mccamy@lymph.DEC (09/25/85)
From: "...decvax!decwrl!rhea!Squirt!McCamy" Merrimack, New Hampshire I too have heard what one would perceive as tape hiss on a CD that was generated from a digital recorded master. As was noted by someone else, there is some noise contributed by each piece of equipment in the recording chain, and there can be sounds that you hear as the engineer attempts to capture the natural ambience of the room where the recording takes place. Next time you go to a symphony concert, listen to the noise level of the room during moments when the symphony is not playing and you will not hear the same dead silence that you tend to associate with the CD. Multitrack recordings done in the studio (which includes just about everything besides classical recordings) tend to be extremely quiet because of the nature of the studio, direct line inputs for many of the instruments, and the fact that little or no effort is made to create a recording with a "live" sound. Listening to the dead silent background of a CD transitioning to some of these classical recordings is analogous to walking out of an anechoic chamber.