Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 December 29

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December 29

Sound quality and record collecting

I started collecting music at that unfortunate time when audio tapes were considered to be the most convenient way to collect music, and then quickly switched to CDs when the players became affordable. CDs were described as being higher quality than vinyl, so I never bothered collecting records. I bought my first iPod about three years ago and loved it for travel and home. However, there was a noticeable decrease in sound quality over CDs, especially when using headphones, so I've kept up on my CD collecting and avoided music downloads

I understand why MP3s are of lower quality than CDs (due to compression, if I understand correctly), and I've skimmed Analog sound vs. digital sound. Can someone explain to me why a CD is superior in quality, but to some a record still sounds better? I know I'm asking for opinions, but I've been musing on this for over a year now, and I'm thinking of taking the plunge and becoming a record collector. My tastes tend to run toward punk, post-punk, and indie rock, and a lot of these artists did and still do vinyl-only releases. So that's one reason to start collecting at this late date (also, everytime I look at a Big Black or Shellac CD, I feel like Steve Albini is disappointed in me).

Is it too late for me, or is record collecting still worthwhile? I know I'll never own Yesterday and Today with the butcher cover, but Thrill Jockey just released a vinyl-only set of singles that I'd like to get. Are there are any record collectors out there who can recommend a good way to get started?

Back to audio quality for a minute, how come you can sometimes hear that little squeak of the fingers moving on the guitar strings and sometimes you can't? Do record producers edit that out?

Sorry about the length of this question, but as I said I've been considering this for a long time. One last question I suppose I should ask: can anyone recommend a good record player? --Joelmills (talk) 03:27, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Seems to me that Analog sound vs. digital sound does a pretty good job of touching on the main points. The use of 16-bit amplitude sampling means quantization noise can be audible, thus the use of digital dithering. The 44100 Hz sampling rate means that the highest pitch possible to encode is 22050 Hz, and that with only two sample points. This is at the extreme upper end of human hearing, so it may or may not be audible. But in order to avoid aliasing music that is being digitized is first put through a filter that cuts out anything over 22050 Hz. Since filters must have some roll-off range they necessarily reduce audio in some range below 22050 Hz. Again whether this is audible depends on many factors. All this and more is on that page, so I'm not sure what more to say really. One thing I've thought about is that while the "two sample point" waveforms at 22050 Hz may not matter much, the "rough quantization" of waveforms continues down into more normal pitch ranges. A wave whose frequency is 11025 Hz will be sampled with only four points -- essentially some kind of triangle wave. Now we are well within the range of cymbals and other higher harmonic timbres. Cymbals, bells, and, I've always thought, pipe organs, get a lot of their zing out of having a mass of high frequency inharmonic partialsa all interfering with one another and producing difference tones and all manner of other complex interactions. But if CD-quality digital audio can only devote 4 sample points for a wave at 11025 Hz, can it really capture that super-rich zizzleness you can hear when listening to an acoustic cymbal played without any electronics? Further, what effect does the anti-aliasing filter set at 22050 Hz have on lower pitches? An octave of pitch represents a doubling of Hz, so those cymbal-rich range around 11025 Hz is only an octave below the cutoff at 22050 Hz. I am not sure how good the filters in analog-to-digital converters are these days, but I would not be surprised if lower quality ones, as well as other digital algorithms designed to avoid aliasing might easily result in an overall loss of high-end zingleness.

As for whether vinyl is better than CDs, I'm not sure there is much evidence that anyone can tell much of a difference, except perhaps the rare person with an uncanny ear who listens to music through extremely high-end audio equipment. I would guess that at the playback end of things the largest factor that colors and distorts the sound is one's loudspeakers. If you are not listening through super-fine studio monitors set up just-so, I am skeptical about whether it will make any difference (for example, how many loudspeakers in common use are actually able to sound something at 22050 Hz or above? Not a lot, I think). Furthermore, to do a fair comparison you need source material that is completely identical except that one has been pressed to vinyl and the other to CD. Since Audio mastering methods tend to differ based on what the final form will be, it may be difficult to find a true "apples to apples" comparison. Finally, there is the psychological difference of putting an LP on a turntable and placing the needle down compared to sticking a CD in a CD player. That difference may be the biggest of all in terms of how it ends up sounding.

On guitar fret noise, it has a lot to do with how the guitar is miked and during recording. If the guitarist is playing an acoustic guitar with no electronic pickups or anything then in order to record it the engineers place one or more microphones around -- perhaps one close to the sound hole, perhaps another further back to capture a more ambient sound, perhaps even one nearer the neck to capture fret noise, if they want it. You can do this with electric guitars too, but often the sound of an electric guitar depends mainly on the amp rather than on any sounds near the strings. So it is common to put the mikes up close to the amp's loudspeakers and record that, rather than miking the guitar itself. Miking instruments during recording can be a real art, and there are endless permutations on how one might go about it. That, I think, is the basic reason why on some recordings you can hear fret noise while on others you can't. For more on this general topic, see Microphone practice.

I don't know a great deal about record players, so can't answer the last question. Pfly (talk) 04:09, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for the response, Pfly. I took another look at Analog sound vs. digital sound and I understood it better with a second reading. Your example was also helpful. I guess I'm also wondering if people who collect records do it more as a hobby or because they prefer the sound quality. Is there a visceral response to listening to music on vinyl one does not get from a CD? --Joelmills (talk) 13:08, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

As a record collector I can make suppositions :) Although the quality of LP over CD will never be quantifiably better it's the very fact that the sound that comes from vinyl is preferred because it's not better. Vinyl sound is analogue (regardless of the method of recording the original sound) and to some people that sound is more enjoyable than the more accurate and neutral digital sound. Our ears and brain are accustomed to analogue sounds. The cleanliness of CD/Digital is, to be melodramatic, alien to us. This is why some people find extended CD listening sessions tiring. Too much perfection is not always the best way to go. :) Personally I'm more interested in the music than the media, but given a choice, if the clicks and pops were gone I'd prefer to listen to the coloured and analogue sound of vinyl. --WebHamster 14:14, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

The audio quality of a CD is essentially perfect. It can produce frequencies from DC to well above the range of human hearing - and it's in perfectly separated stereo which (for headphone listening at least) is also perfect. The number of bits per digital sample produces signal-to-noise ratios well above any previous recording technique - adding 'dither' to that only improves things still further. Analog recordings on tape suffer tape hiss - and in order to reduce the effects of that, some scheme such as Dolby has to be employed to boost the higher frequencies in the recording and to dial them back down again on playback. Vinyl records have all sorts of noise and deck rumble issues and also there is a serious problem with stereo separation and with the dynamic range that can be reproduced that requires these effects to be 'dialled down'. Also the vinyl wears out alarmingly quickly such that the high frequencies in the music are gradually reduced as the record is played more and more often. In every way imaginable, the CD is vastly superior to all previous music distribution media.

So why to people still persist in claiming that the older formats were better?

When you hear an album on CD, you are hearing the sound in it's most original form - but the question is whether you prefer it in it's original form or whether perhaps you like your sound to have been more heavily processed in order to fit within the limitations of older technologies. There is no reason (in principle) why CD's shouldn't be given the same set of recording 'artifacts' as vinyl or tape - but there is a perception on behalf of recording engineers that they must produce the purest version of the original possible. The reason (I suspect) that some audiophiles prefer the vinyl version of a particular recording is probably that they grew up with that version and believe that this is how the music "should" sound. The CD sounds different and faced with a choice between the sound they came to love with the original and this 'different' version, they tend to attribute the problem to some imagined flaw in CD recordings which really isn't there. IMHO, the blame should lie in the laps of the recording engineers. They can process the studio recording to sound any way they like - and perhaps, in the case of nostalgic music, they should consider deliberately inducing some of the kinds of limitations that the vinyl versions had in order to preserve the original feel of the album.

I strongly suspect that some 'audiophiles' also have a wish to stick to the 'old ways' when you could debate endlessly the pro's and con's of one turntable over another and geek-out on what stylus pressure works best with this cartridge versus that. Back in the days when black vinyl was king, you could impress your friends with the awesomeness of your system - the turntable bolted to a half ton concrete block to shield it from room vibrations...that kind of thing. When you have a situation where a $15 CD player produces audio that's essentially identical to what you get out of a $1000 pro-CD player - and both of them produce essentially perfect sound - where does the 'hobby' go from there? These days we're mostly down to arguing about which system has ths shiniest knobs and the whackiest features. The last remaining bastion of sensible audio debate is in the area of speakers and headphones...which, being analog, still have problems.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:48, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

It all depends on what definition of "better" you are using surely? Is it "better" when it gives more satisfaction, or is it "better" if it has better scientific specs? In my eyes (ears!) it's music so it's better when it sounds nicer regardless of what the figures say or what media it comes on. People forget that "better" is a subjective, rather than objective, term. --WebHamster 20:32, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Whew, there's a lot of good stuff here, so I'll just pop in a few comments as I agree with pretty all that's been printed above. One thing that hasn't been touched on is your assertion that mp3s are necessarily of poorer quality than a CD. For the most part it's undeniably true, but that's because most people record and post their mp3s with a bitrate of 192kbps or even 128kbps, versus a CD's bitrate of 256kbps (sometimes higher) - that chopping off is most of the reason why mp3s sound inferior, at least to my ears. However, there's no reason you can't make mp3s at higher bitrates; I've got several at 320 kbps (created either from a soundboard or some of the higher range CDs). I don't know if the sound on them is better than a CD, but it's surely no worse. Obviously there are also completely lossless audio recording systems like FLAC out there as well.

I recall hearing an interview with Neil Young several years ago where he expressed his preference for vinyl to CD. His reasoning was that he liked the fact that the vinyl was not only imperfect out of the box but would also warp slightly with each playing, meaning that every person's vinyl record was essentially unique. I don't know if I accept that as an argument in favour of vinyl, but that was apparently his opinion on the matter. Matt Deres (talk) 16:04, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks again, everybody, for all the information. I've thinking of re-ripping my CDs at 192 kbps, since it was originally done at 128. Would a 50 percent increase in the bitrate correspond to a 50 percent increase in file size? My iTunes is already at about 28GB. --Joelmills (talk) 17:45, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Reasonably close to that, yes. Here's a bit of "original research" I just did. I've ripped the same song (ZZ Top's La Grange... hey, it was nearby!) three times leaving all the settings the same except for changes to the sampling rate. Here's what I got:

At 128kbps filesize is 3,625 kB

At 192kbps filesize is 5,437 kB

At 256kbps filesize is 7,250 kB

So, the file size of the 256kbps is exactly twice the size of the 128kbps version, which is what you suggested and what makes intrinsic sense. The 192 is essentially 1.5x the size of the 128, though it's off by a few bytes. More important than file size, though, is whether the higher rips sound better. To each their own, of course, but I don't see the value of having lots of music I don't like the sound of (if you take my meaning). I am by no means a rabid audiophile and I don't even have a proper stereo to speak of, yet even I can tell the difference between, say, a 192 and 256 rip if I'm using headphones and the music warrants it. Matt Deres (talk) 18:48, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I can certainly hear difference between a 128kbps and a 192kbps bitrate version of the same song, but I think there are diminishing returns. The 256 doesn't sound twice as good as the 128 to the human ear and there will be a point where there'll be no discernible difference to the human ear between sampling rates. Do some tests. Take a control song and sample it at various bitrates and work out the best tradeoff in bitrate/quality for your purposes. Exxolon (talk) 02:56, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

When you hear an album on CD, you are hearing the sound in it's most original form -- I'm not sure about this. What is the "original form"? Is it a choir and we're comparing a CD to the unamplified acoustic sound you'd hear with your own ears live? There no way a CD comes anywhere near to that. Or is it a band that has recorded piles of overdubs and added effects and other processing and so on, and then various mixes are made, one of which ends up chosen for the CD, which then is mastered and further processed. It's not clear to me what "original" might even mean in such a case. Another example of how CD audio might differ from whatever the "original" might be is the so-called Loudness war, in which mastering engineers take advantage of the greater dynamic range available on CD to make the whole CD sound louder than other CDs by compressing the audio and boosting overall amplitude. In short, when albums from pre-CD days are released on CD, for example, they are almost never just digitized without processing. They are not "original". ...a related issue -- it is not uncommon to find older albums remastered and released on CD, but with the CD sounding clearly worse than the vinyl -- often flatter, deader, "lifeless", etc. This is embarrassingly common. But it is not because CDs are lifeless compared to vinyl. Rather it is because it is extremely common for "digital remastering" to be done poorly. Pfly (talk) 21:49, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

why letters are returned unanswered?

I have written the following letter to yahoo question bank, but they say that my letter cannot be delivered to the addressee; here the addressee is yahoo itself. I write letter to yahoo about my opinion about their question-answer-point-vote. My free e-mail address is also yahoo. The situation seems to be like "I don't know who I am". Please given your comments about this situation.I think my letter is a kind of harsh criticsm about the question bank points getting competition.

My dear Yahoo wonderful answers-giving people,

I am an old lady and I con't understand many of the computer jargons and cluttering home page of many web-site including yahoo. There are at least fifty linkings in one home page and once clicked somewhere by mistake, the clicker willbe taken to unknown destination from where nobody can return to his original home. He will wander all the places like a vagbond aimlessly; at least begger gets some money while begging, but the wanderer in the web gets nothing; only frustration to see all unwanting ad and other alluring pictures, which have no meaning except wasting one's precious time.if the time is considered to be precious. Now about your question and answer session: you speak about many points, level 1, level 2, and level 3 to level infinity.not allowed to level 4,5,5, I don't need any point from you and I am asking question for satisfying my foolish curiosity and create more confusion in a confusing world which to my view is running after the shadows in order to satisfy their momentary sentiment and feelings. In other words, what is the point in getting points in the question answer series?. Let people ask question and let somebody gives any answer she thinks fit. Giving points to people simply create a competition in their minds which on the other hand create tension in the individual to get more points and more points, points, points; so the real thrilling of asking question and aswering question lose its real value. People ask question to get more point and more points. Why don't you throw out this old way of doing things! Internet is not a testing ground as in all other fields, it is a place where people feel free. not to be entangled thmselves with points and points, votes, and votes. Don't follow man made rules and regulation to control the internet! Let freedom prevail! freedom from custom, convention, religion, unwanting testing, points, votes, etc.

Yours thankamma —Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.97.49.2 (talk) 07:30, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't know how to respond except that I enjoyed wandering around in your letter. More technical answers are sure to come, but as far as I know, if you click the back arrow at the top left of your browser page, you will return to where you were last. Julia Rossi (talk) 08:58, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I think we have three separate questions here:

• Why did your email to Yahoo get returned? I doubt that the Yahoo "question bank" returned your letter. Almost certainly you sent it to the wrong email address - which is why it was returned to you by the email system. Try re-sending it - but make sure you type the address in exactly right.

• What happened when you clicked somewhere by mistake? You probably went to a rather nasty kind of web site (often pornography sites are like this) that some particularly annoying people created that deliberately tries to trap you by opening a confusing number of "pop-up" windows. This can be tough to avoid - and once you are tangled up in one, the simplest answer is usually to turn your computer off and start again! But there are ways to set up most web browsers to avoid thie situation. If you'd care to tell us which version of which browser you use (Internet Explorer 7 perhaps?) then I'm sure someone would be able to offer advice on how to set it up to prevent this situation from happening again in the future.

• Why does Yahoo Amswers use a complicated points system? On the Internet, it's often impossible to tell who the smart people are - and who is completely stupid, or who is being deliberately annoying. What Yahoo are attempting to do with Yahoo Answers is to use this points rating scheme to help you figure out which answers are from smart people so you can pay attention to them - and ignore the idiots (of which there are many!). When someone gets an answer, they can award points to the people who gave good answers. In this way, the smarter people will get more points and you'll be able to tell who they are in the future. However, (and I strongly agree with you here) Yahoo messed up the system by allowing themselves to ALSO use it to attract more visitors to the site by giving away 'points' as a kind of status symbol. They give away points for all sorts of strange reasons in an attempt to make their site more popular. Yahoo make money from advertising - so the more times people go there to ask and answer questions, the more money they make - irrespective of whether the answers are good or bad. This turns out to have worked very well for them - Yahoo Answers has become spectacularly popular - despite the undoubted fact that the answers people give out there are mostly AWFUL!

Here on the Wikipedia reference desks, we don't use points systems of any kind. There are no incentives to post answers when you don't know what you're talking about - and this is fine because Wikipedia is supported by donations - not by advertising, so we collect more donations when we simply offer people the service they need and they become grateful as a result. While we have MUCH fewer people using our service, the quality of the answers here is vastly better because we take pride in producing the right answers rather than caring about the number of people who come here.

SteveBaker (talk) 14:18, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Regarding the question about returning to the original site when you by unintentionally clicked a link, the back arrow, generally located on the top left of your browser window, is supposed to bring you back, as stated by Julia Rossi. However, this does not always work, especially if you've clicked some advert, which wants you to study their stuff instead of returning. The thing to do then is to open your browsing history. If you're using Firefox, there is a tiny black downwards pointing arrow just next to the green "back" arrow. When you click the little black arrow, you get a drop-down menu which allows you to back-track the path that led you to wherever you are. It used to be similar in internet explorer. but for some reason Microsoft have redesigned the interface in their latest version of IE, and I'm not sure where they've hidden the browsing history this time (I only use IE as a check when a site behaves weirdly) Oops. Double checked, and it hasn't moved much. A little black arrow just to the right of the pair of blue arrows.

To avoid clutter, I recommend using firefox with add-ons such as FlashBlock and Adblock. When I occationally browse using someone else's PC, I'm amazed how people are able to put up with all the visual noise. --NorwegianBlue ^talk 20:01, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I might be presuming too much here, but I think that someone who has trouble finding and using the "Back" arrow is not likely to be installing Firefox with FlashBlock and AdBlock, however much that information might be useful to some of the rest of us. :-) Bielle (talk) 05:34, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

I don't think the OP is having a hard time finding the back button - I think she accidentally clicked on some site (as I said, these are typically porn sites) where several dozens of popped-up windows appear which come up without banners (hence no 'back button') and which have an 'onClose' method that simply opens another window. Such things are hard to get rid of and even if you can find the original back-button, clicking on it doesn't help you any. Most browsers have a way to turn off the JavaScript events that allow those things to happen - and that's the right course of action here. SteveBaker (talk) 19:18, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

HDV camcorders and Standard-definition television question

Hello,

I want to buy a HDV camcorder like the Canon HV20 but I have a Standard-definition television set. My question is could I view content from that camcorder on my TV? The reason I want to buy a HDV camcorder is, down the line I will get a HDTV but want to preserve my memories for now on digital video. I can live with viewing the video I shoot for now as 'standard' on my TV. I am concerned I might not be able to view it at all. Please help!!! Thank you! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.139.171.183 (talk) 08:50, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Yes you will be able to watch it, but you probably need the composite video cables (yellow, red, white) to view your video. --n1yaNt 11:16, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Sorry just checking something —Preceding unsigned comment added by Littleaudrey (talk • contribs) 23:40, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Do modeling guitar amps and solid state make all guitars sound the same?

This is worry I have. I'm wondering if all guitars sound the same through modeling amps. I don't have a modeling amp myself, but I do have 2 solid state Crate practice amps. I can't afford to buy and maintain a real tube. So what is the case? MalwareSmarts (talk) 16:41, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I think I remember you asking this before. The tone of an electric guitar comes from the guitar and the amp. So, they will sound different through just about any amp. About the only way you're going to have them sound the same is if you drench them in so many effects that the sound isn't very recognizable anymore. If you're worried, try this- assuming your guitar has multiple pickups, try switching between them on any given amp. You should be able to hear the difference. Friday (talk) 17:08, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I see. This is just a big worry I have and when I have questions like this, I tend to ask them a million times. My guitar does have multiple pickups, it is an HSS set up. The humbucker sounds kind of weird clean, I can't really describe it, but the single coils get me the tone I want for clean. So all guitars will sound different through all amps unless you go nuts with the effects? MalwareSmarts (talk) 17:14, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Generally, yeah. There may be some exceptions- if another guitar had the same pickup as yours and a similar body, it might sound a lot like it. Another thing you may notice is that in addition to different tone, some will be louder than others. I've got a fairly hot Seymour Duncan in the bridge position on my main electric, and it's much higher output than the other two pickups. This means it distorts more easily and generally comes out louder. If you don't have or don't use a "lead channel" on your amp, switching to a hotter pickup is another way to make your leads stand out. Friday (talk) 17:23, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Does that mean a Fat Strat would sound similar to my Yamaha Pacifica? What about if I plugged in a regular Fender/Squier Stratocaster and then plugged in a Stratocopy? What difference would my amp make? It's a Crate Flexwave FW15R. MalwareSmarts (talk) 17:43, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

I certainly can't guess whether two guitars I haven't heard would sound similar. The best way to know is to head down to your local guitar shop and play whichever ones you're curious about. Sorry I can't be more helpful. Friday (talk) 00:19, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Sports, specifically biathlon: Qualifying for the biathlon show in Gelsenkirchen

How do the athletes qualify for the "show"? Are they invited? Or does whoever is leading the World Cup og World Championship automatically qualify? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.97.233.168 (talk) 20:03, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Contact the show producers --n1yaNt(~Cpt. Obvious~) 06:04, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Lidia Bastianich

Littleaudrey (talk) 23:18, 29 December 2007 (UTC)In your bio of Lidia Bastianich you mentioned her husband but not his name. Could you tell me her marital status. Is she married, divorced, or widowed?Littleaudrey (talk) 23:18, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

• According to this 2001 New York Times article [1] her and her husband divorced after 31 years of marriage but remain on good terms. Exxolon (talk) 02:48, 30 December 2007 (UTC)