Sound reproduction and playback

[pbrower2a]

(02-28-2018, 04:00 PM)linus Wrote: I'm not a sound person, as I said, so I don't know how all that works, but I have learned a few things about imaging, which may or may not be analogous. The longstanding film/digital debate usually turns on perceptions - subjectivity rather than objectivity, in other words - but there are concrete differences between the two (most of which, but not all, favor film).

I remember that in the 1970s (that obviously dates me) seeing a sticker commonplace in record shops  on the cellophane covers of phonograph records that said "Records are your best entertainment value". Buying a phonograph record was less expensive than going to some concert unless the concert was free, in which case the record stores encouraged you to go to it and hear what live music sounds like.

We would never see that on a music CD today. A video disc might be in a bargain bin in Wal*Mart for $5, and for that you spend less than for a ticket to a movie. That is about as expensive as an old acoustic recording (sound only) that lasts about 40 minutes. 40-minute feature film or 90-minute feature film -- which is the better buy?

This said, music is a legitimate pastime, but music without images is something that one usually enjoys while doing something else -- like driving a car in  a 40-mile commute, posting material on the web, or cooking from scratch. We want as many senses engaged as possible at once, which is human. This said, high fidelity is a strongly-desirable objective where possible. Obviously, road noise will compromise your listening experience if you are in a car. I cannot say, though, that listening to great music in a visual vacuum won't give one a hallucination of images any more than that I hear hallucinations when seeing great art in complete silence. Most people want to hear music as well as possible, and any compromises are out of convenience (one can't take one's household stereo with one) or limited funds. My sound system is an old DVD player now exclusively plays back audio CDs because it is obsolete for playing back video, a run-of-the-mill stereo receiver, a pair of bookshelf speakers now just over twenty years old (they still sound great!), a subwoofer to expand the bass response instead of buying a pair of all-in-one speakers, and now a reader device that I now dedicate to YouTube videos of classical music.

Quote:The contention, mostly peddled by dslr makers, that the human eye can only see 16 million colors (which is to say 8 bit with 4:2:0 chroma sub-sampling - what you get shooting H264 or MP4 on your whatever camera) is both empirically true, but also likely misleading. Through something I've seen referred to as color smoothing, the hvs can detect smoother or harsher transitions in color and contrast. As it stands, pro digital cinema cameras shoot 12 or more bit raw and or log video, which have (at least, I think, at 14 or more bit - it's a quick math problem) a color depth in the billions. If the 16 million outside limit was all there was to the story, there'd be no reason (other than clipping in post) to shoot raw video, or even stills. Color depth in film is infinite (and even though most distribution now is digital rather than prints scanners can still capture higher bit depths than digital cinema cameras).

So I guess what I'm wondering is: do ears work in a similar way such that analog or analog-to-digital is still better than digital? Dunno.

Yes, it is analogous to sound. You can hear sound down to a certain frequency (about 16Hz if you are a child never exposed to deafening sounds, and somewhat higher if you have used a lawn mower) -- but you can probably feel vibrations through your feet. Organ pipes yield fundamentals below the threshold of aural hearing, but that one can feel. A truly-satisfying experience in music, as at an organ concert, entails feeling the sub-audible fundamentals from those giant pipes.

Quote:Another thing about film v digital is format size. Historically, photographers tended to work in the largest reasonable/feasible format, largely because the larger the format the more fine detail that can be resolved. A picture, all other things being equal, taken on a 4x5 view camera is going to look better than the same one taken on a small or medium format camera - and not just blown up to poster or wall size, but even just as snapshot/print size.

Sight and sound are not perfect analogies, but visual resolution and audio fidelity are ideals worthy of achievement.

Quote:So, in film-only times, people who shot small format (35mm) tended to be news, sports, and wildlife photographers (largely because they needed long telephotos, which would be ginormous, or even more so than they already are, as well as even more insanely expensive). Medium format tended to be for weddings, and some portrait, fine art, and landscape work. And large format was always the gold standard for landscape/architecture, as well as for portraits and fine art when applicable.

What's happened with digital is that logic/understanding has been tossed out the window. Digital sensors top at about halfway between 35mm/"full frame" and the smallest medium format, 645 (not to mention the fact that the camera in question, the newish top end Phase One, costs like 50 grand - you could 20-some complete 645 film outfits for that price). So, basically, much or almost everything is shot on small or ultra-small format now.
Yet another issue is exposure. At the same exposure values (ev), digital sensors are able to resolve more shadow detail, and film is able to resole more highlight detail without blowing out the bright spots. (Something like 90% of digital raw files are devoted to preserving and even reconstructing highlight detail.)

Of course a digital zoom does much of what SLR lenses used to do, and digital SLR cameras are desirable for those who want tricky lens shots  -- fish-eye, wide-angles, and the like. It is also possible that 35mm film is somehow better than digital storage. On the other side, I have taken about 1000 photographs (many of them failures, but if I get 100 artistic successes out of 1000 camera shots and 300 useful as snapshots, I am doing far better than making 200 photos with expensive film and processing and going to great efforts to arrange things so that I don;t waste precious film.

Quote:Finally, I think, there's the issue of resolution. Film, of course, doesn't work in megapixels, and different film stocks have different "resolutions," but the guesstimate of at least 75mp of usable detail in a 35mm still by internet photo guy Ken Rockwell sounds reasonable enough.

OK, 35-mm film is no more measured in pixels than one can measure vision in digital bits.  But both digital cameras and digital recording both translate something resembling a sensory experience into digital bits.