Is bit depth about dynamic range or data?

[sandyk]

17 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Where digital "gets it wrong" for many people in the real world of playback, is that critical information that is encoded at relatively quiet levels compared to the maximum signals that are occurring at the same time, is too distorted by imperfections in the playback chain to be easily discerned by the listening mind - people hear this all the time in sub-par systems; a track which is a complex mix of sounds is played, and it "sounds a mess!" ... the dynamic range is there, as a technical, measurable characteristic, but distortion of low level information is too great - and subjectively "you can't hear what's going on" ...

 

I recently posted a clip of a track from a Ry Cooder album, and the response was that it "just collapses into a bowl of mush" - this is a classic symptom of inadequate effective resolution of the playback chain; subjectively, the "dynamic range" is not good enough ... and this has absolutely nothing to do with the encoding using only 16bits.

 

 

While I don't have too much of a problem with the first paragraph, if the posted clip was from YouTube, even most mediocre systems should have no problems playing virtually all YouTube Audio without any real problem.

 

I also agree with this comment from Mansr

Quote

Even with flat 16-bit TPDF dither, a 1 kHz tone at -100 dBFS is audible over headphones, even though the dither noise is subjectively louder.

 

[sandyk]

22 minutes ago, fas42 said:

it wouldn't make sense to prove you how good my system was, by ringing you up on my old fashioned corded phone, and holding up the handset so that you could listen ... 🙂.

 

The old fashioned analogue corded phone was vastly superior in the area of clarity, in the  latter days of the Analogue networks (at least in Australia) , to anything currently available via Digital networks with their typical 300-3,000HZ frequency response  , and did quite a reasonable job with reproducing music too, after the replacement of the old carbon microphones with electret type microphones . Rocking Armature type receivers even did a reasonable job reproducing the sound of Air Conditioning given the use of later opamps than the 709 to drive them.

[sandyk]

44 minutes ago, bluesman said:

The Bell system “speech band” was 300-3400 Hz through decades of dial phone use.  Bell Labs did a lot of research to determine everything from the optimal frequency response of their phones to the size of the holes in the dial and buttons on touch tone phones. The equipment was very high quality until the demise of Bell - and it was tough as nails.  I suspect that those black dial phones were bulletproof!

 

I blew a 6L6 in my guitar amplifier on a gig in the summer of 1968. It was almost midnight, and I had no spare.....but we had another 2 hours to play. So I called the phone company’s repair service from the club, explained my predicament, and asked if they had any tubes I could buy. The guy who answered asked where I was and said he’d get back to me.  About ten minutes later, a Bell System truck pulled up and the driver brought two 6L6s to the bandstand, telling me I should replace both for best sound. I asked what I owed him, and he asked for my home phone number - he told me it was “repair service” because I was a customer!

Yes, that's what I call service.

The bulk of our Analogue network ,at least in Sydney was determined by the distance and the amount of attenuation. and used balanced transmission feeds .

 Outlying and new areas had to use PCM systems of course, the passband of which varied a little between the system manufacturers. . To maintain a high S/N, the earths of the various exchanges needed to be very low, or there could be a small amount of hum. The earth systems occasionally needed upgrading.

We had a problem with the remaining amount of Strowger (USA) equipment at Chatswood in Sydney, as the Ring Tone was derived via  capacitors from the actual LF ring, and didn't get through the Carrier Systems to some other states.

 It would appear to be a No Progress call until somebody suddenly answered. My O.I.C asked me for assistance , so  I used a DIY 52V transistor amplifier from the new ARE11 Processor controlled exchange to modulate the LF ring with the 400HZ ring tone which was used to supply the remaining Strowger gear until it was replaced. This also benefitted a couple of large PABXs in the area which were fed ring from the exchange via dedicated pairs.