Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: tortoise
Not really true these days. Even a lot of relatively cheap soundcards have an honest-to-God clean dynamic range that exceeds the intrinsic theoretical cleanliness possible for a Red Book CD. It used to be that converters good enough to do this transparently cost a bundle, but these days they are dirt cheap.

I disagree. Most sound cards generate so much noise and the input levels are so inconsistent that "quality" is seriously debatable.
20 posted on 09/18/2003 5:29:30 PM PDT by Bush2000
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 15 | View Replies ]


To: Bush2000
I disagree. Most sound cards generate so much noise and the input levels are so inconsistent that "quality" is seriously debatable.

Only the cheapest budget ones (as in $30 and under). Most of the people that I know who care enough about their music on their computer to fiddle with something like this have a passable soundcard. A great many consumer sound cards have 20- and 24-bit converters now, and most of those are getting an honest 18-bits of real dynamic range out of them. Which is actually pretty poor relative to the nominal "bit-ness" of the converter but still better than a Red Book CD can even do in theory.

Yes, the super-cheap soundcards on low-end PCs now being made will inject a fair amount of noise, but stepping up to a soundcard that has better real-world audio specs than a CD is even capable of is quite cheap. For example, the common Turtle Beach SantaCruz card ($75 new, $35 used) has a measured noise floor that exceeds the theoretical limit of a CD. I've heard many excellent amateur recordings with very passable noise floors that were recorded through soundcards that I would not deign to put in my computer. And then you have to take into account that any professionally recorded albums that are more than 15 years old don't have more than 12-14 bits above the noise floor even though a CD format supports 16-bits, so it is mostly irrelevant for older recordings regardless. Never mind that only the most high-end consumer amp/speaker systems are actually producing more than 12-bits of real-world noise floor in practice.

A Red Book CD is twenty year old digital technology. It is very cheap and very easy to build a device with today's technology that measurably exceeds the theoretical limits of the Red Book standard. And quite frankly, even at that the CD usually has a far lower noise floor than could ever be appreciated on the vast majority of sound systems.

21 posted on 09/18/2003 8:42:05 PM PDT by tortoise (All these moments lost in time, like tears in the rain.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 20 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson