Modern Aural Regression?
The sound reproduced by the modern CD is inferior to what its predecessors achieved. That’s what Bob Dylan seems to have just said. I’m no expert audiophile, but CD’s, at face value, sound much better than LP’s, at least that’s what I remember, as I haven’t listened to vinyl since the ’80’s. And if he’s down on the CD format, I wonder what he thinks of iTunes’ AAC format. For music I really care about, I’ve been buying CD’s assuming the sound to be authentic whereas AAC offers a water-downed version of the original. And what about Hybrid SACD? Mr. Dylan, does this mean I shouldn’t go ahead and get me a copy of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan? What’s a Bob Dylan fan to do in these Modern Times?
on August 24th, 2006 at 8:59 am
Digital is inherently inferior to analog, all other things equal. Representing smooth soundwaves with rough 1’s and 0’s causes some unholy things to happen. But there are 2 things at work here. 1, digital is easier to preserve than analog, so there’s no degredation across copies. 2, as the digital sampling frequency approaches infinity, it becomes indistinguishable from analog. Some people can more easily hear the difference between a CD and a clean LP than others, but I believe you’d be hard pressed to distinguish an SACD from even the best analog master.
Nyquist’s theorem tells us we must sample at twice the rate of the analog signal’s high tones in order to preserve all the sound information. Human ears can hear 20KHz, and hence CD’s are sampled at 44.1KHz. Perhaps the folks that hear the difference simply have ears that can go beyond 20KHz.
Dylan also might be referring to some of the really lousy production that is done these days. Pushing certain sounds to unnatural levels, etc. If he’s so concerned about it, maybe he should try producing and mastering his own material.
on August 25th, 2006 at 1:37 pm
That’s good to hear, pun intended, about SACD. Can’t wait to listen to the Dylan SACD’s.
on August 27th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Breddy,
Yeah, I think he’s talking about the compression (not lossless/lossy, but audio level compression). The thing that makes all this crappo on the radio sound so similar, each station competing to sound the loudest/clearest/rockest etc as you scan through.
Here’s a good example :
http://brianstagg.co.uk/p_t_a_clipressed/
Jorge. I don’t think CD’s sound better than your old vinyl. Maybe your amp or speakers have got better since ‘the old days’, but a good condition record and a good CD sound really sound about the same, IMHO. Records are notoriously easy to damage / get dirty, and that probably enforces the ‘CD sounds better’ argument. Nobody has ‘oscilloscope ears’, so I don’t go along with the analogue/digital rivalry over how pure the waveforms are. I belive that CD sampling is good enough to fool the old earole.
-James.
on August 30th, 2006 at 6:05 pm
What’s the meaning of Dylan’s appearence in iPod/iTunes ads? Will his music be available for free download on iTunes, given its “atrocious” digital encoding, or is he recanting his criticism of digital?