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<p>An analog pundit – unnamed here to protect the innocent from more stupidity – explains to his readers that with digital noise, even though you can’t hear it, can’t measure it, can’t explain it, can’t identify it, but you know it’s there even when you don’t hear it. With analog noise on the other hand,* your shoulders relax and you breathe a sigh of relief, as if the burdens of the world were suddenly lifted from your shoulders.</p>
<p>Analog noise is “nice noise,” acceptable noise, welcoming, warm, moist and fuzzy noise, and your shoulders relax as soon as you hear it. It is more “natural” because, <em>clue</em>: that’s what you’ve been listening to for the last fifty years. And the analog pundit says, everyone has heard it – even those who have not. The digital noise that is. Analog noise is another matter: You can listen behind and past it, he might say, and hear <em>more</em> of the music. You can also look behind glass flaked with encrusted garbage and see more of the world – that is, if you hear voices in your head telling you that you are seeing more. As in, less is more.</p>
<p>Let me clarify it: One can measure both analog and digital noise. What noise there is, can be measured. Accurately. Any noise on an LP can be seen on a scope. Or on a bouncing tonearm. As Rodney Dangerfield might say: Take my pop. Please take her. He was referring to his wife of course. Noise on analog tape can be heard provided no noise-reduction technology were being used. If Dolby for example were turned on, you should hear the absence of the music you might have heard previously without the noise overlaying it. Nice noise that is.</p>
<p>Analog is capable of recording most, if not all, of what the microphone hears. Up to 80%. With noise. However LPs made from analog tape are incapable of playing what was on the tape back without adding tons of noise and various distortions…that’s a story for another time.</p>
<p>Digital is capable of recording more of the music with less noise…and there you have its superior S/N ratio. After you had recorded the digital stream you no longer have to reprocess it <em>via</em> an RIAA filter such as the one the analog pundit processes in the next article for a mere $35,000. The only filter really necessary for digital is for Nyquist, way beyond the hearing ability of analog pundits in their sixties. Even for pundits in their forties.</p>
<p>The only noise one cannot measure is the noise made by the voices in one’s head.</p>
<p>But in actuality, that too, can be measured.</p>
<p>Voices in one’s head requires medication for the noise to go away and there are no guarantees except for one: the noise returns as surely as the noise will return as soon as you drop the arm on the platter.</p>
<p>Provided that the data is decoded bit perfect through resampling software and a good DAC, digital noise is far less intrusive, and less of it exists to begin with than analog noise in your phono playback system. Orders of magnitude better…and you can relax your shoulders now.</p>
<p>The last is provable by any non-bisased listening panel not <em>managed</em> by the analog pundit or by others with agendas and skin in the game.</p>
<p>Remember this: the noise was not pre-existing. It is <em>created</em> within the playback system by the playback process itself. No noise is good noise, no matter how many times one repeats the inanity that good noise is better than no noise; and no turntable is expensive and good enough to dispense with the noise, to sweep it under the proverbial rug, er, record mat, but can only add to it.</p>
<p>Unlike analog noise which intermodulates with the music signal, digital noise is less likely to occur to begin with with the smaller amount of existing digital noise induced by the digital system – at least not to the degree it will with LP and analog tape.</p>
<p>The bottom line: Intelligence has its limits; the noises in one’s head can continue the conversation indefinitely. The problem gets more serious when another voice joins the argument with the first. The third voice called Femtoclock, is entirely silent.</p>
<p>My own reaction is that I sigh with relief when I shut down the turntable, power up my Fidelia Advanced powered by iZotope on my MAC, and listen to my very good DAC playing back what I had just heard on my turntable, free of noise, hash, ticks and pops, vinyl grunge, rumble, wow and flutter, haze, cartridge crosstalk and its predictable rolled off top end, and the unavoidable dynamic compression deliberately cut into LPs that can easily be heard against direct-to-disc LPs cut simultaneously; that, is also now missing the analog tape noise. More or less the same way you can hear the noise missing with a digital master. Less in this case, is more.</p>
<p>I refer you to Robert Harley’s editorials concerning this matter.</p>
<p>One can of course convince himself while trying to convince others that the digital noise that can’t be measured, identified, seen or heard* is unnatural – and it really exists. No matter what anyone might think. On the premise of words repeated over and over. If one says it’s so, it must be so.</p>
<p>The analog pundit has a problem. Robert’s problem? Apparently, just like The Audio Hitman, he doesn’t hear voices in his head.</p>
<p>The bottom of the bottom line or the end of this tale: The only possible purpose for the pundit’s noisemaking is to set the notion in concrete (soon to arrive in your mailbox or PC) that a $100,000 digital system is <em>a priori</em> not as good as his $200,000 analog front end; and therefore the goal will “prove” with mere words – rather than performance – the superiority of analog – and that Lee Harvey Oswald did not fire that fatal shot.</p>
<p>The last time I looked at Google Earth, Roswell still showed up in New Mexico, and it had glowing objects hovering over it. One was a $300 gold plated LP.</p>
<p>Andrew G. Benjamin</p>
<p>(c) All Rights Reserved</p>
<br /><span class="c4"><img src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-spamfree/img/wpsf-img.php" width="0" height="0" alt="" class="c3" /></span>
[Source: http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/noise-head/12706/]
<p>Analog noise is “nice noise,” acceptable noise, welcoming, warm, moist and fuzzy noise, and your shoulders relax as soon as you hear it. It is more “natural” because, <em>clue</em>: that’s what you’ve been listening to for the last fifty years. And the analog pundit says, everyone has heard it – even those who have not. The digital noise that is. Analog noise is another matter: You can listen behind and past it, he might say, and hear <em>more</em> of the music. You can also look behind glass flaked with encrusted garbage and see more of the world – that is, if you hear voices in your head telling you that you are seeing more. As in, less is more.</p>
<p>Let me clarify it: One can measure both analog and digital noise. What noise there is, can be measured. Accurately. Any noise on an LP can be seen on a scope. Or on a bouncing tonearm. As Rodney Dangerfield might say: Take my pop. Please take her. He was referring to his wife of course. Noise on analog tape can be heard provided no noise-reduction technology were being used. If Dolby for example were turned on, you should hear the absence of the music you might have heard previously without the noise overlaying it. Nice noise that is.</p>
<p>Analog is capable of recording most, if not all, of what the microphone hears. Up to 80%. With noise. However LPs made from analog tape are incapable of playing what was on the tape back without adding tons of noise and various distortions…that’s a story for another time.</p>
<p>Digital is capable of recording more of the music with less noise…and there you have its superior S/N ratio. After you had recorded the digital stream you no longer have to reprocess it <em>via</em> an RIAA filter such as the one the analog pundit processes in the next article for a mere $35,000. The only filter really necessary for digital is for Nyquist, way beyond the hearing ability of analog pundits in their sixties. Even for pundits in their forties.</p>
<p>The only noise one cannot measure is the noise made by the voices in one’s head.</p>
<p>But in actuality, that too, can be measured.</p>
<p>Voices in one’s head requires medication for the noise to go away and there are no guarantees except for one: the noise returns as surely as the noise will return as soon as you drop the arm on the platter.</p>
<p>Provided that the data is decoded bit perfect through resampling software and a good DAC, digital noise is far less intrusive, and less of it exists to begin with than analog noise in your phono playback system. Orders of magnitude better…and you can relax your shoulders now.</p>
<p>The last is provable by any non-bisased listening panel not <em>managed</em> by the analog pundit or by others with agendas and skin in the game.</p>
<p>Remember this: the noise was not pre-existing. It is <em>created</em> within the playback system by the playback process itself. No noise is good noise, no matter how many times one repeats the inanity that good noise is better than no noise; and no turntable is expensive and good enough to dispense with the noise, to sweep it under the proverbial rug, er, record mat, but can only add to it.</p>
<p>Unlike analog noise which intermodulates with the music signal, digital noise is less likely to occur to begin with with the smaller amount of existing digital noise induced by the digital system – at least not to the degree it will with LP and analog tape.</p>
<p>The bottom line: Intelligence has its limits; the noises in one’s head can continue the conversation indefinitely. The problem gets more serious when another voice joins the argument with the first. The third voice called Femtoclock, is entirely silent.</p>
<p>My own reaction is that I sigh with relief when I shut down the turntable, power up my Fidelia Advanced powered by iZotope on my MAC, and listen to my very good DAC playing back what I had just heard on my turntable, free of noise, hash, ticks and pops, vinyl grunge, rumble, wow and flutter, haze, cartridge crosstalk and its predictable rolled off top end, and the unavoidable dynamic compression deliberately cut into LPs that can easily be heard against direct-to-disc LPs cut simultaneously; that, is also now missing the analog tape noise. More or less the same way you can hear the noise missing with a digital master. Less in this case, is more.</p>
<p>I refer you to Robert Harley’s editorials concerning this matter.</p>
<p>One can of course convince himself while trying to convince others that the digital noise that can’t be measured, identified, seen or heard* is unnatural – and it really exists. No matter what anyone might think. On the premise of words repeated over and over. If one says it’s so, it must be so.</p>
<p>The analog pundit has a problem. Robert’s problem? Apparently, just like The Audio Hitman, he doesn’t hear voices in his head.</p>
<p>The bottom of the bottom line or the end of this tale: The only possible purpose for the pundit’s noisemaking is to set the notion in concrete (soon to arrive in your mailbox or PC) that a $100,000 digital system is <em>a priori</em> not as good as his $200,000 analog front end; and therefore the goal will “prove” with mere words – rather than performance – the superiority of analog – and that Lee Harvey Oswald did not fire that fatal shot.</p>
<p>The last time I looked at Google Earth, Roswell still showed up in New Mexico, and it had glowing objects hovering over it. One was a $300 gold plated LP.</p>
<p>Andrew G. Benjamin</p>
<p>(c) All Rights Reserved</p>
<br /><span class="c4"><img src="http://www.pstracks.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-spamfree/img/wpsf-img.php" width="0" height="0" alt="" class="c3" /></span>
[Source: http://www.pstracks.com/opinions/noise-head/12706/]
