From: ujwb@uxa.ecn.bgu.edu (Jeff Beer)
Subject: Re: Digital vs. Tape vs. Vinyl
Organization: Educational Computing Network
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 05:14:02 GMT

In article <ALLMUSIC%92121721562141@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU> Michael <EVK102@URIACC.URI.EDU> writes:
>More about digital --
>
>Frank Zappa claims that forcing music through a a/d converter filters out
>all of the emotion, the subliminal feeling deep within music.  He claims
>it cheapens it.  Howwever, I feel that it is important to note that
>Zappa stuff still comes out on CD.


hmmm, are you sure it was Zappa?   It isn't like that someone so anal about
the role of the composer over the performer would say that.
I thought I heard him once say that digital made you realize how
noisy analog was.  I didn't know Zappa to worry that much about the
emotion subliminal feeling in the first place.  He usually scoffs at
that, saying that that comes because of the way sounds makes neat looking
graphs with your nervous system, and that the emotional or subliminal
dimension was all subjective.  I know he said something like that
sometime in a Downbeat interview.

now I could imagine Keith Jarrett saying that kind of thing.

Analog has its devotees, and I know an AAD CD can sound real good.
There are some good DDD ones.  People mentioned brands like Chesky.
There are others such as BIS and they do classical music.  I think DDD
helps Sharrock type guitars, because it sorts out the textures better
than analogue.   It does help things in which the sound of the music relies
heavily on reverb.  It does a great job on harps, harpsichord, Indian
instruments.  It has troubles with violins, cellos, and the like,
because of the complex transients in their attacks.

The audiophile folks tend to be analog proponents, saying it is more
musical.  However, whenever they talk about music, I get the impression
their knowledge of music is suspect.  For one thing, they tend to like
records that have good engineering over good musical performances.  The
classic audiophile record is the soundtrack to Casino Royale.  Casino
Royale might be good film music, but it is hardly the type of thing to
get excited about on a musical point of view.

Rudy Van Gelder is known to be a good engineer. In fact, the audiophile
folks tend to like him, because he doesn't overproduce a
recording to death.  I read an interview with him, and he prefers
digital 100%.  (An aside, he also tends to want to record the bass
players with 100% of the sound coming from the pickup.  That drives most
bassists crazy.  They usually want to be record with a mix of the sound
coming from their pickup, and a microphone picking up the bass
acoustically.  After all, it is _their_ sound) 

There is a newer version of Kind Of Blue on CD.  A friend of mine has
it, and he says it is truly amazing.  He is going to loan it to me soon,
and I will do a comparison with the original CD issue.

I heard over in rec.music.classical a tale from someone who was
recording a pianist.  After they were done, just for the hell of it,
they recorded him on a short piece using a Synclavier at a sample rate
of 100K.  They played it back at 100K.  He said the sound was so real
that he thought it was the piano.  So we were screwed when they picked
the 44K sampling rate of the CD.  It would have made the CD only
slightly bigger.

I think to sum up, being digital is no guarantee that it will sound
good.  It is an art... to make them sound good, and you have to do
different things, sometimes by hook and crook, and the final sound 
is going to be different than good analog.  The good digital sounds 
very good.  The good analog sounds very good.  But I think the average 
digital is way better than the average analog.

the DDD Beer 
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