Cory Doctorow: "Hardware ebook readers are a dead end"

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Vinyl is a niche fashion fad. Still outsold by CDs which are far superior.
Spotify seems to be hurting iTunes more than CDs.

Vinyl does not have the hard frequency cutoff that CD's do.
CD has a 44KHz sample rate (split between Stereo Channels)
OTOH Vinyl just rolls off. CD-4 (Discrete Quad) records had a 30KHz pilot for the rear channel (FM Stereo uses 19KHz to this day) decode.
The overtones (on things like chimes) are lost early on CD.
OTOOH Digital has little snap-crackle-pop that my older records do have (even with care).

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by theducks

Vinyl does not have the hard frequency cutoff that CD's do.
CD has a 44KHz sample rate

Since 44.1 kHz is enough to represent all frequencies audible to human ears, this is not a technical flaw, unless you care to provide ABX results demonstrating that you can hear frequencies above 20 kHz.

[Quoth]

After a few playings Vinyl has less than 15 kHz. Recordings from 1950s onwards were made on tape which hardly went more than 15 kHz. Earlier they used direct cutting of a master and that would not have reached 15 kHz. Only Condenser microphones (maybe ribbon) would do above about 10 kHz to 12 kHz.
The S/N, distortion and dynamic range is far worse than CD.
CD-4 (Discrete Quad) records were a failure.
FM Radio doesn't use 19 kHz, as that is the pilot tone for the DSBSC subcarrier at 38 kHz. The max audio frequency on FM is about 12kHz to 16 kHz.
The 44.1 KHz sampling chosen to suit bit rate of the new digital mastering in 1980s and all Vinyl & CD uses the same recordings. They don't live record twice. The sample rate is higher than needed to make the anti-aliasing filter simpler. The 48 kHz and later 96KHz wasn't chosen to give any more audio bandwidth but so cheaper and simpler anti-aliasing filters can be used.

[John F]

Originally Posted by Quoth

Vinyl is a niche fashion fad. Still outsold by CDs which are far superior.
...

Vinyl outsold CDs in U.S. for first time in 30 years in 2021.
And if you happen to live in Ireland

[Quoth]

Inaccurate figures based on supermarket sales. At least two supermarkets promoting a small selection at twice CD price.
Most CDs are bought online.
I believe Tesco in UK may have stopped selling CDs because it takes too much shelf space for too little return. People buy them online.

But console games take most of the money that used to be spent on music.

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by theducks

Vinyl does not have the hard frequency cutoff that CD's do.
CD has a 44KHz sample rate (split between Stereo Channels)

CD has 44.1KHz sampling of each channel independently - it's not split between channels.

The overtones (on things like chimes) are lost early on CD.

The only overtones that are lost due to CD's sampling are those that you can't hear anyway (unless you're very, very young, and even then probably not).

In comparison with CD, vinyl also has:
- worse dynamic range
- worse signal-to-noise ratio
- worse stereo separation
- more harmonic distortion
- more wow and flutter

Some people may prefer the "sound" of vinyl, but that's just because they enjoy the sound of the inaccuracies and distortion of vinyl. If the question is which one most accurately reproduces the original signal, CD wins comfortably - it's not even close.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by jbjb

CD has 44.1KHz sampling of each channel independently - it's not split between channels.

Yes, I missed that. Also no compression.

Originally Posted by jbjb

The only overtones that are lost due to CD's sampling are those that you can't hear anyway (unless you're very, very young, and even then probably not).

Those overtones, which probably no-one can hear, don't make it to the recording, no matter if direct cut disk, analogue tape (early 1950s to late 1980s), digital tape (since late 1970s) or HDD recording (last 20 years).
They may not even make it past the microphone.

You can perfectly duplicate the sound of any era of recording, media and amps. The weakest link is now the speaker. Most of those are far worst than 1930s to 1990s now.
I've owned two serious quality turntables (still have one with new belts) and I have one not bad JVC belt drive. I bought one of the current supermarket typical turntables. They claim to do 78 rpm, but don't have the larger different shape stylus for that. The cartridge is similar quality to a 1965 budget type. The arm is too short. The turntable is too small and light. The speakers are worse than cheap 1990s 3″ plastic cased PC or walkman extension speakers, far too small. I've restored budget 1950s autochanger transportable record players that are better.
As well as CDs I have 78s going back to 1920s, a 1935 radiogram, 45s from 1960s, a couple of 1960s LPs and a bunch of 1970s LPs.
Even the highly compressed minidisc was better than LPs (I transferred CDs to it) though 256 kbps mp3s are better than minidisk.

Few people now have decent speakers. I've 4 hifi systems with real speakers and the main TV sound uses a full size stage bass guitar speaker as subwoofer and 5 full size speakers. The bedroom HiFi uses 5 decent Bookshelf speakers.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Since 44.1 kHz is enough to represent all frequencies audible to human ears, this is not a technical flaw, unless you care to provide ABX results demonstrating that you can hear frequencies above 20 kHz.

Not anymore.
I used to hear CRT TV flyback singing, Ultrasonic motion detectors used in alarms and traffic light triggers in the 70's.

[Dazrin]

Originally Posted by theducks

Not anymore.
I used to hear CRT TV flyback singing, Ultrasonic motion detectors used in alarms and traffic light triggers in the 70's.

Ya, it's pretty common to hear well above 20k Hz up until sometime in your 20s. A little later sometimes.

I used to hear up to ~30k Hz. I had an unusually "cruel" high school physics teacher with an oscilloscope who left it on just above his own hearing range one day for a lesson. Mr. Berg was a lot of fun. After we all complained and asked what it was he helped us all see where our own hearing maxed out and how low of frequencies we could hear. It was a painful class but very interesting. Now, I can't hear anything close to that but my daughters do.

I do get to enjoy the constant ~20kHz ringing that I used to hear from some electronics all the time now though. It's just all in my head now. Tinnitus is not your friend.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Barty

Everybody I know who reads books at all has a Kindle. (I'm the lone one who has branched out to a Kobo). But I'm probably in a very specific demographic.

I do have some online friends who use Kobo.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Dazrin

Ya, it's pretty common to hear well above 20k Hz up until sometime in your 20s. A little later sometimes.

No, nothing like as high as that. It's rare that young people can hear as high as 18 kHz, though a very few can hear up to 28 KHz. Hardly any adults can hear much above 16kHz.
Also actual program material has little above 10 kHz, which is why that was chosen in 1934 for 405 TV audio upper limit. You can use a cheap electret microphone which is good to about 18 kHz and has some response to 50 kHz and connect it to a professional spectrum analyser that does over 150kHZ on the lower range. There is little content above 8kHz and you'd struggle to exceed 15 kHZ with harmonics (overtones) of instruments in a significant level. The telephone system is up to about 3.5 kHz and most codecs for mobile or VOIP sample at 8 KHz, thus the filtering at the input has to roll off before 4 kHz. AM Radio used to be up to about 6 KHz, but channels are now 10kHz or 9 kHZ depending on region and as it's AM the maximum audio frequency has to be less than half. Typically a 4 to 4.5 KHz filter. FM audio has traditionally been anywhere from 10 kHz to 16 kHz. 19KHz was chosen as stereo pilot and 38 kHz for the L-R signal, thus the mono L+R and and the subcarrier L-R both must have no content at 19 kHz. Filters can't be like a cliff. Hence 15 or 16 kHz

The TV whistle is less than 16 kHz for 625 or 525 line systems. Magnostriction on ferrite cores. Originally 15750 Hz for 525 lines, 15625 for 625 lines (Both predate colour)
441 25 fps / 50Hz was 11025 Hz
441 30 fps / 60Hz was 13230 Hz
405 25 fps / 50 Hz was only 10125 Hz and very obvious.
819 25 fps /50Hz was 20475 Hz
1125 lines is Analogue HD origin of current 1080 lines.

Basic VGA or Progressive analogue from NTSC DVDs is a 31500 Hz line frequency.

Some TVs even in 1950s had no line whistle due to construction of the LOPT and scan coils.

[JSWolf]

So how would you compare vinyl to a digital version at 24/96?

[kandwo]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Well, not here. I don't know anyone who uses an ereader, besides myself and my niece, who got one of mine. I never see any in public transport either. Everyone has their nose in their phone, or very occasionally in a tablet. No ereaders. But then, ebooks aren't particularly popular here. Local stuff is expensive and probably lots of people borrow from a library, which you can only do with paper books here. The only local book subscription service only works on phones and tablets, not on eink and not even in a browser.

OTOH, I've managed to sell all my old ereaders relatively quickly, so there must be some people who use them.

I was in Russia many years ago and it's the only place where I saw people read on e-readers in public transport. Reading has a much higher status there than in many other places in Europe and they do have a long tradition of e-books. All Russian books, more or less, are available as e-books.

In other European countries I haven't seen people read on anything other than their phones.

The trend also seems to be mostly about audio nowadays. My parents have always read a great deal, and they do have e-readers (some local brand), but they mostly either read physical library books or listen to audio books.

I'd wager that most people consume books through audio, even in public transport - either that or podcasts.

I'm the only one I know that reads books in public transport or when I'm alone at some café - but even then I do it on a Hisense A9, so it'd look like reading on a regular smartphone to anyone around me. An e-ink smartphone is a dream come true for me.

[jbjb]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

So how would you compare vinyl to a digital version at 24/96?

Given that CD at 16/44 is already massively superior to vinyl in every way, then 24/96 obviously will be too.

While 24/96 will clearly be technically better than than 16/44, I doubt the difference would actually be audible in practice when used as the delivery format. There are valid arguments for using higher resolutions during mixing and other processing, so that rounding errors don’t add up etc., I don’t see any reason to go beyond 16/44 for final delivery.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Quoth]

The 24/96 only allows simpler thus cheaper filters at the input and less need to control level. It's usually digitally resampled and level digitally adjusted to 16/44.1 and 16/48 either of which is good enough.