Not wasting my time on new Digital

Drubin: What i was saying is that electronic componentry has a higher level of time delay and signal smearing than even just a reasonably well designed piece of cabling. Sean
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Eldartford,

Ditto! I was about to say the same thing.

The problem starts with the recordings. I have witnessed A-B tests between a SOTA ($60K+) vinyl setup and certain Digital only to find out that, with the same record title, some sound better on the Digital and some better on the Vinyl.

Believe or not!

Regards,
Alex

El, I think you miss the point. To answer your last question first, I have not measured dynamic range in source components or in in-room replay, which is why I provided the link. Did you bother to look at it? But what is your point here? Must one actually make the measurements oneself to understand the concepts behind them?

As far as dynamic range is concerned, you simply misread my statement that, in analog, not digital, replay, sounds can be heard 10db to 20db into the noise floor and this leads to analog replay having a greater dynamic range than redbook CD and is quite audible. Where, as you assert, did I say that sounds 10 to 20db below what is audible are things that you should "care" about? Intentionally misreading is simply obfuscation. My only point about digital replay was that cutting off signal below the least significant bit, throws away information. And I also pointed out that the addition of dither can recapture at least some, of this information. Show me where I said that this disregarded information is audible?

Your point is that the information, being overtly inaudible, makes it of no value. This may well be true and I cannot take issue with your assertion. However, I am not at all convinced that some of the information that "reads" as room tone and ambiance does not fall below what is considered to be the standard limit of audibilty. Some will argue that our listening room noise levels, sometimes running as high as 40db (and yes, I have measured this), will just swamp these small changes. Again, as with analog replay, we hear into the noise floor of our listening rooms, as ambient noise is not correlated with the audio signal, it is easier for our sensory gating mechanisms to diminish. To be clear, I am not saying that this is the case, just that it might be possible.

We have also heard similar arguments about the 20K upper limit of CD replay. If it is inaudible, who cares if we throw it away? And yet, there are still many that believe that information above 20k is necessary to maintain the integrity of the signal and there are audible consequences to eliminating this information. I think that a lot of it comes down to hearing acuity as well. A young person may hear well in excess of 20K, as we grow older the upper limit of hearing diminishes. But it does not always completely disappear, it simply rolls off. There are individual limits to low level hearing as well. I am not so presumptuous as to think that, because I cannot hear something, that others cannot either. So what does not matter to me, may be quite important to others.

Viridian: I am loathe to insert myself into the middle of this one, but I can't make sense of your statements

"...analog, both tape and LP, has greater dynamic range than redbook CD. Sounds can be heard between ten and twenty db beneath the noise floor on analog. Digital media simply throw away all information below the least significant bit"

"in analog, not digital, replay, sounds can be heard 10db to 20db into the noise floor and this leads to analog replay having a greater dynamic range than redbook CD"

Taking for granted, for the sake of argument, the assertion about audibility below the noise floor with analog, I can't see any connection between that supposed fact, and drawing the conclusion that therefore digital must have less dynamic range. Even if the stipulation about audibility is true, it seems to me the comparison would be wholly dependent on where the analog noise floor actually falls in relation to the bit-depth of a particular digital format. If, for instance, an analog format has a noise floor 20dB higher than the LSB of a digital format, then they should have equal dynamic range by your argument. But even so, taking the noise floor of the analog into account, the digital should have superior low-level resolution.

Personally, I'm not sure that any of this stuff actually has much to do with the perception of 'dynamic' sound (or whether dynamics has anything to do with D_Edwards contention about digital and multichannel, for that matter). But regardless, your inference does seem like a non-sequitor to me.

Viridian...Your question, "Where, as you assert, did I say that sounds 10 to 20db below what is audible are things that you should "care" about?" is one that I cannot answer because the posting has been (conveniently) deleted.

Thanks for the link. Interesting, but I have seen it before.

In my multichannel system (5 channels contributing noise) I never hear noise with digital sources. With LPs, quiet passages almost always have enough audible noise to bother me. (Perhaps I am more sensitive to this than you are). My spectrum analyser clearly shows why this is so.

I have no special record cleaning equipment, and I am talking about ordinary LPs: not special audiophile editions. While the noise floor of the LP system is pretty well defined by the technology, the maximum signal can be anything that the recording engineer thinks his customers' cartridges can track. Most LPs intended for the general public have been compressed and peak-limited so that Joe sixpack can play them.

By the way, I think that dynamic range is not the most important parameter. Sometimes I find that quiet passages, even without noise, are difficult to hear unless the volume is cranked up so much that the loud passages are ear-splitting. Too much of a good thing.