[sdiy] jitter, warmth, and so on

[Richard Wentk]

At 01:56 22/04/2006, Antti Huovilainen wrote:
>On Sat, 22 Apr 2006, Richard Wentk wrote:
>
>>I've occasionally wondered if 'fat' is related to very low level noise 
>>introducing a kind of dither. If that's present, it needs 24-bit 
>>resolution to record it properly.
>
>In this case no analog synth recorded on cassette or LP could be fat.

We're only talking about the VCO component here. Analogue Fat[tm] will 
always be a multitude of factors. If you're talking about fat VCOs on their 
own, since we haven't even worked out if fat is even an audible quality, 
it's too early to know for sure whether the fatness will survive on tape or 
note.

Besides, it surely makes sense to eliminate any other possible sources of 
signal degradation.

>>44.1kHz is barely adequate for high-res audio. (Not a Nyquist issue so 
>>much as a hardware issue.)
>
>Well, to me analog synths sure sound warm even when recorded on CD.

As above.

>I'm not aware of single scientific study that shows beyond much doubt that 
>there is an audible difference between 44.1 and 96 khz in realworld case. 
>There have certainly been tries though.

As I said, it depends on specific hardware, not theory. I'd expect little 
or no audible difference with absolutely pristine pro-spec hardware than 
with prosumer hardware with marginal sampling and reconstruction filters. 
For a 4kHz saw, harmonics will still be significantly audible at 22kHz. And 
given that sampling filters are unlikely to be perfect some aliasing may 
creep into the sound.

That aside, it - again - it makes sense to make the recording as accurate 
as possible using the best available technology. For short samples that 
won't be more than a few MB, there is no good reason not to do this.

Richard