Ok Shenmue fans, time to open your wallets again...

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Aleron Ives
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Re: Ok Shenmue fans, time to open your wallets again...

Post#11 » Wed May 27, 2015 2:50 am

dan1234 wrote:You're correct by saying vinyl degrades over time by usage, but not so by saying digital "perfectly represents" sound.

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That's a common misconception and is wrong. Digital audio is not correctly represented by using a stairstep pattern.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIQ9IXSUzuM

The video explains how it really works: the stairsteps are a convenient drawing to illustrate sampled audio but don't actually represent how a digital-to-analogue conversion really looks. You can confirm on an oscilloscope that there are, in fact, no stairsteps when you reconstruct the analogue sound wave from the samples. Band-pass filters are quite useful. ;)
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Re: Ok Shenmue fans, time to open your wallets again...

Post#12 » Wed May 27, 2015 4:19 am

Aleron Ives wrote:The video explains how it really works: the stairsteps are a convenient drawing to illustrate sampled audio but don't actually represent how a digital-to-analogue conversion really looks. You can confirm on an oscilloscope that there are, in fact, no stairsteps when you reconstruct the analogue sound wave from the samples. Band-pass filters are quite useful. ;)

It may be a complete sound wave, but it's not like the original. Like you said, it's reconstructed from all the samples. Which is not the same thing as having all the samples between two steps. Wouldn't surprise me if that makes a difference in how the music / sound is perceived...

Even a 'smart guy' like the one in the vid may not take everything into account. It's easy to make a vid with shortsighted 'undeniable facts now look at my oscillator' and not allow anyone to comment on it. A bit of a dick move...

As for the 'if you are not a bat or a dog you won't hear those high and low sounds' remark. I knew that comment was coming. In my opinion, even if we don't hear or perceive those sounds counsciously, they still play a role in how the music sounds as a whole and is -again- perceived...

On another note, don't forget Shenmue was all about experiencing how if felt to live in Asia in the 80's. If there's one game soundtrack that deserves a vinyl release, it's Shenmue...

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Re: Ok Shenmue fans, time to open your wallets again...

Post#13 » Wed May 27, 2015 4:48 am

krssn wrote:As for the 'if you are not a bat or a dog you won't hear those high and low sounds' remark. I knew that comment was coming. In my opinion, even if we don't hear or perceive those sounds counsciously, they still play a role in how the music sounds as a whole and is -again- perceived...

The thing is, we don't need to rely on opinions in this matter, because there is an objective way to determine if this is true: double-blind listening tests. It is entirely possible that ultrasonic frequencies may cause differences in the audible spectrum or otherwise impact the listening experience, and if that's the case, it should be possible to distinguish between content that contains and content that does not contain ultrasonic frequencies.

If these frequencies are important, then music sampled at 96 kHz and 192 kHz should sound better (or at least different) than music sampled at 44.1 kHz, because higher sampling rates will capture the same ultrasonic content as analogue recording devices. To my knowledge, there are a grand total of zero professional double-blind listening tests where people could distinguish between 96 kHz and 44.1 kHz music, which means that so far nobody has been able to demonstrate that ultrasonic frequencies are important to the listening experience.

Remember, the burden of proof lies with those saying that there is a difference between having ultrasonic frequencies and not having them. You can't prove that something doesn't exist, so the null hypothesis is always that A and B are the same until somebody can provide objectively obtained and replicable evidence that they are different in some way.

The main reason that people enjoy listening to vinyl is that the analogue recording process introduces artifacts that people find audibly pleasing. It is not because analogue recording devices are more accurate than digital ones; they just inject a distinctive "warmth" into the audio that people find enjoyable. That does not mean that it provides a more accurate listening experience, especially since humans often seem to find less accurate experiences more enjoyable than accurate ones. (Look at how high-FPS movies are viewed as "weird", because people are used to the choppy motion provided by the standard 24 FPS that has been used in films for decades. It's objectively true that 24 FPS provides inferior smoothness of motion to higher FPS, but people like it better anyway.)
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Re: Ok Shenmue fans, time to open your wallets again...

Post#14 » Wed May 27, 2015 5:43 am

Double-blind listening tests might also have their flaws, just like this guy's train of thought in the vid you posted...

Good vs bad pressing. Quality of master recording used. Digital vs analog receiver used. Etc...

Makes me think of that 1974 experiment with monkeys that proved marijuana kills brain cells. They 'objectively' counted the dead brain cells after the experiment. Disregarding the oh so flawed setup in the process...

Say what you want. I have a few soundtracks on both vinyl and CD, and the vinyl counterpart sounds better every time. Both in the high and low frequencies, and everything in between. And no, I don't have superior hearing.

Also, don't think digital music is untinkered with. In a lot of cases they pump up the bass -loudness- to the point that it doesn't sound good anymore, because apparently that's what people want nowadays. Listen to different versions of old songs on both CD and vinyl and you'll know what I'm talking about...

Think what you want. In the end I care as much about your opinion as you do about mine. As long as we can both choose our medium you can listen to CD's 24/7 for all I care. I'll just leave it at that... lol

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Re: Ok Shenmue fans, time to open your wallets again...

Post#15 » Wed May 27, 2015 3:39 pm

The loudness war is again completely different from the digital vs analogue debate.
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Re: Ok Shenmue fans, time to open your wallets again...

Post#16 » Wed May 27, 2015 3:41 pm

That's a common misconception and is wrong. Digital audio is not correctly represented by using a stairstep pattern.


The video explains how it really works: the stairsteps are a convenient drawing to illustrate sampled audio but don't actually represent how a digital-to-analogue conversion really looks.


Below is screenshots from a digitally recorded guitar track on my daw. Zooming into the waves a little bit looks normal, but the further you zoom in you can see the sample dots. Picture 4 is Picture 1 zoomed in further. You can clearly see the staircase

Capturing frequencies above 20 kHz is pointless, since humans can't hear them (assuming the audience for your CD is humans and not bats, dogs, or some other species with superior hearing


You're right, we can't hear alot of the higher frequencies. But the difference is there
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Re: Ok Shenmue fans, time to open your wallets again...

Post#17 » Wed May 27, 2015 4:03 pm

I saw in the video the staircase is "rounding down" the sample points. But point being analog has no sample points in the wave

Its like a painting and a picture of a painting. On the actual painting you can look at it as close as you want, and see the fine bumps in the canvas and the character of the paint. But a picture of a painting the closer you zoom it just gets pixelated and the fidelity of actually looking at the painted canvas is lost.

You can increase the resolution of the picture, but it will never be just the same as the real thing, because eventually it will get pixelated
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Re: Ok Shenmue fans, time to open your wallets again...

Post#18 » Wed May 27, 2015 7:00 pm

dan1234 wrote:You're right, we can't hear alot of the higher frequencies. But the difference is there

I'm not sure what your point is.

Your argument is like saying, "We should only watch live plays and never watch movies, because TVs cannot reproduce the ultraviolet light that is present from the lighting in a physical room." That's true, but our eyes can't see ultraviolet light, so the fact that it's missing from our TV screens is irrelevant. Why worry about the replication of a factor that has zero impact on the way our bodies experience the physical world? There's no point in replicating phenomena that are beyond the capabilities of our bodies to perceive. We will never know what ultrasonic frequencies sound like or what ultraviolet light looks like, so there is no reason to replicate them in the technology we use to record sound and images.

Even if there were some way for our bodies to detect ultrasonic frequencies without the use of our ears, vinyl would still be a terrible way to try to capture that content, because the high frequencies on a record are the first things to go the more you play it. The high frequencies in a CD are always there, but you couldn't even play a record 100 times before you'd have caused irreversible damage to the audio.
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Re: Ok Shenmue fans, time to open your wallets again...

Post#19 » Wed May 27, 2015 7:02 pm

I truly wanted to stay out of this conversation.

I will keep it simple.

Fuck Digital! :twisted:
Analog FTW. :mrgreen:
Viva la Vinyl :ugeek:

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Re: Ok Shenmue fans, time to open your wallets again...

Post#20 » Wed May 27, 2015 7:24 pm

We get it. You don't like vinyl. That's fine.

Can we move on now please?...

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