Did any one else enjoy Brian Eno's letter to the editor in Tape Op?

I found both the contents of the letter and the fact that it was published refreshing.

Anyone else?

it was an interesting letter, on the purely technical sense...

but ultimately, doesn't matter a lot for larger runs of reproduction, versus duplication.

if you're doing runs of duplication, you're probably not turning over that much product, and your not being compared to audiophile playback, where the difference would even show up.

in other words, who except for audiophiles, would ever even notice the difference?

most folks seem to listen to crappy 128kbps mp3's, or the stuff that itunes sells

"in other words, who except for audiophiles, would ever even notice the difference?"

The message I took from his letter is that he felt unable to explain to a collaborator that a comparison of two copies of a sound file, that could be shown to be identical to such a degree that a bit checker indicated that they were 100% identical, did not actually sound different from each other. The collaborator was convinced that one copy of the file had been altered in some negative way while the other sounded ok.

Mr Eno seemed genuinely concerned that sometimes it is impossible to reassure or help a collaborator who is forcing a superstitious opinion, that can not be substantiated through analysis or shared experienced, upon a situation.

He left the door open by asking if there is some possibility that he is unaware of some factor or parameter, but he also confirms that the files passed a bit check test.

I found it refreshing to see both Mr. Eno and the TapeOp magazine discussing these sorts of awkward situations so candidly.


:-)



I don't think it has much to do with audiophillia, It seems to provide more insights into human behavior than sound technology.

best regards,
mike

ultimately, it only matters as far as it boils down to releasing product on CD for listening to.

it's a technology issue.....
one which i hope will soon go away.

Anybody gonna fill the rest of us in on what you're talking about?

Dave, Jeff and I are all ears...

T

Thanks Mike!

I finally got around to reading this.

They touched on some interesting points, but my favorite is that the jitter caused by a CD player is easy to fix just by isolating the DAC clock's power from the CD servo (I'm guessing reasonably cheaply too).

The question then is, do they not fix it because of some incompetence, or the cost, or just because no one can hear it anyway?

Personally, I think jitter is a favorite culprit when talking about digital audio because almost no one really understands it - and the measurement devices required are very expensive (I've heard figure in the hundreds of thousands of dollars), so everyone just ends up making claims or speculating.

The truth is you can't even begin to talk about what jitter would sound like if it were audible, and if it could be audible unless you know what the jitter waveform looks like and what kind of ADC or DAC you have!