Harley's response is typical. It sounds like it is full of really believable engineering stuff but it is actually mostly baloney. I am sure the average TAS reader now thinks he is a genius and I am a fool.
I sent a response. Probably won't publish a lengthy exchange.
First, thanks for publishing my letter. Second I think your response was a show for the non engineering readership. I am sure they all thought you were wonderful and I was shown a fool. You surely know that the count density of particles on magnetic tape does not show its resolution. Recording, playing back and measuring the played back signal shows the resolution and it is inferior to 16/44 PCM in both distortion and noise performance. Resolution is simply the ability to reproduce a recorded event. Ability to discriminate between musical events in amplitude and time shows up in the distortion measurements. It can be demonstrated (and has been) that lowering the number of bits in a digital system does not change the accuracy of the reproduced signal, it changes the noise floor. Since the tape has a hugely higher noise floor than 16/44 PCM, recording both mag tape and digital tape at low levels will not sound better on the analog tape, the analog tape will be much noisier and low level signals will disappear into the noise floor while still audible in the digital system. Analog recording is not continuous virtually or any other way. The discontinuity is simply different in nature than it is in the digital domain.
5 microsecond “time smear”? Please show me the experiment that shows that the human ear can discriminate between two sounds that are 5 microseconds apart.
What we have here is an attempt to explain a subjective opinion in engineering language. The engineering explanations are simply wrong.
I sent a response. Probably won't publish a lengthy exchange.
First, thanks for publishing my letter. Second I think your response was a show for the non engineering readership. I am sure they all thought you were wonderful and I was shown a fool. You surely know that the count density of particles on magnetic tape does not show its resolution. Recording, playing back and measuring the played back signal shows the resolution and it is inferior to 16/44 PCM in both distortion and noise performance. Resolution is simply the ability to reproduce a recorded event. Ability to discriminate between musical events in amplitude and time shows up in the distortion measurements. It can be demonstrated (and has been) that lowering the number of bits in a digital system does not change the accuracy of the reproduced signal, it changes the noise floor. Since the tape has a hugely higher noise floor than 16/44 PCM, recording both mag tape and digital tape at low levels will not sound better on the analog tape, the analog tape will be much noisier and low level signals will disappear into the noise floor while still audible in the digital system. Analog recording is not continuous virtually or any other way. The discontinuity is simply different in nature than it is in the digital domain.
5 microsecond “time smear”? Please show me the experiment that shows that the human ear can discriminate between two sounds that are 5 microseconds apart.
What we have here is an attempt to explain a subjective opinion in engineering language. The engineering explanations are simply wrong.
