Does Digital Matter?

Bernd Enders in his article (1996) proposes the following five theses: First Thesis: Digitalization modifies the information itself Second Thesis: Multimedia modifies the value and the hierarchy of the arts Third Thesis: Virtual realities become highly important in science, technology, education and art Fourth Thesis: Global networking, on the one hand, will lead to the effect that cultures increasingly resemble each other; on the other hand, narrower cultural groups with new divergence criteria are emerging Fifth Thesis: Musical life, musicology, music education and the music industry will undergo radical changes.

A New Culture? It is no longer a question whether a new cultural technique is emerging... music, being one of mankind’s most important cultural achievements, is by no means indifferent to these problems, but rather is affected by them in an especially forceful way.(p. 236) The digital world exists because of a great number of collateral inventions whose inventors were not seeking cultural change George Boole’s Mathematical Analysis of logic 1928 Harry Nyquist’s “Topics in telegraph transmission theory” 1939 Alan Turing’s machine 1947 The semi-conductor research of Bardeen and Brattain 1950s Assembly language and higher level software 1960s Hyper Text Markup language 1990 World Wide Web 1994 Flash Drive memory

What is your experience? Has the availability of digital formats changed the music we hear? In what ways? Has it changed the sound? As a musician, or as a listener Has it changed our perception of the value of sound? Do we use sound differently? Has it changed our access to sound?

How does digital work? What is the process of creating digital sounds? Recording 1. The analog signal is transmitted from the input device to an analog-to-digital converter (ADC). 2. The ADC converts this signal to a series of binary numbers. The quantity of numbers produced per second is called the sample rate. 3. These numbers are stored onto recording media such as magnetic tape or hard drive or optical drive. Sampling and 4-bit quantization of an analog signal (red) using Pulse Code Modulation.

Playback 1.The sequence of numbers is transmitted from storage into a digital-to-analog converter (DAC), which converts the numbers back to an analog signal. 2.This signal amplified and transmitted to the loudspeakers or video screen. Even after getting the signal converted to bits, it is still difficult to record: the hardest part is finding a scheme that can record the bits fast enough to keep up with the signal. For example, to record two channels of audio at 44.1 kHz sample rate with a 16 bit word size, the recording software has to handle 1,411,200 bits per second.

Word size and Sample rate Word Size The number of bits used to represent a single audio wave (the word size) directly affects the achievable noise level of a signal recorded with added dither, or the distortion of an un-dithered signal. Increasing a sample's word length by one bit doubles its possible values, likewise increasing the potential accuracy of each sample and the fidelity of the recording to the original. 24-bit recording is generally considered a current practical limit as this word length allows a signal-to-noise ratio exceeding that of most analog circuitry, which by necessity must be used in at least two points in the recording/playback chain. Sample rate The sample rate is even more important a consideration than the word size. If the sample rate is too low, the sampled signal cannot be reconstructed to the original sound signal. Hence the output will be different from the input. The process of under sampling results in aliasing whereby the high frequency components of the sound wave are represented as being lower than they should be. This causes the output wave shape to be severely altered. To overcome aliasing, the sound signal (or other signal) must be sampled at a rate at least twice that of the highest frequency component in the signal. This is known as the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. For recording music-quality audio the following PCM sampling rates are the most common: 44.1 kHz 48 kHz 88.2 kHz 96 kHz kHz 192 kHz When making a recording, experienced audio recording and mastering engineers will normally do a master recording at a higher sampling rate (i.e. 88.2, 96, or 192 kHz) and then do any editing or mixing at that same higher frequency. High resolution PCM recordings have been released on DVD-Audio (also known as DVD-A), DAD (Digital Audio Disc—which utilizes the stereo PCM audio tracks of a regular DVD), DualDisc (utilizing the DVD-Audio layer), or Blu-ray (Profile 3.0 is the Blu-ray audio standard). In addition it is nowadays also possible and common to release a high resolution recording directly as either an uncompressed WAV or lossless compressed FLAC file[ (usually at 24 bits) without down-converting it.

Red Book standards However if a CD (the CD Red Book standard is 44.1 kHz 16 bit) is to be made from a recording, then doing the initial recording using a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz is obviously one approach. Another approach that is usually preferred is to use a higher sample rate and then down sample to the final format’s sample rate. This is usually done as part of the mastering process. One advantage to the latter approach is that way a high resolution recording can be released, as well as a CD and/or lossy compressed file such as mp3—all from the same master recording. Red Book is the standard for audio CDs (Compact Disc Digital Audio system, or CD- DA). It is named after one of the Rainbow Books, a series of books (bound in different colors) that contain the technical specifications for all CD and CD-ROM formats. The first edition of the Red Book was released in 1980 by Philips and Sony; It was adopted by the Digital Audio Disc Committee and ratified as IEC The standard is not freely available and must be licensed from Philips. In 2009, the IEC document is available as a PDF download for $260. It specifies the form of digital audio encoding: 2-channel signed 16-bit Linear PCM sampled at 44,100 Hz. This sample rate is adapted from that attained when recording digital audio on PAL videotape with a PCM adaptor, an earlier way of storing digital audio.

History In 1937, British scientist Alec Reeves files the first patent describing Pulse-code modulation. In 1943, Bell Telephone Laboratories develops the first digital scrambled speech transmission system, SIGSALY[2]. In 1957, Max Mathews of Bell develops the process to digitally record sound via computer. In 1967, the first digital tape recorder is invented. A 12-bit 30 kHz stereo device using a compander (similar to DBX Noise Reduction) to extend the dynamic range. In the 1970s, Thomas Stockham makes the first digital audio recordings using standard computer equipment and develops a digital audio recorder of his own design, the first of its kind to be offered commercially (through Stockham's Soundstream company). In 1970, James Russell patents the first digital-to-optical recording and playback system, which would later lead to the Compact Disc. In 1972, Denon invents the first 8-track reel to reel digital recorder. In 1979, the first digital Compact Disc prototype was created as a compromise between sound quality and size of the medium. In 1979, the first digitally recorded album of popular music “Bop ‘Til You Drop” by guitarist Ry Cooder is released by Warner Bros. Records. The album was recorded in Los Angeles on a 32- track digital machine built by 3M Corporation. Here’s “Little Sister” written by the Isley Bros Also “Go Home Girl” from this session. In 1982, the first digital compact discs are marketed, and New England Digital offers the Sample- to-Disk option on the Synclavier, the first commercial hard disk recording system.

What mattered? Tape recorders had made multiple track instrument or vocal parts possible, digital technology accelerated the tendency. Many “bands” were really just one or two people manipulating drum machines and synthesizers, or re-recording bits and pieces of existing music. Digital devices could compose, perform, record, edit, and mix songs. Previously, musical instruments had been separate from recording machines, and both had been separate from computers, but digital technologies combined all three in a common platform

Audio File formats WAV, short for Waveform Audio File Format is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is an application of the RIFF bitstream format method for storing data in “chunks”, and is also close to the AIFF format used on Macintosh computers. It is the main format used on Windows systems for raw and typically uncompressed audio. The usual bitstream encoding is the Linear Pulse Code Modulation (LPCM) format. MP3 is an audio-specific format that was designed by the Moving Picture Experts Group as part of its MPEG-1 standard. The group was formed by several teams of engineers at Fraunhofer IIS, AT&T-Bell Labs, Thomson-Brandt, CCETT, and others. It was approved as an ISO/IEC standard in The use in MP3 of a lossy compression algorithm is designed to greatly reduce the amount of data required to represent the audio recording and still sound like a faithful reproduction of the original uncompressed audio for most listeners. An MP3 file that is created using the setting of 128 kbit/s will result in a file that is about 11 times smaller[note 1] than the CD file created from the original audio source. An MP3 file can also be constructed at higher or lower bit rates, with higher or lower resulting quality. The compression works by reducing accuracy of certain parts of sound that are deemed beyond the auditory resolution ability of most people. This method is commonly referred to as perceptual coding.[5] It uses psychoacoustic models to discard or reduce precision of components less audible to human hearing, and then records the remaining information in an efficient manner.

Comparison

So what can we say about digital’s impact on music? Why was digital created? Initial use was to keep secrets. What was the initial impetus for recordings. First development was for video to be used with television. Audio was working fine with analog—except that there were limits to how much post-recording processing that could be done. The development of the video recorder (as an analog machine) allowed for the necessary space to create commercial digital audio. The necessary engineering to synchronize the audio and video, created a need to have time code locks, these prove necessary for digital.

The computer technology changes everything What is the basic innovation of computer technology? What could computers do initially? multimedia technology, i.e. computer based media technology, which means digital processing of all areas of information and perception. Computer technology was a device looking for a use.

The creation of ways of sharing digitized media has changed the market To now record in analog is art. It requires more time and talents to achieve the level of quality available to consumers from digital. The new media delivery systems have increased demand for more, not less music. The shared knowledge of sound continues to create replacement technology that becomes increasingly Cheaper More powerful More integrated