On Wed, 6 Apr 2005, Bob Blick wrote:

> Peter writes:
>
>> A 38cm/s studio tape in brand new condition with a near perfect
>> recording will sound bad to most people when compared to a cd, even with
>> dbx and other noise canceling schemes. There are some valuable
>> recordings (like early Beatles tracks) which sound really bad on modern
>> cd because the original tapes were not good enough, for example.
>
> I disagree.
>
> Most people can't tell the difference between an mp3 and a CD.

At what data rate ? A mp3 needs to be beyond 256kBps to sound 
reasonable. If you compress 44.1kHz (=705.6kBps) cd quality audio 2:1 
(easy) using something lossless you get something like 350kBps lossless 
cd quality data. Thus if a 256kBps mp3 does sound as good as a cd then 
the size gain from using mp3 is only 350/256 ~= 36%. And a 256kBps mp3 
does *not* sound like a cd, at least not to me, although I have to 
listen carefully to a part I know well to discern them. And there are 
lossless sound compression algorythms that go way beyond 2:1. Oh, and 
usually the non-mp3 compressors (that I know of) require a peanut-sized 
integer dsp as opposed to the pentium-class processing required to do 
mp3 decompression in real time.

> Digital is not necessarily better than analog. 44100 samples per second
> with 20000 Hz bandwidth is a serious compromise.

I agree. But most people can't hear much beyond 12kHz anyway. On the 
other hand, munging the available information using mp3 in the 
upper midrange where it matters most for sound coloration is not such a 
good idea either imho. Good that most people don't care.

> DBX on analog tape doesn't make the recording quality better. It makes it
> worse. It only reduces the noise. Very few major albums were recorded with
> noise reduction. Good engineering practice, noise gates, and fast board
> work are used instead.

I agree, but someone must have botched the originals or used poor 
quality materials (or the tapes were not stored properly).

Peter
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