7 Channels Possible with ALL-DIGITAL Station

[hubcity]

Often, the audibly perceivable distinction between "digital" and "analog" isn't necessarily that one's analog and one isn't, it's that the dynamic range compression (as opposed to lossy or lossless data compression) is very different between a 30-year-old LP and a current CD, and the reason is that everyone wants to have the loudest CD in the changer (or the loudest MP3 in the iPod.)

Metaphorically, this typing (with proper capitalizations, etc.) is how an LP is engineered, and THIS IS THE WAY MOST CDS ARE ENGINEERED TODAY. Every sound is raised to its highest possible loudness. It's actually tiring to listen to.

So digitizing an LP and removing the pops and clicks actually does result in a much better listening experience; the loud parts have more punch in comparison to the quieter parts. Currently-produced LPs often have this in mind, and are engineered using the compression they've always used.

(And when you're trying to program music from across a 40-year span, much of it digitized from the original vinyl, it's a pain to deal with.)

 

[RadeoEngineer]

(And when you're trying to program music from across a 40-year span, much of it digitized from the original vinyl, it's a pain to deal with.)

As the former engineer of a former oldies station, I heartily concur.

 

[Ai4i]

What does one do with Roberta Flack's, "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face"?
No way to make it sound good with any procassing!
Don't get me wrong, I like the song, just can't process it for analog radio.

 

[tomservo]

So what's more annoying to you folks: dealing with too-loud modern music albums, ms "remastered" old music? ;-)

 

[K6JHU]

I will admit that the new modern sound of Classical is a lot better than the LP days. The old days for Claasical was the 'wall of sound' with two mics (for stereo). New recodings allow a lot better mix so you hear each instrument. The only real improvement in audio quality. BTW, after I digitize an LP, I keep the original in my computer and burn a CD for the car with just enough audio compression (Old Dbx analog at that - means re-digitizing) to get over the road noise.

 

[spunker88]

Those bitrates seem pretty low. According to wikipedia a CD is actually using around 1400kb/s, but since its an uncompressed format the number is higher. With MP3 compression I'd put CD quality at around 300-500kb/s. Analog FM when being tuned to a strong station that doesn't overcompress their audio in their studio and listened to on a decent tuner can sound just as good if not better compared to a CD. Anything less than 128kb/s comes across to me as low quality. That is the minimum bitrate I use for MP3 files. Online streams are usually 32 or 64kb/s and you can tell pretty easily that its low quality.

Telephone audio is somewhere around 8-10 kb/s, and if you've ever listened to somebody phone in on an AM station you can easily tell the phone audio is a lot worse than the in studio audio. AM is usually overcompressed and with narrowband analog signals popping up to accompany IBOC the analog quality is getting an even worse reputation. AM, under ideal conditions and with the right tuner (usually a modified one) can achieve near CD quality as well. Add in stereo and you'd have a hard time telling AM and FM apart. Heres proof of a wideband AM stereo station in Japan sounding as good as FM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMAPKTnJtnA

 

[Ai4i]

All well and good but the advantages of going from AM to FM, mechanical to electronic or optical and analog to digital are, as we see it, to reduce or eliminate noise indefinitely and in the real world.

 

[KB1OKL]

All well and good but the advantages of going from AM to FM, mechanical to electronic or optical and analog to digital are, as we see it, to reduce or eliminate noise indefinitely and in the real world.

The other night someone on the NRC reported that WHAM had it's IBOC off, I tuned it in on my SX-28 with it's excellent audio (14 Khz in wide position) and it sounded almost as good as most FM stations with no drop outs and no noise. This is the way AM routinely sounded 40 years ago, this was from 350 miles away. AM can sound great.

 

[hubcity]

Those bitrates seem pretty low. According to wikipedia a CD is actually using around 1400kb/s, but since its an uncompressed format the number is higher. With MP3 compression I'd put CD quality at around 300-500kb/s. Analog FM when being tuned to a strong station that doesn't overcompress their audio in their studio and listened to on a decent tuner can sound just as good if not better compared to a CD. Anything less than 128kb/s comes across to me as low quality. That is the minimum bitrate I use for MP3 files. Online streams are usually 32 or 64kb/s and you can tell pretty easily that its low quality.

Hang on there - you're conflating two different kinds of "compression" and not comparing apples to apples on the important one...let me see if I can tease that out...

"Overcompressed" audio on an FM signal (analog or digital) really refers to compression of the audio's dynamic range, where the difference between loud and soft is minimized, peak volumes are moderated, and then the volume of the whole shebang is turned up as high as possible without overloading. It's wholly different than compression of the data stream used for carrying music over a digital transport.

Data compression quality varies based on the method used:

- "Uncompressed" audio data is exactly that, with a data rate of 1,411.2 kbit/s for CD-quality tracks. If one were to try to recode that to an uncompressed format whose data rate was consistent with MP3, the sound quality would be atrocious.

- "Lossless compressed" audio allows for audio data that sounds exactly the same before compression as it does afterward. FLAC is one format that performs this trick, allowing for the same quality as CD at about half the data rate.

- "Compressed" audio data takes advantage of auditory tricks that convince the average listener that they're hearing more than they are. That allows for drastic reductions in data rate, but also means that the audio is different before compression than it is afterward. The quality of reproduction depends on the data rate, but also depends on the algorithm used. The trade-off is computing power - better algorithms allow for smaller data rates to achieve equivalent (though still lossy) quality, but also require stronger processors, or more dedicated ones in the case of HD Radio, to perform the compression and decompression of the data stream. uLaw was an early compression standard, but MP3 is noticeably better than uLaw at approximating the original audio at lower data rates. AAC-Plus is even better than MP3, and (supposedly) the HD Radio codec is better than all of the above.

The point I'm trying to make is that you can't compare the audio quality at a certain data rate encoded via MP3 to the same data rate encoded by FLAC, or AAC-Plus, or HD Radio's proprietary codec. I believe HD Radio does sound better than MP3 at lower bitrates, and might even sound better than AAC (though I'd have to hear proof.) For that reason, you can't say "I code my files at bitrate X" and then claim that HD Radio is cruddy because it's coded at a lower bitrate than that - there's more to the story.

Though a 16kbps stereo bitrate using any method is still pretty cruddy no matter how you slice it.

 

[pocket-radio]

What a joke CD quality = (100 kbit/s) Who are they trying to fool? their customers..

128 kibit/s delivers a fair to poor sound sounding MP3.

Just add road/wind noise with drops for very unhappy customers who were scammed paying big bucks for their HD upgrade.

 

[nd2023]

The audio quality of the web stream of a station (64k AAC+) sounds better than the station sounds like on an HD radio.

 

[tomservo]

Anyone who thinks that FM stereo, even under perfect laboratory conditions, sounds transparent to a well mastered CD, needs their hearing checked.

Or maybe I just have really good hearing.

I find the sharp cutoff of high frequencies present on good FM stereo broadcasts to be painful, depending on the audio content. Even though it's technically a step down, I very much prefer the aural characteristics of wideband AM/AM stereo. Something about the high end rolloff sounds so much better to me, and I don't seem to miss the low frequency rolloff of C-QUAM.

What I don't get is how people (the general public) seems to be so immune to the undesired artifacts of digital lossy compression. It's become so pervasive that I doubt anyone under the age of 30 has probably heard good analog audio in years. I hear the artifacts on my DirecTV receiver's SD channels, I hear it on local radio stations, I hear it on YouTube, on iTunes downloads, etc etc. It's truly everywhere. Even my local ABC TV affiliate has their commercials running at what sounds like about 16 kbps mp3. :

Sometimes you gotta dust off an old record and play it to remember what all-analog sounds like. Then stuff like FM HD or satellite radio or Pandora, they suddenly sound pretty ratty!

 

[JohnnyElectron]

I did do something right, my teen has a working turntable and uses it more than his MP3 or CD and does realize what compression sounds like, so there ARE still some 'golden ears' in our next generation, thank God. And yes, he does know that there's an "AM" button on his Delco UX1 radio, and that there's a CQuam stereo station on preset #1 (from Canada).

 

[KB1OKL]

Sometimes you gotta dust off an old record and play it to remember what all-analog sounds like. Then stuff like FM HD or satellite radio or Pandora, they suddenly sound pretty ratty!

Yes the LP record which has been surpassed by so many technological "improvements" is by far the best sounding recording medium in my experience.

 

[TheRover]

Sometimes you gotta dust off an old record and play it to remember what all-analog sounds like. Then stuff like FM HD or satellite radio or Pandora, they suddenly sound pretty ratty!

Yes the LP record which has been surpassed by so many technological "improvements" is by far the best sounding recording medium in my experience.

I can just see it now.... sometime in the next 10-20 years, some grand-kid, some great grand-kid, is going to visit their elderly grand-parent, that grew up on great sounding LP's from the 60's and 70's, and gramps will put on an LP, on that "funny looking contraption", and fire up the Marantz Receiver, and that young tween/teen will hear some "real" music for the very first time in their lives, and realize that they have the coolest grand-pa in the World ! ! !

 

[Ai4i]

I disagree. I really feel that overcoming noise no matter how many times a source is played is paramount, el primero, numero uno. That gr8 gr8 granddaughter will be unimpressed with the will be unimpressed with the will be unimpressed with the zzzzzz (medium pause) pops, skips, and wooaarbleeung, but that is just (simulated skip) pinion.

 

[Tom Wells]

I have 78s that sound better than some mp3s I've heard.

I do appreciate the ability of digital storage to save a copy of recordings from LPs where I've done work to clean up the
artifacts of surface noise.

But I also appreciate the durability of 78s 45s and LPs. They sit on the shelf with no worries or degradation as long as you like.

 

[Savage]

Do a YouTube search under the topic "V-Discs."

V-Discs were pressed in vinylite, IIRC vertically-cut (as opposed to the traditional lateral inscribing) and pressed to play at 78 rpm in the late World War 2 - postwar period. They were produced to entertain Armed Forces and were in some cases aired on Armed Forces Radio, but were restricted from play on commercial radio during the period.

The high recording speed of 78 rpm and extreme care in mastering and processing produced records of quality unsurpassed, in some examples, by almost any other medium since. If the records aren't worn and have been handled with reasonable care, in most cases they sound better than LPs. Certainly WAY more natural than web streams, overprocessed CDs and carelessly mastered 45s. Using "78 rpm records" as a generic pejorative for recorded material is, in a word, ignorant.

It was actually more than a decade in the past when we had a young college intern here, who wanted to produce a commercial one day using a certain sound effect. Whatever noise she was looking for wasn't available on our digital EFX library, but I recalled it existed on one of the old Audio Fidelity sound effects LPs. I steered her to the dusty record storage rack. She withdrew the disc with tremendous care, and powered up the Technics in production. Holding the tonearm gingerly, she hesitated - and asked me: which "sample rate" do I use? 45 kbp/s or 33 kbp/s? I told her, 33, and it's "revolutions per minute," the number of times the record turns every minute.

She burst out in laughter: "That's SO funny!" And she placed the stylus adjacent to the label, waiting for the sound to start.

 

[KB1OKL]

I disagree. I really feel that overcoming noise no matter how many times a source is played is paramount, el primero, numero uno. That gr8 gr8 granddaughter will be unimpressed with the will be unimpressed with the will be unimpressed with the zzzzzz (medium pause) pops, skips, and wooaarbleeung, but that is just (simulated skip) pinion.

I have a good old manual play Thorens TD-150/II with a Shure M97xE cartridge on it that is supposed to be close to an old Pickering V-15 and there ain't NO pops, skips or wooaarbleeung coming from that baby or any of my records. I've done A/ B comparisons with people to see if they could tell the difference and which one sounded better and almost all picked the LPs over the CDs. It is the most realistic sound I've heard, yes you need to keep your records in pristine condition but it pays. I have an old half speed master recording of Steely Dan Aja and it sounds great, also have a half speed master of Abbey Road, excellent sound, I've had these two records for 30+ years.

 

[Carmine5]

I encountered a very eye-opening experience a couple of weeks ago. I was transferring a friend's Sheffield Labs direct-to-disk recording to digital. I have Stanton's best turntable and cartridge and was using a ProTools 002 rack system which has very good D/As and using a 24-bit sample rate.

The original recording, although showing a slight bit of wear since it was from the 70's, still had plenty of life and punch to it. Very full and live. It sounded amazing. But the transfer to digital sounded entirely different. Technically all the information was there. But it seemed as if the "soul" had been ripped out of it.

If someone heard the digital transfer they would think it sounded great (once the clicks were removed). But stacked against the original LP and it would be apparent that something was missing. It may be also that the direct-to-disc process makes the shortcomings of digital all the more obvious. It really brought home to me that there is more to hearing a great recording than just the absence of noise.

It's not for nothing that, for a third straight year, sales of vinyl records has actually increased (by 33%). True, the sales are negligible compared to overall music sales but no one is reporting that CD sales are on an uptick. And if some of the younger ones on this board have never heard a direct-to-disk recording, try to find one on eBay or specialty store. It will blow you away. c5