Which bit depth rate should be enough to ensure that the humar ear no longer notice any difference between digital and pure analog?
I'm asking this because nowadays you can always hear or read the "ooh, the analog synths were so much better". I admit I never got an analog synth.
Is it because of the synth features? Or only about the sound?
If it's only about the sound impression to the ear, there's always the possibility to record / sample at such frequency / bit depth rate so the final result could get 1:1 to pure analog path - for the human ear.
If it's about the method, then I don't know. They may still be right, provided the analog synth shows both ease of use and deep editing - as compared to digital. In the times of the DX7, that was the case. Is it still now? I doubt it but one can never be sure.
P.S. If my question falls into an inappropriate forum, feel free to move it to the right one.
Digital vs. analog question
Re: Digital vs. analog question
To be short: the human ear doesn't know the difference. The human brain is the problem. :)
Well written question and food for thought and a neverending discussion. :)
Well written question and food for thought and a neverending discussion. :)
Re: Digital vs. analog question
I owned a Juno 106 for a while, and when I play Juno 106 Synth Legends patches on my Integra I don't hear a noticeable difference. Sounds great to me either way. Pretty much the same.
The only thing the Juno had that an Integra can't imitate to near perfection is that noisy chorus. Personally, I didn't care for the Juno's chorus either way so that one depends on how you look at it, but maybe if you played with chorus settings on a VA you could get the same sounds.
The only thing the Juno had that an Integra can't imitate to near perfection is that noisy chorus. Personally, I didn't care for the Juno's chorus either way so that one depends on how you look at it, but maybe if you played with chorus settings on a VA you could get the same sounds.
Re: Digital vs. analog question
"the human ear doesn't know the difference. The human brain is the problem." Love it! Thanks, HK77.
Re: Digital vs. analog question
Digital v analogue
Major discussion..
It depends what you want to achieve with your sound..
if you want hard sound digital will always give you that
if your looking for a warmer sound thats where analogue comes in..
The harshness of digital is of course to do with stepping in the digital realm of 1s and 0s.
where as analogue is pure sound cycles generated by voltage.
Major discussion..
It depends what you want to achieve with your sound..
if you want hard sound digital will always give you that
if your looking for a warmer sound thats where analogue comes in..
The harshness of digital is of course to do with stepping in the digital realm of 1s and 0s.
where as analogue is pure sound cycles generated by voltage.
Re: Digital vs. analog question
The thing is..
... what ever you will do, you will still go to the final product:
16bit / 44100Hz as audio track on a CD.
:)
So the most listen medium as fas as I know, for the moment, is Audio CD.
Yes, the internet is full of mp3, of itunes tracks, but, as an artist, a release is made on Audio CD.
Which is 16 bit / 44100 Hz.
The only way of listen the pure analog "thing" is to sing live, and people listen to your gear.
:)
As recording, mixing, most of the studios, work in 24bit/48000Hz.
Why?
Because this way they can capture the sound with a good quality and a good dynamic.
The 96Khz / 192KHz is still hard to achieve because it is asking for good resources, from hard disk to processor, or other hardware recording gear, an not only as hard disk space, but writting speed too.
Depends on how many channels are recording in the same time...
As recording, it depends on hardware.
Some of the keyboards have digital out, some of them don't. Some of them have balanced outputs, some of them not.
The quality of the recording is the purpose.
Now, again, it depends on the ADC of the keyboard, sound card, even the cables matter.
And again, as artist, the final product, is a digital track, on an Audio CD.
So if you record it analog, digital, on stereo track, multitrack, whatever, the final product should be a digital audio track on an Audio CD, and released as a single or album.
I know it is the internet era, and many artist are releasing itunes album...
... but as an alternative.
They are still releasing Audio CD albums.
... what ever you will do, you will still go to the final product:
16bit / 44100Hz as audio track on a CD.
:)
So the most listen medium as fas as I know, for the moment, is Audio CD.
Yes, the internet is full of mp3, of itunes tracks, but, as an artist, a release is made on Audio CD.
Which is 16 bit / 44100 Hz.
The only way of listen the pure analog "thing" is to sing live, and people listen to your gear.
:)
As recording, mixing, most of the studios, work in 24bit/48000Hz.
Why?
Because this way they can capture the sound with a good quality and a good dynamic.
The 96Khz / 192KHz is still hard to achieve because it is asking for good resources, from hard disk to processor, or other hardware recording gear, an not only as hard disk space, but writting speed too.
Depends on how many channels are recording in the same time...
As recording, it depends on hardware.
Some of the keyboards have digital out, some of them don't. Some of them have balanced outputs, some of them not.
The quality of the recording is the purpose.
Now, again, it depends on the ADC of the keyboard, sound card, even the cables matter.
And again, as artist, the final product, is a digital track, on an Audio CD.
So if you record it analog, digital, on stereo track, multitrack, whatever, the final product should be a digital audio track on an Audio CD, and released as a single or album.
I know it is the internet era, and many artist are releasing itunes album...
... but as an alternative.
They are still releasing Audio CD albums.
Re: Digital vs. analog question
Once you go to the digtial realm production quality is key.
If you started with an analogue master you digital production will have a better quality
Simply because its an original sound source.. where as digital sources tend to already be generation processed sounds.
As said, no one who only hears the Finnish product is realy going to notice if you had start digital and then produce the CD since that what they hear.
Which is why you often hear that fans feel there favorite band sounded better live, because its all coming directly from the source digital or analogue.
Just as a side comparison regarding production...
Many years ago I switch from listening to mainstream music and moved over to classical
and my main reason was fidelity. I was starting to feel cheated with mainstream music by the over processed artificial sound that i was hearing, nothing sounded real.
Classical gave my ear an my brain back what it was missing.
If you started with an analogue master you digital production will have a better quality
Simply because its an original sound source.. where as digital sources tend to already be generation processed sounds.
As said, no one who only hears the Finnish product is realy going to notice if you had start digital and then produce the CD since that what they hear.
Which is why you often hear that fans feel there favorite band sounded better live, because its all coming directly from the source digital or analogue.
Just as a side comparison regarding production...
Many years ago I switch from listening to mainstream music and moved over to classical
and my main reason was fidelity. I was starting to feel cheated with mainstream music by the over processed artificial sound that i was hearing, nothing sounded real.
Classical gave my ear an my brain back what it was missing.
Re: Digital vs. analog question
Just buy any analog synth and a big bag of therapeutical 'semiprecious stone' and place it beneath it.
It now absorbs all the bad vibrations from digital gear in your neighbourhood.
A heavy plate made of granite will also help dampen the pcb vibrations inside your synth.
Don´t forget to ionize the air in your studio! The airwaves will move much smoother throu it.
You will now enjoy a much clearer even more analog sound!
And don´t use electrons produced in atomic power plants. ;)
It now absorbs all the bad vibrations from digital gear in your neighbourhood.
A heavy plate made of granite will also help dampen the pcb vibrations inside your synth.
Don´t forget to ionize the air in your studio! The airwaves will move much smoother throu it.
You will now enjoy a much clearer even more analog sound!
And don´t use electrons produced in atomic power plants. ;)
Re: Digital vs. analog question
What are you comparing here? Spinach and frutti di mare?Quinnx. wrote: I was starting to feel cheated with mainstream music by the over processed artificial sound that i was hearing, nothing sounded real.
Classical gave my ear an my brain back what it was missing.
btw.: Any 'classical' instrument is a high tech machine. Esp. Organs!
It´s all artificial and can be 'overproduced' or played in a cheesy way. :P
Re: Digital vs. analog question
Are you sure your on the right track?
I am speaking orchestral classical which are all acoustic instruments.. ;-)
Motzart Beethoven Vivaldi Tchaikovsky etc..
I am speaking orchestral classical which are all acoustic instruments.. ;-)
Motzart Beethoven Vivaldi Tchaikovsky etc..
Re: Digital vs. analog question
Nobody wants to respond specifically to my question (or doesn't know how to answer).
I asked which bit depth resolution should A DIGITAL SYNTH have that, once you plug it into headphones / aux out etc. you cannot figure out it's digital or analog. IN REAL TIME. Not in any recording.
I also want to debunk the "theory" that once recorded everything will sound digitized. I beg to differ. A very high bit depth rate / resolution will allow for a very rounded wave which will ressemble the analog wave behaviour much more than a 16 bit wave. The sound expression and dynamics from such a source will certainly appear (albeit into a truncated form) in the final mix, and if a 1024 bit wave is recorded in a 16 bit CD format it will sound different that a 16 bit wave recorded in a 16 bit format. If something is lost, that doesn't mean EVERYTHING is lost.
This is not a question for synth experts. This is a more a question for biology experts (experts in human ear) who happen to know a bit about sound gear technicalities. Just a bit.
Probably that's why everybody is beating around the bush and not answering straight.
I asked which bit depth resolution should A DIGITAL SYNTH have that, once you plug it into headphones / aux out etc. you cannot figure out it's digital or analog. IN REAL TIME. Not in any recording.
I also want to debunk the "theory" that once recorded everything will sound digitized. I beg to differ. A very high bit depth rate / resolution will allow for a very rounded wave which will ressemble the analog wave behaviour much more than a 16 bit wave. The sound expression and dynamics from such a source will certainly appear (albeit into a truncated form) in the final mix, and if a 1024 bit wave is recorded in a 16 bit CD format it will sound different that a 16 bit wave recorded in a 16 bit format. If something is lost, that doesn't mean EVERYTHING is lost.
This is not a question for synth experts. This is a more a question for biology experts (experts in human ear) who happen to know a bit about sound gear technicalities. Just a bit.
Probably that's why everybody is beating around the bush and not answering straight.
Re: Digital vs. analog question
Personally I have found a difference in how it sounds on bit rate
32 bit to me always sounded warmer than 16 and of course during production stage you do want to use more than 16 bits. for live it would realy mater because your doing everything realtime
but in production your mixing slicing resampling and all that can take its toll.
If you have a keen ear going from 32 to 16 there is a harshness there that would not have been there before.
but have said that only you will notice it because you started with the original source.
The only time it really matters is when your trying to stand up against other music, obviously the thing to do is run a comparison between them and see if you have reached your goal.
If your starting with digital gear your not going to retain or gain anything from your synth since they mostly are 44k 16bit so you will never reach any grater level that what is coming from the synth
Some however will send the sound at higher sampling rates via digital out like the vsynth will send at 96k
but its source is still 44k.
the purpose of this is to retain signal and again useful for production and live.
so if you start digital its always going to be digital but if you want to retain signal you could use AD amps that resample and playback at higher sample rates which will give you the purest signal on output.
32 bit to me always sounded warmer than 16 and of course during production stage you do want to use more than 16 bits. for live it would realy mater because your doing everything realtime
but in production your mixing slicing resampling and all that can take its toll.
If you have a keen ear going from 32 to 16 there is a harshness there that would not have been there before.
but have said that only you will notice it because you started with the original source.
The only time it really matters is when your trying to stand up against other music, obviously the thing to do is run a comparison between them and see if you have reached your goal.
If your starting with digital gear your not going to retain or gain anything from your synth since they mostly are 44k 16bit so you will never reach any grater level that what is coming from the synth
Some however will send the sound at higher sampling rates via digital out like the vsynth will send at 96k
but its source is still 44k.
the purpose of this is to retain signal and again useful for production and live.
so if you start digital its always going to be digital but if you want to retain signal you could use AD amps that resample and playback at higher sample rates which will give you the purest signal on output.
Re: Digital vs. analog question
On this page you can see the frequencies of a whole MIDI keyboard: http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/jw/notes.html
C8 = 4186 Hz
The spectrum you can reproduce without any loss with 44.1 kHz sampling rate is 22.05 kHz.
You can get all multiples of C8 until 20930 (5x) into that frequency range.
Even for C8 you still get the most important parts of a saw spectrum (http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http ... wAg&dur=37) into the allowed range.
So you don't need any better than that. The 16 bit are debatable but production in a studio with 96kHz and 24..32 bit dynamical resolution and encoding this to 16bit at 44.1kHz is more than enough to preserve a two dimensional waveform and it´s dynamics. It does not matter if the generator was analog or digital in the first place.
What you cannot preserve is room acustics and a live concert feeling. No stereo or monitor box can go into the infraschall/subsonic range which is important in a natural environment.
You cannot with normal stereo technology recreate the signal response of a concert hall with all that is in it.
And you would need a artificial head with microphones as ears, but the head has to be a copy of yours with ears and hair. That´s just not possible for normal human beings. Maybe an oligarch can afford to have a concert recorded with that technology.
C8 = 4186 Hz
The spectrum you can reproduce without any loss with 44.1 kHz sampling rate is 22.05 kHz.
You can get all multiples of C8 until 20930 (5x) into that frequency range.
Even for C8 you still get the most important parts of a saw spectrum (http://www.google.de/imgres?imgurl=http ... wAg&dur=37) into the allowed range.
So you don't need any better than that. The 16 bit are debatable but production in a studio with 96kHz and 24..32 bit dynamical resolution and encoding this to 16bit at 44.1kHz is more than enough to preserve a two dimensional waveform and it´s dynamics. It does not matter if the generator was analog or digital in the first place.
What you cannot preserve is room acustics and a live concert feeling. No stereo or monitor box can go into the infraschall/subsonic range which is important in a natural environment.
You cannot with normal stereo technology recreate the signal response of a concert hall with all that is in it.
And you would need a artificial head with microphones as ears, but the head has to be a copy of yours with ears and hair. That´s just not possible for normal human beings. Maybe an oligarch can afford to have a concert recorded with that technology.
Re: Digital vs. analog question
Well, I'm not a biology expert but the human hearing is a very complex and yet very imperfect, not distinguishing Stereo images well and very limited in what respects high frequencies and varying from individual to individual (of course this is not news as almost everybody knows this ;-)Parsifal wrote:Nobody wants to respond specifically to my question (or doesn't know how to answer).
I asked which bit depth resolution should A DIGITAL SYNTH have that, once you plug it into headphones / aux out etc. you cannot figure out it's digital or analog. IN REAL TIME. Not in any recording.
I also want to debunk the "theory" that once recorded everything will sound digitized. I beg to differ. A very high bit depth rate / resolution will allow for a very rounded wave which will ressemble the analog wave behaviour much more than a 16 bit wave. The sound expression and dynamics from such a source will certainly appear (albeit into a truncated form) in the final mix, and if a 1024 bit wave is recorded in a 16 bit CD format it will sound different that a 16 bit wave recorded in a 16 bit format. If something is lost, that doesn't mean EVERYTHING is lost.
This is not a question for synth experts. This is a more a question for biology experts (experts in human ear) who happen to know a bit about sound gear technicalities. Just a bit.
Probably that's why everybody is beating around the bush and not answering straight.
Based on my experience with sound equipment design (late 80's and early 90's), I would say that sampling an audio source (20hz-20khz) at at least 256-512khz uncompressed and then rebuilding the sliced sampling on a top of the line 40 bit DAC, no audiophile will be able to distinguish it from the original.
Back then I've designed synths using Digital oscillators, capable of generating Sine, triangular and sawtooth wave frequencies up to C10 (33488 hz non audible by the human kind) without distortion nor unwanted harmonics.
How come they claim HI-FI sampling at 44.1 kHz ??? This is just twice the frequency of what the human hear can perceive.
Of course they use compressing algorithms, which does the trick and compensates for the lack of sampling cycles, but to some extent, it even worsen the issue by introducing unwanted artifacts and harmonics.
Re: Digital vs. analog question
44.1k is Stereo 2 channelHow come they claim HI-FI sampling at 44.1 kHz ??? This is just twice the frequency of what the human hear can perceive.
which means each ear receives 22k ;)