvinced at the claims of the opponents of digital audio. Comments anyone? !harpo!utah-cs!morris