12-02-2018, 06:04 PM
<WONKISHNESS>
The biggest difference between analog and digital audio is time coherence. With the exception of very high sampling rate ADPCM, which is actually a digital rendering of the analog signal, with sampling rates higher than 4 to 10 times the highest frequency we can hear: 20kHz, almost all coding schemes favor efficiency over fidelity. In other words, the digital files are lossy. What's lost is almost always time coherence, but also can, and typically does, include some of the dynamic range and tonal integrity too.
So what effect does loss of time coherence involve? For one thing, imaging just falls apart. Because time coherence allows your ears to place sound in space if two loudspeakers are reproducing the same sound at slightly altered time offsets, The offsets have to be precise. To be that precise, digital sampling rates have to very high, but that makes files very large and impractical for use outside a studio. Another negative time coherence effect is known as transient intermodulation distortion (TID). If instruments seem harsh, that's the cause.
That's a small primer on the subject. I'll leave it there.
</WONKISHNESS>
The biggest difference between analog and digital audio is time coherence. With the exception of very high sampling rate ADPCM, which is actually a digital rendering of the analog signal, with sampling rates higher than 4 to 10 times the highest frequency we can hear: 20kHz, almost all coding schemes favor efficiency over fidelity. In other words, the digital files are lossy. What's lost is almost always time coherence, but also can, and typically does, include some of the dynamic range and tonal integrity too.
So what effect does loss of time coherence involve? For one thing, imaging just falls apart. Because time coherence allows your ears to place sound in space if two loudspeakers are reproducing the same sound at slightly altered time offsets, The offsets have to be precise. To be that precise, digital sampling rates have to very high, but that makes files very large and impractical for use outside a studio. Another negative time coherence effect is known as transient intermodulation distortion (TID). If instruments seem harsh, that's the cause.
That's a small primer on the subject. I'll leave it there.
</WONKISHNESS>
Intelligence is not knowledge and knowledge is not wisdom, but they all play well together.