greg@olivej.UUCP (Greg Paley) (11/20/84)
The latest issue of "Absolute Sound" arrived containing a letter from the president of Reference Recordings. In the letter he describes the circumstances that he feels has forced his company into the production of CD's. He also states very clearly that the analogue LP's they are producing are superior to the CD's, and that the analogue master tapes they are making side-by-side with their digital masters are far superior. In the same issue is a letter from a representative of Polygram (DGG/Philips/London) admitting that in practice the dynamic range reproduced by their CD's is no greater than the LP equivalents. This follows a letter last year (spring '83) from a representative of Denon admitting that, although they found it a commercial necessity to get into the CD market at that point, they felt there were still severe problems that couldn't be disguised or resolved. The point that interests me is knowing what would prompt people in this position to make such (from a commercial standpoint) potentially disastrous admissions. Other than restoring credibility in the eyes of those few who are seriously dissatisfied with digital recordings and the CD, the gains would seem to be few and the possible losses tremendous. Even if they figured that "Absolute Sound", having limited circulation and a reputation for exoticism, would be a "safe" place to send letters of this sort, letters can, and will, be quoted in other contexts. Certainly, though, I've never seen anything of the sort, from a president or representative of a major company admitting to major flaws in their own products, appear in Stereo Review or High Fidelity. If disparaging comments about digital technology and the CD coming from manufacturers dealing in these products are false, what motive could they possibly serve? - Greg Paley
herbie@watdcsu.UUCP (Herb Chong, Computing Services) (11/21/84)
One might look to see how much unsold analog tapes and LP's are sitting
in the back of the warehouse :-). Some of this has been well known
from the beginning. Digital recoding has offered a significant
increase in dynamic range over analog recording media, flatness of
response, etc., etc.. To offer the full dynamic range of CD's to the
consumer, the orignal source must have at least that much dynamic range,
whether achieved by compression, more bits, or different encoding
methods (i.e. floating point or delta modulation). Greater frequency
response of the master recorder is required so that the cumulative
phase shifts of the various analog and digital filters are minimized;
this means higher sampling rate. It also will lower the frequency response
error at high frequencies. Some of the current problems cited for digital
audio systems can be attributed to not having a professional recording
standard that is significantly better than the consumer one.
Herb Chong...
I'm user-friendly -- I don't byte, I nybble....
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