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Old 2007.04.09, 07:49 PM   #11
HEDOfloe
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I don't understand this format so well, is it just a dvd with more capacity? Also, I don't see why people would buy this unless it is just for a collection because even if you could hear the difference in quality, most people probably won't be able to rip it so that they can listen to it outside of their tvs or computers.
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Old 2007.04.10, 09:02 AM   #12
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It's a regular DVD disc, except instead of high quality video, there's high quality audio.

Im sure audiophiles still find reason to complain about it. Glath? =P

as far as I'm concerned, LP > whatever else.
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Old 2007.04.10, 09:07 AM   #13
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Originally Posted by Tokyo Jihad View Post
LP > whatever else.
is LP's sound quality so far better?
cause I always wanted to know why there are musicians that still release LPs
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Old 2007.04.10, 09:09 AM   #14
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Nah, I'm pretty sure almost whatever else > LP sound quality wise. I'm speaking from a strictly "cool-ness" factor.
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Old 2007.04.10, 11:04 AM   #15
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Originally Posted by justriiingo View Post
I can't believe people would still want to buy the HF DVD after seeing the clips.
Good point. XD

I'm too young to have a relation to LP's other than my Mom's collection of jazz that I listen to all the time.
And I don't think I'll be getting the DVD unless something very exciting happens to be on it - my money will be better spent on adding to my Ringo single collection.
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Old 2007.04.10, 11:30 AM   #16
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Originally Posted by Tokyo Jihad View Post
I'm speaking from a strictly "cool-ness" factor.
with it I totally agree!
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Old 2007.04.11, 01:09 PM   #17
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So... When I came home from a weekend visit home, I found that my power amp would no longer power up. I want to cry. I think this makes my choice of passing the DVD a little easier since I'll have no way of listening to the damn thing until I can afford a new amp/get this one repaired.
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Old 2007.04.12, 03:21 PM   #18
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The debate on sound quality of DVD-A vs LP is an old one.
It's the same battle that's been done on digital vs. analogue.
LP are an analogue medium and DVDs are a digital medium.
I'll try to explain the difference as best as I can.

The human ear can listen to a staggering quantity of sound frequencies (although it pales in comparision to many animals, like our friendly cats and dogs, for example). We can listen to sounds as soft as a mosquito beating its wings, and under certain circumstances, we might stand the sound of a jet engine (as long as we are not too close, because we would become instantly deaf due to the tremendous sound pressure on the ear).

Having cleared this up, there is the challenge of transfering such a big variety of sounds onto a physical medium like tape, or a hard drive. Both methods are different, and have their advantages and disadvantages.

To record the sounds, the microphone receives the sound frequencies and transfers them into electrical signals. This is the same process for both digital and analogue mediums. But it's after this that things differ.
Tape is a magnetic medium. The electrical signals that carry the sounds are converted into magnetic energy, that is imprinted into the sensitive surface of the tape. Because we are always dealing with natural forces, no frequencies are lost during this transition to tape, although there is a downside. The downside is that as the sound signal passes through all that circuitry, noise is being added to the signal as well. The more circuitry exists in the signal path, the more noise is added.

As for digital, the electrical sound signal has to be converted into a series of 0 and 1. Each frequency is mathematically converted into zeroes and ones. These series of zeroes and ones are again converted into electrical signals, when they go out to the speakers for listening pleasure. But here's the catch: the quantity of frequencies existing in the signal is so GIGANTIC that the amount of space that is necessary on disc to mathematically store all of them would be enormous, maybe even infinite.
So a compromise was necessary. To elaborate the CD format, it was decided that only the frequencies that remained within the listening range of the human ear would be subject to mathematical conversion.
But in live music, even though we cannot hear all frequencies, we can feel them, and they have a very important impoact in our apreciation of the music as a whole.
Another compromise is the speed at which the computer can convert the frequencies into mathematical data.

In the case of tape, all of the sound energy is directly imprinted into the surface of the tape. But a computer needs to convert sound energy into a mathematical wave using coordinates. The speed at which the computers can do this operation has been increasing. For CD, the possibilities of the time only allowed for a conversion of 41 Khz sample rates and 16 bit wordlengths. Now DVD-A allows for the double of those values. but, even so, during the process of converting sound into mathematical data, there is quite a bit of sound information that is forever lost in the process.
The advantage of digital is that the amount of circuitry that the sound signal has to pass is less, and this results in less noise inside the sound signal.
Also, because it's mathematic information, the music can be played many times without sound degradation.
If a tape is played too many times, the sound slowly degrades.

But on the other hand: because music formats are changing so fast, a song recorded digitally today might be completely unplayable 20 years from now, because there might be no devices that would recognize the present format.
But it will still be possible to listen to magnetic tapes, because the mechanisms, as long as they are maintained, can be very durable.
Today, we can still listen to tapes recorded many decades ago.

Another aspect is sound distortion: If you record a loud signal on tape, the distortion produced tends to be much more "bearable" or "musical" than in the digital medium, where it is considered "too harsh".
This is one reason why so many people prefer tape: they claim the sound to be "more warm" and "saturated" than the digital medium, that is considered "sterile" and "cold".

But this is also the result of habit: we have listened to tapes for many decades. It is natural that the sound of CDs was harder to accept.
But musical genres have appeared that take full advantage of the characteristics of the CD: electronica, glitch, dance music, etc.
As people grow in a digital environment, the bias towards tape is diminishing. But for many musical styles, listening to a full saturated tape sound reproduced in a vinil is still the way to go for the ultimate experience.

Most of the people don't care about the sound difference in digital compared to tape. It is a matter of training. when I was young, I didn't care, but I've been doing recordings for quite some time. I've had the experience of recording both in tape, and now in digital. When you become accustomed to mixing sounds in high resolution, and then you listen to the finished product in CD or Mp3, the difference in sound quality is quite noticeable. but regardless, I've learned to appreciate the advantages that each medium brings, and accept its disadvantages. The difference in sound quality does not disturb my enjoyment/apreciation of the music, and the same goes for any audiophile (which I am not). But audiophiles will always relish at the opportunity of listening to music in the maximum resolution/quality as possible. It is the "caviar" of the sound listening experience, and makes the music we already love all the much sweeter.

Sorry for the long post.
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Old 2007.04.12, 07:37 PM   #19
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Incredible post, bebio. Thank you.
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Old 2007.04.12, 07:59 PM   #20
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I already knew most everything there, and there's a couple of other things I thought I'd point out.

bebio is speaking from a white paper "this is how these products officially are" standpoint, but in reality, the one that's better, depends upon which product was based on the other, and it doesn't always go one way. Sometimes the vinyl is better than the digital, and sometimes the digital is better than the vinyl. It also depends on your turntable, because the cheaper your turntable is, the more tempting that the 'cleaner' sound of CDs will be.

I like buying vinyls, and recording them in 192kHz with an overkill turntable. It's hard to hear the difference, and you get the convenience and durability of digital, but you lose the advantage over CD if you're not playing back those files on a 192kHz soundcard with an unforgiving set of speakers or headphones. Those files also take up a lot of space (at least six times as much as CD - depending upon whether you use Floating Point or not), and WavPack is the only feasible lossless format to compress them, while most/all other lossless formats specialize in 44.1kHz/16bit (standard CD resolution audio).

I'd say that with extremely high-end digital (whether you're talking about audio or photos), the only thing you lose is the warmth of analog. It's just something you can't capture or convey with digital. You can just mask it with tubes or other expensive go-between pieces of audio equipment.
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