In theory this does seem a reasonable strategy. But in practice, it not only is a fast track to sound engineering despair, it is also a great way to create distorted master recordings that will suck big time for all time.

I think it's best to leave the responsibility for good quality Dolby/DTS-compressed sound with the companies that make money on them: DOLBY & DTS. Let them invest their time and R&D money in continuing to improve their processes (which they have done to a greater or lesser extent.)

Better to create the highest possible quality masters so that future technologies might represent them more effectively, rather than distort the masters to compensate for the failings of contemporary technology.

But wait. How about this?!!? We create TWO sets of masters! [Er, well, three, if we include DD AND DTS and the "real" master. Uh, well, FOUR if we include SDDS. .. And so it goes....]

Again, this sounds good in theory; but film studios (and recording companies) have enough trouble just properly storing and keeping track of ONE master. (And do a shockingly poor job of that.) It seems to be more than they can do to manage ONE set of master recordings.


[This message has been edited by boblinds (edited February 10, 2003).]

Good points. These are all the same arguments folks make in my line of work for writing source code in the clearest possible manner and letting the compiler/linker sort it out. If the code is bloated or slow, the compiler/linker needs to be improved.

In reality (the place I live, next door to theory ) a good coder can write clear code that lends itself to be well optimized by the compilers available. This also has the side effect of allowing us to create marketable products now.

Also, with the current bunch of codecs I'd be surprised if there wasn't some similarity in the data that is selected for heavy compression or discarding.

This may not map well to audio mixing, but I thought it worth mentioning. I'm not an audio engineer, and I don't even play one on TV.

If you listen to the file I posted, the kind of audio that gets hit the hardest is quite clear: very active, dense and loud. If you notice at the beginning, there is not as much activity and the "thrown away" track has less content. That seems to suggest to me that all music and movie soundtracks must be very quiet and simple to escape heavy hatcheting by DD.

Actually, that wouldn't be half bad - we could use more quiet and simple sounding movies

SH, Did you delete the demo? I was busy and did not download, Darn, have to move quicker next time!

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited February 14, 2003).]

SH just checked in, and saw this. THANK you! And Happy Valentines Day….

Now just need to figure how to turn off l/r channels on these computer speakers, -Altec Lansing and used to be decent (for a computer) but I think the kids have partially blown them, I rarely use them. I appear to have one volume control, which controls both, but will figure something out.

That was so kind for you to mess with linking again, - next time I’ll be sure when I see something to go ahead and capture it for storage when its posted, even if I have to get to it till later

Got it now…again ….many thanks!

Lena:

Gosh...happy Valentine's day to you too!

You might also be interested in these two files too. They show the effects of the use of "dither" in digital audio. Here's the complete post from another forum:

There is one thing that I have not seen mentioned in this discussion: that is the addition of dither to the LSB. This allows you to hear below the theoritical noise floor for a particular bit depth. I actually created a CD containing a series of tests that proves that this works, and does indeed allow the audio to be heard below the noise floor. I have included a couple samples from this CD here. If the dither is of the "noise shaped" variety, you can add an effective 2 bits to the nominal resolution of the digital word. Once you get near and beyond the 16 bit level, the "self noise" of the electrical system, microphone, and acoustic room noise create a natural dither.

The following samples use an 8 bit quantitazation level so that the effects of the quantitization process and of the dither can be clearly heard. For higher bit depths, the effects would be the same, but farther down in level. It consists of a short "excitation" of a 24 bit digital reverb, which was quantitized to the 8 bit level, with and without noise shaped dither. All processing was done in the digital domain.

Sample with noise shaped dither

Sample with no dither

Notice in the dithered example how the reverb tail can be clearly heard to fade BELOW the "hiss", which is the dither noise at the LSB level. The example without dither cuts off abruptly as soon as the level of the reverb tail reaches the limits of the noise floor for 8 bits, which is 48db. This abrupt cut-off was the reason some early CDs sounded like the low level details "fell off into a black hole" - dither was not in common use when digital audio CDs were first introduced. It is now routine practice to use dither in all recording and processing of digital audio. Some companies like Sony (with their "SuperBit Mapping" CDs) use noise shaped dither to increase the audible signal to noise range, allowing a 16 bit CD to have the effective resolution of an 18 bit recording.

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited February 14, 2003).]

SH,

Thank you again, just picked these up. Had never paid attention to ‘dither’ before. (what it was etc).
Somehow I think it was in my personal handbook as, - dither added = dither is bad. Since I had never looked at this subject at all. And if you think like me, - the word ‘dither’ just sounds bad…..if asked to guess without knowing the word has a negative connotation 'ring' to me. Do you want your music rock steady or do you want it to ‘dither’ around?
Now I’ve logged dither as manipulation that benefits the final product.

Can I ask a question, which proves my total ineptitude on many subjects? I was thinking of posting this under its own topic header, but had hesitated since its such a ridiculous question I hated to embarrass myself that badly in public…(although when did that ever stop me most days… ) So I will try and sneak it in here, (some damage control) for any who might have thoughts on the subject.

I was contemplating the fact that my mains (L & R) are so much more capable than my matched center (same line. nice setup..but…). Has anyone taken a 3rd main turned it on its side…(I told you it was a crazy thought) and used it for a center? I know that regards the Beethoven’s I am talking about a direct-radiating straight array, which would give you your tweeter on your left, mids centered and woofer on far right. Would the increase in center capabilities be negated by how off-axis your sound would be coming from a Beethoven laid on it side (which was never intended for such a setup).

Don’t fall out of your chair too hard laughing at the strange ways my mind can work. But I am frustrated by the fact that my very nice center Maestro, is really not as good a speaker as the Beethoven’s, when I have SO much information being routed through the center channel when spinning DVD’s for HT.

The only thing that you would compromise tuning a speaker meant for L/R use on it's side would be that of dispersion. The center speaker's dispersion is optimised for sideways mounting. They usually have the d'appolito arrangement where the tweeter is in the center, between two "woofers". Now, if you can find a speaker intended for main L/R use that has this driver arrangement, (or has a single "co-axial" driver) this might not be as much an issue, but you would have to talk with the manufacturer to see if there are any other considerations specific to their speaker. Of course you can always try putting one of your current L/R speakers on it's side and see if the dispersion suffers, and if it sounds good to you, then you may be able to use one that way.

SLL,

I have a couple of friends that use 3 identical speakers for the front. One has Paradigm studio 40's all around, which for multi-channel music sound fantastic. He has the 1 in the center on a stand in front of his RPTV. The other one has ML speakers, unsure of the model but they stand about 5 to 6 feet high, he has 3 of those across the front with a perforated screen in front of the center speaker. I feel if it is possible to do it I think you wouldn't regret it. But if you never hear it you wouldn't miss it! Right?
Me, I am not able to do this now so I will stick to the center speaker I have, but I now have a contact that got me a great deal on some more Paradigms (ie:below cost!!!) and am going to much larger speakers for my surrounds. I think it will make a big difference on multi-channel music.

------------------
m-mmeyer
GO TWINS
My DVD's

[This message has been edited by m-mmeyer (edited February 15, 2003).]