CDs Not Lossy?

CD was chosen also, as to define the limits of what all humans are able to hear. As far as going to both high and low frequency extremes, and to levels that are below the ability to be heard, in ANY normal environment.

Everything else that came later did not expand the range of what all humans can hear, but did expand "Beyond" what a human can hear.

Therefore CD audio is the standard of "High Fidelity sound" ( even if it is not exactly perfect) And everything else is honestly arguably going beyond what is needed.

 

Did you say priceless or lossless

 

The question at which point it makes sense to talk about losses is a more philosophical and a less practical one. Postulating that your understanding of this is the only correct one, maybe it's your thinking that's narrow-minded and (possibly) faulty ...

 

Can you "lose" something you've never had? Think about it.

 

CD never had a higher than 16/44.1 resolution.

 

To make myself feel better or worse, I spent a little time last night searching Google.

Using phrases such as ' downsampling "lossy process" ' brings up many results. Once one scrolls past the usual Wikipedia and related entries, one finds many articles, both in various books and tech papers, referring to downsampling as a "lossy process." Some of these refer specifically to image manipulation, but not all do, and many refer to audio processing.

This proves little, of course, except that there are areas outside of the audiophile world where the idea that downsampling cannot be considered 'lossy' is not established beyond a doubt.

So at least my confusion, in my case from coming at the term from my particular (as opposed to Shaboo's) IT background, was not unique or without cause.

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

 

We're talking about recording.

 

In contrast to you, I'm not accusing people of "faulty, narrow thinking", just because they don't share my opinion.

 

It seems you reached a conclusion, to wit: "Modern studio, mixing, and mastering processes, equipment, and workflows use resolutions higher than 44.1kHz/16 bits while still delivering 44.1kHz/16 bit material to the consumer. That disparity can be characterized as a loss of resolution or 'lossy' for a shorthand term." ...and tried to apply that conclusion to a query about the vernacular of consumer audio terminology:

But that's really a non sequitur. By this logic, blu-ray discs are "lossy" compared to the 4K (or higher) resolution of the material captured on the set or by a film scanner.

So sure, you can google a few words and have the search return articles that discuss audio mastering techniques. But to suggest those search results support what is at best an awkward attempt to apply new meaning to the word "lossy" is a fallacy IMHO.

 

Squirrel.

 

I think that describes me at the beginning of this thread, yes.

Close, but not quite. I wasn't talking about sampling non-digital sources to digital. I was talking about methods of converting high resolution digital masters to lower resolution digital formats.

And here is where I feel like you may not have followed my thought over the span of this thread, or even to the end of that exact post. This wasn't a, "here's proof what I thought was right," as much as a, "this may be part of the reason I was confused."

Shalom, y'all!

L. Bangs

 

The question you posed (Can you "lose" something you've never had? Think about it.) was more general.

If you are going to argue that CD is 'lossy' because of the existence of a higher resolution somewhere, then ALL formats are lossy because there will always be a higher resolution possible. That is clearly a ridiculous argument. The very existence of DXD (8 Fs PCM) makes DVD-A and Blu-Ray 'lossy' by your logic, even though they cannot support 8 Fs.

And before someone interjects about recording and releasing in 24/96, for example, no commercial release is composed of unedited raw recordings. Editing, mixing, cross-fading, level adjustment, etc. all changes the audio, and all those DSP steps introduce noise/distortion at some level.

 

It made me wonder what if LPs had come in 13rpm, 23rpm, 33rpm, 45rpm, and so on until 90rpm? That would have been some format war!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

"CDs are lossy."

 

I think it's important to note that all recording of any kind is inherently lossy.

There is no recording system available that can record every detail of air movement involved when an instrument makes a sound. Even if possible, there is no playback equipment to reproduce it.

 

I can see that I probably shouldn't have used the term "lossy" in my last post if we are referring to lossy strictly as a compression/encoding scheme where decompression does not yield the original.

 

That's the thread in a nutshell, all ten pages of them.

 

(inserting cross-cultural humor for moment of comic relief)

Squirrel? Do you mean Eichhörnchen?

maybe it's just perspective... or pronunciation

(background here)

 

Well just like in video various coding schemes can be used and one 16/44. can be very different sounding than another 16/44.
The machines use the make the code matter.

 

not really an answer though

 

I'll try. Lossy and lossless do not apply. CD implements a song digitally - the question becomes is the algorithm strong enough to represent the song - if not then there would be "loss" as compared to the analog (tape vinyl version).

 

The reason we have language is to communicate ideas. When we add additional meaning to words it is harder to get a point across easily. Lossless and lossy already have established meanings in the audiophile lexicon referring to data compression. In the same audiophile lexicon we have the terminology of fidelity. Fidelity is used to describe how close the one version comes to another version, ie. how does the CD sound vs. the original Master file or Master tape.
If we add more meanings to lossy and lossless we get even more confusion, like several people who've incorrectly stated the MP3 loss data every time they're played.

 

Which is why the made-up word "vinyls" is like nails on a chalkboard to some...