| >response (0 to 20kHz is better than vinyl & tape, but not as good
| >as ears)
|
| A scientific note... Actually, that goes slightly beyond the human
| hearing range. And a 96 db signal to noise ratio is absolutely
| grande (my player sez it gets 100+ db though).
Oops, careful with the "scientific" there. 20kHz is an average, set long ago
in the dark ages. True: many people can barely hear 15kHz, but that doesn't
mean there aren't those of us who can hear beyond 20kHz. It's only one more
octave to 40kHz, you know.
Besides, scientists had the speed of sound wrong for years because nobody
bothered to recheck the math until a couple of years ago.
Research is showing that humans can distinguish the effects of frequencies
well above 20kHz; our ears aren't digital - there is some gray area in any
subjective human measurement.
On signal to noise: the human brain has the ability to distinguish and
interpret faint sounds significantly below the noise floor. With digital,
those sounds are completely missing while analog reproduces them along with a
higher volume of noise. CD players even cheat by turning off the converters
between tracks to mask how much noise is really there due to quantization
noise.
Brian Willoughby