Sound Science Corner Pub
May 14, 2024 at 5:37 PM Post #676 of 833
I think Castle needs a level up


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May 14, 2024 at 6:05 PM Post #678 of 833
https://imgflip.com/i/8q2ifq

Edit…..I give up……I’m having a dumb moment attempting to get a meme to show up….move on……nothing to see …..
 
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May 14, 2024 at 7:24 PM Post #680 of 833
See ………..I’ve caught one. :astonished:
 
May 14, 2024 at 11:00 PM Post #682 of 833
I stumbled across a couple of Sheffield Lab CDs at Amazon the other day... a two CD set of all three Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished Colleagues albums, and Dave Grusin Discovered Again Plus. Back in the pre-CD era, these were my goto albums for great sound. They were recorded live direct to disk with no intermediary master on tape. I put on the Distinguished Colleagues album and sure enough, it had the exact same great sound I remember with a few live mixing errors sprinkled in at all the same places. No need for those albums any more. The CD replaces them/

Then I put on the Grusin... It sounded *better* than the old record. There were always spots on Sheffield Labs direct to disks where the mixer would miss a cue and a drum hit would go into distortion a little. But the Grusin album was absolutely perfect. You could hear the drummer dig in, but everything was perfectly controlled. So I dug out the liner notes... there was a difference between the two CDs. The Distinguished Colleagues was transferred from vinyl by Seth Winner. But the Grusin was derived from a 2 track stereo tape they ran as a backup during that session. The tape took the peaks perfectly and on CD it sounds amazing.

Direct to disk albums definitely are curates eggs, but vinyl is no match for magnetic tape and CD.

Thanks for the info on the Dave Grusin Discovered Again album. I have the original LP so after I read your post I started playing the “Plus” version on Spotify. It’s fun hearing a great-sounding 1976 recording on 2020’s-fidelity media and speakers.

Another fun fact: Captain Bacardi was mis-spelled Captain Bicardi on the original LP cover (at least according to Wikipedia).

I can’t recall the old LP sound well enough to compare the new mastered-from-backup-tape sound in an informed way, but I will say, my wife (for real!) came in from the other room (!) to say “that’s some interesting music!” And as we all know, as a barometer of good sound, that’s as good as it gets!!
 
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May 15, 2024 at 12:07 AM Post #683 of 833
Good stuff. Hard to pin down what genre of music it is. Sounds like TV music.
 
May 15, 2024 at 1:26 AM Post #684 of 833
Since we're getting into the art of vinyl: I think some of the collectables are really neat. Even though the mastering is from a digital source: you have a young generation liking the large album art. There's also a newer technology of holography: you shine a light at the grooves and you see a projected image (I have a Jack White album that produces an angel image with the holograph section, and it also has a self repeating section when you end the side). There's a Star Wars album that projects a tie fighter or millennium falcon.
 
May 16, 2024 at 5:17 AM Post #686 of 833
What movie is that gif from?
Black Hole: can understand why Ryokan references it as the gif is Maximilian robot in it, and his avatar is VINCent from the same movie.
 
May 16, 2024 at 9:32 AM Post #687 of 833
I thought the quote below might actually be worth commenting on, that someone (other than who posted it) might find it informative. So I’ve broken it into bits and just quoted it anonymously in the hope he doesn’t notice and gets triggered into posting more BS.
Let's assume we are using a perfect 10k sine wave digital source.
As it has been somewhat misrepresented in the past, I’ll take “perfect” in this instance to mean some concept of “absolute” or “condition-less” perfect (rather than what is typically meant; perfect within a set of limits). In which case, then we cannot “assume we are using a perfect 10kHz sine wave” because there is no such thing. Either we’ve recorded that 10kHz sine wave from an acoustic or analogue source, in which case it has all sorts of noise/distortion due to the recording environment, mics, etc., or probably smaller amount of noise/distortion from the analogue circuitry of the signal generator. If the 10kHz sine wave is generated digitally, so no ADC process takes place, still it will not be (absolutely) perfect, because along with the sine wave there has to be some amount of low level noise (dither).
What would the waveform look like at any given time (for example during one particular cycle of the 10k "sine wave") ?
“Look like”? There is no waveform once we get into the digital domain, there’s just a very long string of zeroes and ones which represent values at specific points in time (sample points). Of course, a string of millions/billions of zeroes and ones is impossible for anyone to edit, so in DAWs and audio editors this string of binary digits is represented in a graphical form that is far easier to visualise and edit. Exactly what it will “look like” obviously depends on the graphical representation implemented by that specific audio editor. In some cases it will “look like” a nice smooth waveform, because the editor software is representing the data as it will be reconstructed (assuming a proper reconstruction filter of course). In most cases though, the audio editor will represent it as a sequence of individual sample points connected by horizontal lines, which looks somewhat like a waveform but if you “zoom in”, you can see the famous “stair-steps” (that don’t actually exist). Software Graphic User Interfaces were designed that way originally (30+ years ago) because it was visually familiar to audio engineers and computationally easy for computers of that time to draw (render).
On that particular cycle, the waveform is "super sharp" instead of "smeared".
Again, there is no waveform, there’s just a graphical representation of one in the DAW/audio editor and whether it looks “super sharp” or “smeared” obviously depends on that graphical representation. You would expect with a modern computer, video monitor and software that it would look pretty sharp.
During that particular cycle, is the waveform reconstructed a perfect 10k sine wave?
Of course not, you can only reconstruct the input, which is an imperfect (not absolutely perfect) 10kHz sine wave. A DAC cannot magically turn an imperfect recording into a perfect one.
Where is the "smearing" coming from if every cycle reconstructed is a perfect 10k sine wave?
What “smearing”, is there some “smearing” due to a poor video monitor or editor software? Or, do you mean the analogue or acoustic noise floor/distortion or the tiny amount of dither noise, that came from the recording and/or ADC process? And again, “every cycle reconstructed” is the same imperfect 10kHz sine wave we started with, there was never a perfect 10kHz sine wave!

G
 
May 16, 2024 at 11:03 AM Post #688 of 833
Silent Running is an other good sci-fi film imo, especially as it seems all too plausible, though really sad as only one robot is left alone at the end to tend the garden, a real tear jerker just to warn peeps who haven't seen it. Anyone else got any sci-fi recs?


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May 16, 2024 at 11:21 AM Post #689 of 833
Seconds with Rock Hudson… a devastating film, beautifully made. Sci Fi without space and rockets.
 
May 16, 2024 at 11:24 AM Post #690 of 833
I had this (well, in French) as a kid. My mother remembers it as Star Wars. :smile_cat:

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