> I know that this is going to sound stupid to most of you. But I still question
> using digital storage to store analog information. Sound is analog. At some
> point in the process you are going to have to convert analog to digital.
Very true... the only issue is that as soon as you try to store data in an
analog format, you have to worry about A) physically moving parts that are
very sensitive (like phonograph cartridges) or B) media damage (like a
cassette). Degradation becomes too much of a factor, both on the playback
end *and* on the media.
As for storing the data digitally, Nyquist's theorem (IIRC) states that with
a sampling frequency of n Hz, you can store data at *NO LOSS* that goes up to
the Nyquist frequency, which is n/2 Hz. Now, currently, a CD stores data at
44.1kHz, 16 bits wide. That means that there are 65536 distinct possible
sound intensity values. As digital storage sizes increase, the potential
exists to double the sampling rate to 88.2kHz (bringing the Nyquist frequency
to 44.1kHz, high enough to be inaudible by animals, and finishing up the
farthest reaches of the dynamic range that the human ear can discern), and
bringing the bit width to 32 bits (so there would be 4294967296 distinct
sound pressure values). You could store *much* higher quality audio in only
4x the space.
If such a format shift was performed, backward compatibility into older DAC's
would be trivial (cut the last 2 bytes off of the end of the sample, making
it the most significant 16 bits, then skip every other sample to bring the
sample rate to 44.1kHz) without going below the current quality standard. If
such a format shift occurred, the bottleneck of audio quality would no longer
be the storage medium, but the playback equipment, and whether your speaker
system could reliably respond across the range that you're encoding into your
media.
/Andrew
-----------------------------------------------------------------
To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word
"unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
