Activity

  • PiPoe posted an update 5 years, 1 month ago

    “analog information is continuous, while digital information is not.” an excerpt from the following article from Columbia University on Music and Computers – I found this quite interesting.
    http://sites.music.columbia.edu/cmc/MusicAndComputers/chapter2/02_02.php

    • Yes, very good, basic explanation. I’ve been torturing friends and family with my analogue vs. digital rants for the better part of a year now! I’m quite sure that most of them don’t get it, or more importantly, don’t actually care! They also don’t understand why an engineer (electrical) would have these issues. Not all of us engineering types are cut from the same thread, you know! I also like to use some of the following:
      Analogue = human; Digital = transhuman (or anti-human)
      Analogue = infinite; Digital = finite
      Analogue has no number base; Digital is base-two (on or off)
      I could go on and on, but you get the idea. I sent a rant to one of my dear University friends who is an audiophile, but got no response. I think I overloaded him! Part of it went like this:
      “…Humans (analogue) sing into a microphone (analogue) and play their instruments into mixer and amplifier (analogue) and then the analogue data goes thru an ADC (analogue-to-digital converter) where it slices up phonemes and picks out data points that can be stored on digital media. We then stick that digital media into our digital stereos (or computers) where the DAC chip (digital-to-analogue converter) reassembles those slices back into pseudo-analogue in a way that some Silicon Valley nerd determined will “sound the same” as when it was originally created by humans in analogue! For ______ Sake (profanity removed for JPF sake), what’s wrong with that picture?”

        • Superb. This would also seem to explain why digital can be hacked and analogue cannot unless a ‘converter’ is placed between the two signal types.

          • Maybe a person has to experience, or have recent exposure to, analog music (or analog anything else) to appreciate/remember how different it is from its digital simulacrum. Fewer and fewer analog experiences are occurring. Then there’s always going to be a fraction of the population without the ability to perceive the richness of an analog experience, emotionally or intellectually, due to a psychological problem–think sociopathy, psychopathy, and certain kinds of autism.

              • Yes. And speaking of the “richness” aspect, I was looking into how pixels are created – it is number based. https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs101/image-1-introduction.html
                and that led me to ‘tonal colour’ or timbre – quite interesting (this article breaks out the different timbre employed during the different music eras.
                https://helsinginkaupunginorkesteri.fi/en/tonal-colour

                • Yes, FiatLux, and well said. I say it to people all the time – if there is an audio show nearby where you live, go to it! Yeah, there will be a lot of digital and WiFi stuff there, but the analogue and tube-based product is worth putting up with the rest! There is a big analogue revival in the audio world and it will blow your ears into the next dimension when you hear it!

                  • Hi Fiatlux and hope you are well,

                    I can close my eyes at anytime and clearly hear the crackling of the vinyl record, it’s warmth ~ which enveloped the whole room as if a cotton candy mist blanket had fallen over everything, and all this imagery just from recalling a childhood memory. This plush sound was almost or very similar to the burning wood in a fireplace, the same quality in form, it’s dance was undulating like the dance of a flame. My father would play Bach and neither the record-player/turntable nor the speakers were the supposed ‘audiophile’ quality costing a fortune, as we were never wealthy, but never the less i distinctly remember with definitive clarity the breadth and depth – richness of that experience. Thank you for your reminder, and although a fear inside me grows not wanting to loose such experiences, i wonder what i can do other than purchasing a record player and some vinyl records to keep such wonderful machinery from being lost forever. I wonder if my love for film photographs is also the same analogous type; it must be, no? I always admired the fact that I could find a negative from almost a half century ago, hold it up to a light source such as the sun and still see the image imprinted there. It is shame that all my digital photographs of my son will not have the same accessibility.

                      • Beautifully worded.

                        • Funny, I just sent a rant to someone about this very topic of film photography! Here is a little clip from that rant, “…I’m so fed up with digital everything! To me, life was more enjoyable when we put vinyl on a turntable and loaded film into a camera. When taking analogue pictures with film, you not only needed to know how to take the photos, but you were very judicious about what photos you took and how they were composed. In other words, you had to think instead of just hold the button down whilst the camera clicks away…” Though Kodak brought back Ektachrome, I don’t trust those who develop it. Developing film was as much of an art as taking the photo. I’m not quite sure that today’s woke teeny-boopers would get it. I used to send slides directly back to Kodak for processing, but that service is gone. And nobody prints photos the old analogue way now. They all seem to scan them and print on an ink-jet. Just so maddening. Now, that said, if they brought back Kodachrome, I’d seriously consider shooting film again!

                            • You brought back fond memories of developing photos in a dark room and using various techniques to bring out different effects. Good times.

                              • Hey toddb,
                                I you are so right, i haven’t experienced those simple pleasures myself in so long, right now it seems like several lifetimes ago, thank you for the reminder. I really need to find some film although i do not know where i can get Kodak Ektachrome at this point in time or if they even make it anymore. I still have my 35mm film cameras and right now it seems like the perfect time to feel them out once again.

                          • A question just popped into my mind. If analogue has no number base, how can the cosmological information field be composed of numbers? or, is it that numbers, which are just symbols with attached meaning… wait a minute. Could it be that digitizing numbers reduces their multi-dimensional meaning as symbols to a single dimension (flat earth vs. spherical)?

                              • Hmm…interesting. Very interesting. Well, my understanding (and not saying that it’s correct) is that the language of the Universe is colour, tone, and archetype. I believe that numbers may be an end-result of that, or stated differently, something that pops out of that.

                            • That article is indeed very interesting–and easy to grasp for non-physics types like me!