Klarinet Archive - Posting 000423.txt from 1997/11

From: Mark Charette <charette@-----.com>
Subj: Re: Recording Quality of Clarinet
Date: Tue, 11 Nov 1997 11:58:56 -0500

Jrykorten@-----.com wrote:
>
> Regarding the degredation that occurs during the recording process: I agree
> whole heartedly. For me, ever since CD's predominated the market, I have had
> a great deal of difficulty listening to either the piano or the clarinet.
> Turns out the CD wipes out all the upper harmonics! (A 10kHz sine wave on a
> CD looks like a triangle wave). It's probably for this reason that I can't
> get excited about any clarinetists sound from a CD. In fact Shifrin's sound -
> which used to excite me so - now sounds like anybody else when I listen to
> him on CD. And I'm sure this is because of the CD recording process.
>
> The piano on the other hand sounds like some cartooon version of a piano with
> "boingy" sounding strings to me.

Jerry,
If a triangle's what you're seeing off the end of your CD player then
it's time to get it fixed. Even though the CD is recorded at
44 Khz/channel (so that 22Khz is it's maximum recordable frequency)
it goes through a resonably sophisticated digital->analog conversion.
At 10Khz there's no statistically significant difference in the
output waveform from digital recordings.

I used digital technology 18 years ago that was approximately equal
to todays technology to record machine vibration in anti-submarine
warfare equipment. We did an enormous amout of statistical work,
comparing digital to analog recording techniques. In the range of
<10Hz to 18Khz digital technology won out by a considerable margin
in accuracy and repeatability of recording. We used transducers that
were epoxyed onto the equipment, so we could repeat the test using
many different types of recording medium.

Above 18Khz the difference was less discernable on a scope or frequency
analyzer. Below 10 Hz the analog didn't record at all (and we
had the best analog equipment your money could buy at the time).

The digital recordings we made were at (I think) 44 Khz - in any case
they were less than 48Khz for other reasons.

Ping jockeys (sonar technicians) preferred the digital recordings to
analog recordings of contacts. They swore that they could hear more
detail in the digital recordings, and during testing this was
indicated (there were a greater number of correct matches to ship
types when using the digital recordings).

Whether or not you (or I) _prefer_ digital over analog recordings
is a completely different matter. I grew up with a Dynaco ST120,
Dynaco pre-amp, a great turntable (whose name I forget) along with
a Stanton mag pickup and AR-1a speakers. I still get teary-eyed
thinking about them ...

On a slightly different tangent - I _do_ like DDA LPs (Digitally
recorded and mastered but converted to vinyl) better than the
DDD CDs of the same piece. I _think_ I can hear a difference, but
then again the RIAA equalization from the cartridge and difference
in sound level (I don't think I can manually match the sound levels
quite right) may be making all the difference ...
--
Mark Charette, Webmaster - http://www.sneezy.org/clarinet
Web/Personal - charette@-----.org
Business - charette@-----.com

   
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