rayjay@ihuxr.UUCP (06/15/83)
I know that I am subjecting myself to possible severe abuse (only verbal
I hope) when I say that CDs are an unsatisfactory medium for me. While
at the summer CES, I got a chance to listen to many versions of these units.
Aside from the lack of record noise and the expanded dynamic range there
was little else to reccomend them. The upper midrange was terribly shifted
(upward) and the high end was downright brittle. Except for electric piano
and guitar, everything seemed "processed". People talk about increasing
the sample rate but will that ever make up for lack of third and fourth
order harmonics?
J. K. Wray BTL-Napervillers55611@ihuxk.UUCP (06/15/83)
In regard to the comment that CDs don't have the bandwidth for third and fourth harmonics: But they do! The highest fundamental on a piano keyboard is 4186 Hz. (Csub8). Thus, a CD system with a bandwidth of 20 kHz (>40 kHz., but most likely ~50 kHz. sampling rate) will accurately reproduce the third and fourth harmonics of the highest pitch piano note. Furthermore, this is higher in frequency than the highest notes produced by flutes, piccolos, harps, clarinets, soprano saxes, etc. (fundamentals of these are all lower than the highest C on a piano). As another comparison, an operatic soprano upper limit is about 1050 Hz (~Csub4), so that high order harmonics will all fall below 20 kHz. I would submit that any discoloration heard at CES was likely in the amps and/or speakers, or else there were hardware problems in the system that resulted in lost bits, and therefore excessive quantization distortion. (The max. pitch info was pulled from a book on human factors topics, including speech and hearing, called Human Information Processing, by Lindsay and Norman.) Bob Schleicher ihuxk!rs55611 Bell Labs, Naperville, Ill.
becker@uiucdcs.UUCP (06/17/83)
#R:ihuxr:-47000:uiucdcs:22700026:000:266 uiucdcs!becker Jun 17 01:20:00 1983 i've read that the advent of CD's will require new and different production techniques in the studio. Could it be that we're used to the sound of conventional stereo equipment, that the music recorded on regular albums wasn't produced to sound good on a CD system?
jeff@tesla.UUCP (06/30/83)
I`d like the guy who wants to hear 3d & 4th order harmonics above 20KHz to tell me how both his tweeters and his ears are built. Jeff