But the joy with electronic music is that most of these instruments really
don't generate much in the way of high frequency harmonics - your sampler
can't. Which is why people used to love the Synclavier - it has a sample
rate of 96kHz I think - something ridiculous
quoted 46 lines -----Original Message-----> -----Original Message-----
> From: Irene McC [SMTP:substar@iafrica.com]
> Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 1998 2:10 AM
> To: artist@sub-con-geo.demon.co.uk; idm@hyperreal.org
> Subject: RE: (idm) nu __ge[minidi]scom
>
> On 22 Apr 98, siliconvortex wrote
>
> > a cd, which is (given good mastering) an exact digital copy
>
> There you said it "DIGITAL". All cut up into millions of little
> bits and jammed back together, not one smooth sound curve.
> It samples at 44 thousand.1 times per second....
>
> > or vinyl, which has been converted from dat to analogue, cut with
> > a lathe into a piece of metal, then pressed into a piece of soft
> > plastic, then tracked through a dust filled groove with a diamond
> > connected to a magnet, then put through an riaa equaliser, before
> > you hear the end result. which did you say sounds better?
>
> It's not quite as simple as that.
>
> The actual vinyl has "give" in it, meaning that the walls of the
> vinyl contract and expand - causing a certain amount of compression
> that happens in the vinyl itself which sounds attractive to the
> human ear. It's called "Wellie" (coming from the visual image of a
> kick up the bum with a wellington boot). If you go above clip in
> digital you get a terrible distortion but in any analogue medium it
> givies it more 'wellie'.
>
> That's why certain recording artists deliberately go from their
> digital master onto 1/2" analogue tape to saturate the tape which
> gives it a much better "warmer" sound - and then transfer it to CD
> from THAT. And many rock artists only record directly to analogue
> multi-track tape and then use the Apogee UV22 process to achieve
> analogue-like "warmth" on CD. The mastering process on the CD is
> the most important : there is a *big loss* between original analog
> mastering to digital - unless 24-bit mastering is used (which is
> already available).
>
> A well-mastered vinyl 12" can contain harmonics up to 30 kHz, which
> would be chopped dead on CD at 20 kHz. Brick wall.
>
> I
> *
> np : The Black Dog Live In Toronto (*** thanks!!)