My two penny worth...
On 15ips tape - yes, this is fairly limited in one way, that 20 k or less
was often the cut-off frequency, that was the 3dB point, but the roll off
was very slow, often only 6dB per Octave at first until near the first
extinction point caused by the head gap so it doesn't have the artefacts of
the brickwall filters on an apparently similar bandwidth 44/48 k digital
system. As a result it generally sounds "nicer" even though less accurate.
Used creatively this can be a positive boon, but it remains far more
distinguishable from the original sounds from the mics than even a modest
digital recorder like the original pcmf1.
On what is needed - I am always dubious about things when people say this
is all that is "needed". I can't help remembering that every major advance
in recording technology, cylinder->disk, mechanical->electrical,
disk->tape, shellac->vinyl, vinyl->CD has been accompanied by claims of
"indistinguishable from the real thing". On the other hand, we do have more
real scientific evidence these days. I'm quite happy to use 16/48 (properly
dithered) in a concert situation (often had to in the past because we had
to use Adat light pipe converters) but I would only use it for recording if
I had absolutely no choice. I would normally go for 24/96 for that unless
I was absolutely sure no processing would happen to the sound afterwards.
incidentally, I'm surprised that the Beeb came up with Jazz as the worst
case dynamic range - obviously never came up against electro-acoustic music!
Anyway, I don't know why people worry any longer - memory is so
ridiculously cheap so why not just do the best you can? The first digital
audio workstation we had was based on a PDP11 16 bit computer running Music
11 and it had the grand total of 5 megabytes (yes, 5,000,000 bytes) on two
RK05 hard drives. They cost over a thousand pounds second hand - I have
several terabytes on my home machine which cost, in all, about half that.
The great thing about earlier (analogue) systems is that the recording
process generally captured more than the contemporaneous replay systems
could reproduce - why save pennies on digital systems to reverse that?
Dave
On 28 May 2013 03:41, Ronald C.F. Antony <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 27 May 2013, at 21:23, Sampo Syreeni <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> > 24/96 is already twice as much even as a non-shaped format, but perhaps
> has to be chosen evenso if we want to be sure it's transparent; as the next
> common format which includes both sufficient sampling rate and sufficiently
> low self-noise to truly cover even the most nastiest of circumstances. If
> nothing else, we can be fully sure nothing above that will *ever* be needed
> even if we just treat it as a naively, TPDF-dithered, somewhat frequency
> limited at the upper end channel.
>
> One notable exception: pitch processing e.g. in a sampler when sort of
> "slow down" playback, or digital "spinning" of "disks" by DJs etc.
>
> Also, digital volume controls may benefit from higher than 20-bit word
> length.
>
> But one would think capture at 96/24 should cover 98% of all scenarios,
> particularly since DJs rarely spin chamber music.
>
> Different story with scientific recordings of sound, think bat or whale
> studies, but that an entirely different game.
>
> Sent from my mobile phone
>
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--
As of 1st October 2012, I have retired from the University, so this
disclaimer is redundant....
These are my own views and may or may not be shared by my employer
Dave Malham
Ex-Music Research Centre
Department of Music
The University of York
Heslington
York YO10 5DD
UK
'Ambisonics - Component Imaging for Audio'
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