Of Steve, & Neil, & HiFi...

[adorshki]

Came across this in the paper today:

Neil Young: Steve Jobs listened to vinyl
By Associated Press
-- Legendary rocker Neil Young has taken his campaign for higher-fidelity digital sound to the stage of a technology conference. He says a giant of technology was on his side: the late Steve Jobs.
Young says the Apple (AAPL) co-founder was such a fan of music that he didn't use his iPod and its digitally compressed files at home. Instead, Young says, Jobs listened to vinyl albums, which are well-known to have better sound.
Young told the "D: Dive Into Media" conference Tuesday that he spoke with Jobs about creating a format that has 20 times the fidelity of files in the most current digital formats, including MP3.
He speculated that if Jobs had lived longer, he might have tried to create a system that used this higher-quality format.

On behalf of all us analog loyalists here, I feel so...vindicated! :lol:

 

[kevin the bass man]

yay for analog
music now is overly compressed and just sounds "meh" for lack of a better term (as far as sound quality). add in autotuning, overboosted gain, low bit rates, etc and its amazing that people consider newly released music to sound good from a sound quality standpoint (then again these same people say that cassettes and vinyl have horrid quality).

 

[fronobulax]

With all respect to Mr. Young, I think I want some of what he has been smoking. Basically the only way to convert from analog to digital is by sampling. The sampling rate determines what frequencies will (and will not) be present in the reconstructed signal. There are already several digital formats that are sampled at a high enough frequency that, in theory, the reconstruction accurately contains frequencies above what the human ear can hear. So if Mr. Young is talking about the analog to digital conversion I think he and the late Mr. Jobs are unlikely to break new ground. If he is talking about compressed formats that deliberately trade of accuracy of reproduction in order to save storage then he is just one of many people searching for the same thing. Since Mr. Jobs, IMO, was more of a popularizer and a packager than an innovator getting him interested in this problem does not increase the chances that a better solution will emerge.

Note that I am strictly speaking of digitized music. I am well aware of the belief that something audible is lost with the current conversion from analog to digital and I am not commenting on that belief. Just because I don't hear it doesn't mean you can't :wink:

 

[adorshki]

With all respect to Mr. Young, I think I want some of what he has been smoking.

Really? :shock: :lol:

Basically the only way to convert from analog to digital is by sampling. The sampling rate determines what frequencies will (and will not) be present in the reconstructed signal. There are already several digital formats that are sampled at a high enough frequency that, in theory, the reconstruction accurately contains frequencies above what the human ear can hear.

Yes that's true although I thought the idea was that they're sampled with a much greater frequency than human hearing samples at, kind of like setting the sampling frequency of a digital oscilloscope (Heathkit had 'em) higher than the frequency being analyzed to capture more accurate waveform displays?

So if Mr. Young is talking about the analog to digital conversion I think he and the late Mr. Jobs are unlikely to break new ground. If he is talking about compressed formats that deliberately trade of accuracy of reproduction in order to save storage then he is just one of many people searching for the same thing.

Since MP3 was mentioned specifically I thinnk that's exactly what he's getting at. It's notorious for sacrificing quality for storage size.

Since Mr. Jobs, IMO, was more of a popularizer and a packager than an innovator getting him interested in this problem does not increase the chances that a better solution will emerge.

I think getting Mr. Jobs interested in anything at all would be quite a noteworthy accomplishment at this point. Perhaps smoking enough of Neil's stuff would at least assist in contacting him. :lol:

Note that I am strictly speaking of digitized music. I am well aware of he belief that something audible is lost with the current conversion from analog to digital and I am not commenting on that belief. Just because I don't hear it doesn't mean you can't :wink:

I am one of those guys who noticed something wrong with stuff I was hearing before I knew MP3 compression was the culprit, and why. But I do blame that on the compression at the expense of fidelity.
In fact a while back I had to admit that I've finally heard CD's whose fidelity exceeds that of vinyl, due to being both recorded and reproduced digitally, with the high sampling frequencies and 24 bit word lengths. In fact one source now says that the bit word length seems to enhance audio quality more than the sampling frequency:
http://audaud.com/term-definitions/#Hi-Res
On a final note, if you do plan to try to meet Steve, could you give me a heads up in case I'd like to tag along?

 

[fronobulax]

On a final note, if you do plan to try to meet Steve, could you give me a heads up in case I'd like to tag along?

I'm reminded of the two dear friends who loved baseball. They made a pact that whoever died first would come back and tell the other about the Afterlife. One died. That evening he appeared to his friend. He said, "I've got good news and bad news". The living friend asked for the good news first.

"There is baseball in heaven."

"That's wonderful. What could be bad news?"

"You're the starting pitcher tomorrow afternoon".


As for the rest, there are several lossless digital music formats (of which MP3 is not one) and Young Jobs is not likely to be the name of a lossy format that sounds as good as the current lossless formats :wink:

 

[dapmdave]

On a final note, if you do plan to try to meet Steve, could you give me a heads up in case I'd like to tag along?

If frono goes to meet Steve, don't go. We like having you around!

Dave

 

[adorshki]

On a final note, if you do plan to try to meet Steve, could you give me a heads up in case I'd like to tag along?

If frono goes to meet Steve, don't go. We like having you around!

Dave

It's more the potential of using Neil's method of transportation, than the actual destination, that's got my curiosity aroused, but thanks! :lol:

 

[alpep]

it is all in the d/A convertor

I bought a high end d/a convertor for my home hi fi and could not believe the sound on the cds
I still love vinyl but it proves that there is much more on that disk than you can hear unless it is converted correctly.

IMHO mp3s are crap

 

[adorshki]

it is all in the d/A convertor
I bought a high end d/a convertor for my home hi fi and could not believe the sound on the cds
I still love vinyl but it proves that there is much more on that disk than you can hear unless it is converted correctly.
IMHO mp3s are crap

Good point but the source still has to be giving your convertor something decent to work with.
For Jazz fans I recommend the "audiophile" re-issue of "Kind of Blue" with 24-bit/96k sampling.
My current "benchmark" cd I've mentioned before: Otis Taylor's " Truth Is Not Fiction".
Best bass I've ever heard, freed from the restrictions of vinyl molding limitations and turntable vibration feedback. (no I don't have one of those $3000.00 isolated turntables) :wink:
I still haven't heard anything that reproduces spatial imaging of individual instruments like my original pressing of "Steppenwolf the Second" though.
So I play those two when I want to give the sytems a "status check".

 

[markus]

It also depends on how much care the record company took when reissuing a recording on cd.
As with one of my favourite classical recordings (Mahler IV/Szell/Cleveland Symphony):
I got it on vinyl first (RCA Red Seal): Sounds great on my 250 Dollar turntable.
I bought it on cd 15 years ago (awful!) and some 5 years ago (very nice).
Markus

 

[alpep]

I have the lavry d/a

I think it is stellar.

agreed on the good source you need a cd that has been mastered well.

the todd rundgren collection on rhino is great

weather report heavy weather

mike oldfield tubular bells

any of the steely dan aja and after

night and day joe jackson

 

[gjmalcyon]

IMHO mp3s are crap

Agreed, but they are handy for music playback on a portable device.

I use Exact Audio Copy with the LAME encoder. I did a bunch of critical listening, and configured to "rip" CD's in true stereo at 256 kb/sec, it is pretty listenable. The file sizes are big, but are still a fraction of the original .wav file size.

That's all really audiophile-geeky, but it is interesting.

More information here: http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/en/index.p ... questions/

 

[adorshki]

It also depends on how much care the record company took when reissuing a recording on cd.

Ja, Ja, most of the early cd re-issues were notorious for poor quality due to being rushed to market with poor, if any, re-mastering.
I think that's at least 1/2 the reason for the reputation of superiority vinyl got early on in the digital era.
My turntable's only a couple hundred dollar Kenwood itself, with a great cartridge.

agreed on the good source you need a cd that has been mastered well.

weather report heavy weather

I'll have to look that one up. One of my faves.