Home General Asylum

General audio topics that don't fit into specific categories.

RE: Made some of the best mixing boards around for many years.

"You don't do bandwidth because our ears hear past 20KHz. You do wide bandwidth so there will be no phase distortion in the audio passband. Ideally you need 2Hz-200KHz to do that, since artifact can show up at 1/10th the cutoff on the high end and 10x the cutoff on the low end."

Similar arguments apply when it comes to digital audio. If the sampling rate isn't at least 400 kHz then the digital designer will be forced into a box of either attenuating aliases less than -100 dB, rolling off audio by at least -1 dB at 20 kHz or selecting a filter that whose impulse response rings. In other words, even at this high sampling rate, there are still engineering tradeoffs dictated by the low sampling rate. (Phase linearity is not one of them, but if one adds that then if the filter rings there will have to be unnatural pre-ringing and that also can sound bad.)

Down at the 44.1 kHz sampling rate these tradeoffs are brutal, meaning that every CD recording almost certainly has some combination of alias distortion, high frequency roll-off and ringing, possibly a mixture of pre and post ringing. With sampling rate conversion software such as iZotope 64 bit SRC it is possible to vary the filter parameters and listen to the various types of distortion and their effect on musical transients, musical tonality, imaging and soundstage.



Tony Lauck

"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar


This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:
  Amplified Parts  


Follow Ups Full Thread
Follow Ups
  • RE: Made some of the best mixing boards around for many years. - Tony Lauck 06/4/1410:58:10 06/4/14 (0)

FAQ

Post a Message!

Forgot Password?
Moniker (Username):
Password (Optional):
  Remember my Moniker & Password  (What's this?)    Eat Me
E-Mail (Optional):
Subject:
Message:   (Posts are subject to Content Rules)
Optional Link URL:
Optional Link Title:
Optional Image URL:
Upload Image:
E-mail Replies:  Automagically notify you when someone responds.