Neil Young on digital audio: You're doing it wrong

I can understand that. If you missed the boat and were not into SACD when it was launched, it's far too expensive - for the most part - to chime in now. If you are a lover of classical music and jazz, it's still viable; but pop and rock offer only marginal improvement at quite high cost.

 

Jazz is my first love, but titles are scant from everything I've seen. Yes, there is a good number of titles out there, but I've already bought way too many "newly remastered" CD's to want yet another version.

 

A CD revival in the future? Man, I don't know about that. It could happen, but the convenience of digital downloads will never go away, unless they shut down the interwebs. And that's what most people want. And the younger generations will likely never change in that regard.

 

I'm just saying there is a whole lot on CD that's not on the 'tubes.

 

Yeah, same problem when CD's first came out. Lots of stuff on LP that wasn't available on CD. That number has dwindled mightily over the decades. I don't know that there's any reason to believe the same things won't happens with the intertubes. IMO, as demand for CD's drop and production and distribution costs don't, I think you'll see most of the stragglers catapulting themselves into the 21st century.

That said, I certainly don't think CD's will ever go the way of the Dodo bird, but like LP's their market will be small and fierce. Heck, dedicated music stores are all but extinct right now! Dusty Groove continues to battle on, but almost all the chains and independents are pretty much gone. I knew when Virgin closed all of their Megastores here in the U.S. that the writing was on the wall. And it's sad, too. I grew up hanging out in those stores. We had two independents where I grew up. And, oh man! A midnight stop at the Virgin Megastore in Downtown Disney was always pretty magical. Such a cool atmosphere. Of my 60+ Coltrane titles, I'd guarantee at least 40 of them were purchased there.

 

I have only ever heard a 24bit/192kHz on one occasion but I've heard a lot of 24bit/96kHz editions of albums (including 24/96 copies of vinyl) and always notice big differences which I have mentioned above and in other posts on this thread. The more samples per second the more accurate representation you get of the original analogue recording. There's a big difference between 44, 100 samples per second and 96, 000 samples per second. CDs are limited because of this and are incapable of reproducing a closer representation of the analogue tape and are not capable of giving you what 24bit/96 or 192kHz gives you.

There is certainly a clear difference when listening with the human ear between 44.1kHz and 96kHz, but I have noticed through this Pono Music campaign via Kickstarter that Neil Young seems to be pushing towards 192kHz instead of 96kHz. Is there anyone who can tell me if there is any improvement in 192kHz over 96kHz when listening with the human ear (through personal experience)? Obviously, the more samples per second the better reproduction you're going to get.

This music news item from 1993 (which funnily enough includes a contribution from Neil Young) explains exactly why 44.1kHz is not enough regardless of the 24 bit rate. I'm referring mainly to The Beatles remasters on the USB device shaped like an apple that's available, which I'm wondering is going to be made available through the Pono Music store or not.

Michael Fremer who then worked for The Absolute Ear magazine describes exactly what I said is lost when listening to CDs (such as the loss of air and ambience). 44.1kHz is 44, 100 samples of the analogue tape per second. Unlike vinyl, you're hearing parts of the recording and not the full constant sound captured with vinyl or when listening to the master tapes in the studio. Of course, he also mentions problems with vinyl that you don't get with CD. I see Pono Music as giving you the best of both worlds with no extra problems that you don't get with CD, MP3 or Vinyl... only advantages.

If they knew this in 1993 I'm surprised the record industry hasn't done something before now. This news report does suggest creating a new format with a higher sample rate, but it's taken a long time to get there, and we aren't really there yet anyway.

 

"44.1kHz is 44, 100 samples of the analogue tape per second. Unlike vinyl, you're hearing parts of the recording and not the full constant sound captured with vinyl or when listening to the master tapes in the studio."

In theory.

I'd love to have people who claim to hear the difference prove it. I find it incredibly difficult to believe the human mind can disect 44,100 samples in the span of one second.

I'd imagine the scientists that settled on that number did so because they found the saturation point of audible sound.

 

I can quite easily tell the difference and would be able to easily demonstrate this to someone if they were in my living room with a decent stereo system hooked up to my DVD and/or a Blu-ray player. Then I could easily prove it, but I think Neil Young has already done that already with those testimonials he's posted by some very big high-up people in the music business. I certainly don't think they were paid to say what they said. Sometimes I think the reason why some people say there's no difference is just because they can't stand the idea that there may be a format out there that is better than vinyl or CD (depending on their preference).

Are you talking from experience when you say there is no difference when listening to and comparing 44.1kHz and 96kHz?

 

Testimonials by people high up in the music business?

Certainly they would have no ulterior motive.

 

While this might be technically factual, I think where the controversy comes in is the "accuracy vs. human hearing". For many years, I subscribed to the "more resolution is always better and preferable" worldview. When applying DSP software to digital audio files, higher resolutions and bit depths certainly are preferable. But for the end user, there is not much in the way of solid scientific data (I concede there have been a study or two) that conclusively show that resolutions above 44.1kHz/16bits are consistently and objectively distinguishable by most humans. I'm well aware there is a faction who is utterly certain of their ability to hear the difference. But understand I'm talking about psychological bias, not "how resolving" a person's home audio system is.

 

I am kind of in agreement with you here, and nearly all the engineers I've worked with have agreed that 44.1 or 48khz is enough, at least for listening back. Above this sampling rate you will normally get an imbalanced sound, with some details being exaggerated. At 192khz the sound can get 'washed out' or 'fatiguing'.

I think that's why EMI put out that USB stick of Beatles at 24/44.1, because overall it was the resolution that gave the smoothest, most 'musical' results.

 

What The Beatles did is I feel is quite rare. Bare in mind that The Doors have released their back-catalogue at 24bit/96kHz and Led Zeppelin are about to, as well as a lot of other artists on one format or another. Even iTunes will only release music under the logo "Mastered For iTunes" if the master supplied is at least 24/96.

I've listened to The Beatles 24bit/44.1kHz (selected tracks) and can here very little difference between them and the 2009 CD remasters (which I think are from the same source).

It seems there are plenty of people in the music business (apart from Mr Young) who seem to think that 48kHz isn't enough. I believe most record companies are backing up their artist's back-catalogues at 24bit/192kHz from the original 2-track masters or the closest possible source. I could go on, and on, and on...

Remember that the music system that you play your music on makes a difference.

 

In other words, they said it, you believe it, and that settles it.

Also, since a couple of bands released their catalog at higher sampling rates, it proves that it's "better".

And you're the only one in this current conversation with the "highly resolving" system and super-human hearing that can detect these massive differences.

Does that sum it up?

 

BTW, what sampling rate is Mastered For iTunes music released in?

 

AAC 256kbps, but there is considerable evidence that playbacks of AAC 256kbps sourced from 24bit/96kHz masters or higher show an improvement. When the Led Zeppelin "MFiT" versions came out last year they were praised highly. Obviously, there is no way that AAC 256kbps is going to give you 24bit/96kHz high resolution audio quality.

You may wish to watch this video which explains "MFiT" in full.
http://productionadvice.co.uk/mastered-for-itunes-video/

Anyway, this thread is about Pono Music and not iTunes. I just hope that if iTunes are willing to turn away masters that are not at least 24/96 if the music is to be advertised as "MFiT", Pono Music will do the same thing and only accept masters that are of the high standard that Pono Music expects i.e. 24/96 or higher and not with any dynamic range compression added.

 

Considerable evidence?

Alright, provide some considerable links, please.

 

I honestly found the 'extra detail' above 48k kind of odd and unnatural. This is listening back in a mastering studio, A/Bing back and forth. Some sounds just never seemed to 'deaden' realistically after they finished, which I found irritating after a while.

I personally hated the sound of the raw high-end 24/192 backups of my original 1/2" 30ips masters that were made several years ago(I was there to A/B them while they were being done). Instead I had 1/4" tape copies made (with no digital in the chain), which I felt captured the 'essence' of the original tape about 100x better, and hired out a Tascam DA-45HR to do a 'pure' digital copy at 24/48 which sounded nice, way better than the 24/192, and as good as digital can get to copying a first generation analogue tape in an 'non-deteriorated' state IMO.

However... I have had quite nice results in both capture and playback at 96k when the source is a master tape that has deteriorated e.g. needed baking due to 'sticky' or 'shedding' issues or where the top end has 'gone'. And where the source is one or several generations from the original master. Those 1/4" backups I made of my 1/2" tapes sounded pretty good copied to 96k. Also I used to make fine sounding needledrops from a belt drive turntable at 24/96 - although these days I am much happier with the results of copying my vinyl from Quartz Locked Direct Drive and Dual Quartz Controlled Belt Drive TTs to 16/44.1 on my old Pioneer CD recorder.

 

I have an analogue Mono Long Player copy of Time Out. It has been stored for 55 years. I can still listen to it. Somewhere in my house are floppy discs half that age that can not be read easily because the technology to access the digital data stored on them is largely obsolete.

 

Make a copy of each to store off site, and let us know the results.

 

I make copies of LPs all the time. On Maxell tapes, then I listen to them in the car. If I can someday get someone to help me access the data on the floppy to copy it to usb or put on a cloud somewhere as easily as I can tape the LP I will let you know.

 

So you're saying digital is the ideal long-term solution?

 

No

 

So analogue tape, which degrades over time with or without use, will somehow outlive zeroes and ones stored on a remote server with redundancy?

You're kidding, right?

But, forget long-term. What if something happens and you lose your house to a disaster?

 

That is a huge problem. One of the things with long-term digital archives is you have to allow to migrating the data, which is the fancy phrase for "copy all the old crap to new drives before the old drives fail." So basically every 4-5 years, you're copying everything, and you have to do checksums to make sure all the files are intact.

I've been very, very careful about this, but even I've run into a few files that have gotten a tiny bit corrupted over the years -- like a momentary "blip" or click in a file where it never used to be there. So far, this has happened maybe 4 or 5 times with many thousands of songs in 10 years. But... I kinda compare this to getting a snarled analogue tape or a new tick & pop in an otherwise pristine LP. Crap happens.

The Library of Congress is archiving to both digital files and 15ips analogue 1/4" open reel. And they have millions and millions of hours of material. We know for a fact that a 50-year-old analogue tape will play back; digital files... not so much.

 

I guess I have to start over. I did it once before. What happens if an employee at the remote server facility that stores your data has an unfortunate incident with a toilet and the storage room is completely flooded with sewer water? And then the building housing the redundant backup is struck by lighting and goes up in flames? And the local firefighters are on strike?

The analogue tape may not outlive the ones and zeros, but the technology that plays back the tape can certainly outlive the technology that accesses the ones and zeros.