When recording on cassette tapes was still the main way for us home
audio enthusiasts (of limited budget) to record music, and CDs were
just beginning to replace the old LP, I took a cue from a friend and
made the switch to using a hi-fi video recorder. I used it to record
favorite albums, 'party tapes' and my own semi-musical meanderings,
(still kept a cassette recorder/player for some things). The reason
for doing this was of course the higher quality, audio-wise, of hi-fi
video compared to cassette tapes. Now it's a generation later and I'm
wondering if I shouldn't take the same approach with digital
recording.

With the price of stand-alone DVD recorders coming down to reasonable
levels do you think it would be a good idea to buy a DVD recorder for
my home audio system, (using it, in part, to preserve old analog
recordings), and just skip buying a CD recorder altogether? (I've got
a burner for my pc, but that's all.) What would be the pluses and
minuses of doing this? Thanks for any comments.

"Gareth Hardy" <gareth@sentientsolutions.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in
message news:bdbqnl$1h2$1@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk
Ever hear of using computers for audio?

It works!

No audible benefits.

Good point, but in fact most practical CD-R's are full of empty space, as
actually used.

Right

Disadvantages of DVD-R:

(1) DVD-R drives are at least 3-4x more expensive than CD-R drives.

(2) Recording software to actually exploit the hardware capabilities of the
DVD can be relatively expensive. We're talking $100's versus free.

(3) DVD-Rs are relatively slow recorders of CD-Rs.

"Arny Krueger" <arnyk@hotpop.com> wrote in message
news:gKadnfZvMtFAHmSjXTWJkg@comcast.com...
CD players use tricks to smooth out the waveform at high frequencies because
of the fewer sampling points there. Higher sampling rates lessen the
effects.

"FDR" <_remove_spam_block_rzitka@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:BwhKa.111488$zm1.98358@twister.nyroc.rr.com
Irrelevant and wrong.

There are no tricks, just proven technology.

As long as there are slightly more than two sampling points, the
reconstruction of amplitude and phase is near-perfect.

Furthermore in CD audio, that happens at or above 22.05 KHz, which is way
more than people can hear the absence of in a musical/voice context.

AFAIK there are no bias-controlled, level-matched, time-synchronized
listening tests that show otherwise, and doing such tests is nearly trivial
in this day and age.

AFAIK there are no bias-controlled, level-matched, time-synchronized
listening tests that show that either, and doing such tests is again nearly
trivial in this day and age.

If you need to hear for yourself, take your 24/96 sound card over to
www.pcabx.com and take a listen.

I'm not an audio expert, but I thought that having a higher sampling rate is
not primarily to benefit the high frequency waveforms. It creates a smoother
waveform at lower frequencies so polyphonics sound clearer.

As well as being no expert, chances are I wouldn't notice the difference
between 44.1KHz audio and 96KHz anyway.

"Gareth Hardy" <gareth@sentientsolutions.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message news:<bdbqnl$1h2$1@newsg2.svr.pol.co.uk>...
A dvdr is the same as 7 cdr and you can get a good dvdr disc for less
than £1.00 now.

25 dvd-r for less than £20(remember thats the same as 175 cdr discs).

David

"Arny Krueger" <arnyk@hotpop.com> wrote in message
news:EIKdnVwOXMwGNmSjXTWJiw@comcast.com...
Nyquist states that 2f is the sampling rate. Tell me what you get when any
sine wavel looks like when it's sampled at twice it's frequency. The actual
reconstruction can be that of a triangle, sawtooth or flatline depending on
the time it was sampled.

Fact is that there are fewer data points at the high end. You cna never
retrieve data that's not there. Yes, there are algorithms to shape the
signal and try to reconstruct it to the original but it's just harder and
less accurate.

Sampling somethin at 8x vs. 2x will always be preferred.


How near perfect? Won't it be more near perfect with more data points?

This reminds me of the figure of the face on the Mars. Then when they got
higher resolution pictures you could easily tell that it wasn't a face.

CD players use steep filters to reject anything above 20khz so it doesn't
matter.

Maybe, but I know that high end frequencies on a CD sound harsh to my ears.

"Arny Krueger" <arnyk@hotpop.com> wrote in message
news:EIKdnVwOXMwGNmSjXTWJiw@comcast.com...
What technology? Assigning voltage to a time point?

Yes, near perfect, or maybe harsh? Tell me how are you gonna discribe sine
wave with 2 sample points? You can't, it is gonna be a triangle wave. So
higher the freqs on CD, sharper they become. Thats why more sample points
are needed in high-end audio. And if you have good speakers, you can really,
maybe not actually hear the difference, but feel the difference between
44.1kHz and 96kHz sampling rate. I would discribe it as a more open,
brilliant, sparkling, fresh full airy sound. You can laugh but it's true

True that we cannot "hear" above 22k or below 20Hz. But have you ever "felt"
15Hz? Psicho acoustics are playing with that kind of problems.

On 25 Jun 2003 01:41:20 -0700, IProtest4@yahoo.com (Golitely) wrote:

Computer CD burners are pushing 52X. DVD burners have been stuck at
4X. This may or may not be important to you. I've been holding off on
DVD because I burn a lot of stuff (mostly live concerts) and when I
get the chance to burn some stuff that is accumulating on the hard
drive I want to burn it fast.

I'm not sure of the speed of standalone CD burners, since I can't
conceive of using one rather than a PC one that costs 1/4 as much and
does more. However it has to be much faster than DVD.

A DVD-RW drive can be brought for less than £100 now which is only £50
more than the highest spec CD-RW drive.

Only about £30 for ulead dvd moviefactory or something silimar.

DVD-R writes at 1/2/4x which equates to 9/18/36x cd speeds. The only
reason DVD-Rs take long to record is because they are 7 times bigger
than a cd.

David

dgk" <sonicechoes@hot-nospamp-mail.com> wrote in message
news:5evjfvc2na0634vpeme8cqmda21b0qocit@4ax.com...
AFAIK, CD and DVD speeds are different. My old DVD ROM drive which was 2x
DVD was actually equal to a 20x CD speed. I wouldn't use 52x speed anyway.
I use my 40x CD burner at a max of 24x most of the time. It is not always
wise to burn so fast as it can affect how some equipment can read the disc.

Unbelievable tripe. WRONG.

On Wed, 25 Jun 2003 19:40:40 +0200, "Sasa [Sason] Miocic"
<sasa.miocic@zd.hinet.hr> wrote:

I think he said "more than 2 points". With a point at time=0, one
1/44,100 second later and 1/44,100 second after that, there is a
unique sine wave with frequency < 22,050 that fits those points.
Hopefully that will be close to the original sound.

Unbelievable tripe. WRONG

"Gareth Hardy" <gareth@sentientsolutions.freeserve.co.uk> wrote in message
news:bdcd33$ssb$1@news8.svr.pol.co.uk...

Look at the theorem from Nyquist in mathematical form. You are spewing BS.

"Sasa [Sason] Miocic" <sasa.miocic@zd.hinet.hr> wrote in message
news:bdcmqr$5op3$1@as201.hinet.hr...

It's true. The output is filtered in a way to basically fill-in the missing
data points. Take a course in DSP sometime.

"Buckaroo" <Dipper_CA@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:bdd50u$tsv$1@gladiola.noc.ucla.edu...

Or get a refund on one that teaches this. What data points
are allegedly missing?

FDR wrote:

On 25 Jun 2003 09:05:13 -0700, robbins1940@aol.com (David) wrote:

And a good CD-R for less than 5 cents, if you keep an eye out for sales,
rebates, and other deals.

For reliable discs that write faster than 1X? Faster than 2X? The 5 cent
CD's I mentioned above are usually approved for 48-52X speeds (and actually,
last time I bought a spindle, I paid 2 cents per disc, not 5).

My prices are being quoted in US Dollars, but even without any conversion,
it's plain to see that CD's are a hell of a lot cheaper per unit storage than
DVD's. CD-R has matured to the point where brand reliability is almost a
non-issue (and many unbranded discs are made by the more reputable
manufacturers anyhow), yet DVD-/+R hasn't matured to that point yet, and you
need to be a little more careful to get a brand of disc that "plays nice"
with your writer and with players. So pretty much any CD media is pretty
reliable, at 2-8 cents (US) for fastest-speed media, whereas a reliable 4X
DVD-/+R still costs over $1 here in the States (usually $2 or so). And with
prices being 10-50 times higher, buying in bulk is less of an option, which
further raises the per-unit price (I can afford to buy a spindle of 100 CD's,
but with the way prices are heading, and the way I use the media, buying a
spindle of 100 DVD's would be a huge waste of money).

It's _awfully_ hard to argue that DVD is cheaper than CD per unit storage,
unless you go the route of arguing for physical storage space (on your
shelf), and factor in the average usage of a disc (i.e. most CD-R's are not
filled to capacity).

--
Erik Harris n$wsr$ader@$harrishom$.com
AIM: KngFuJoe http://www.eharrishome.com
Chinese-Indonesian MA Club http://www.eharrishome.com/cimac/

The above email address is obfuscated to try to prevent SPAM.
Replace each dollar sign with an "e" for the correct address.

I do realize you are making this up as you go along.

Wrong is wrong and all your hand waving and avoidance won't
change the fact that you simply do not have a clue what you
are talking about.

As for the ears hearing analog, you may want to check a good
physiology reference or articles in Scientific American as
to how the ear really perceives sound and how the signals
from the inner ear [past the bones and drum] are passed
to the brain. Not that it has one single solitary thing
to do with whether or not players have filters to "fill in
the missing data points", but you are wrong on the ears as
well.

FDR 0 Facts 2.



FDR wrote:

"Lon Stowell" <lon.stowell@attbi.com> wrote in message
news:3EFA4931.7090304@attbi.com...
I've done a report on the ear for a class referencing medical books that my
wife has (she's a physician). I know how the ear works, so don't act
condescending to me. I also know that everyday sounds are analog in nature.
Sound pressure gets transduced though a microphone to an analog voltage,
then gets converted to binary and loses some info because of sampling and
other errors, get's reproduced to analog with some interpolation to recover
some lost info and amplified to a usable signal that can be put through a
speaker to recreate sound pressure.