Re: Discuss Amongst Yourselves....

[pvallad1@tampabay.rr.com]

At 12:52 PM 3/8/00 -0500, Ken Melms wrote:
>With this in mind - I wonder if the "clipping" of certain frequencies that
>are out of our normal range of hearing (like on a tape or CD or any
>recording for that matter) truly destroys the overal ambiance of the 
>sound.
>Even if you can't hear a 56,000 wavelength, won't that wave still 
>interfere
>/ modify / beat with the harmonics of other notes being played, and that
>interaction/interference beat would vertainly be in a pulse range 
>compatible
>with human hearing.  So - wouldn't the removal of these super-high 
>harmonics
>alter forever the true nature of the original sound?  Just a thought as I
>think about the layers of sound, harmonic upon harmonic, interacting with
>each other to make other "inferred" sounds.

I believe this was among the arguments made by one of my old college
professors (in the electrical engineering department) about why the
industry screwed up by choosing 44.1 KHz as the CD sampling rate.  He
strongly felt 70 KHz was much better because it preserved more of the high
frequencies with the bandwidth topping out at 35 KHz instead of around 20
KHz, the supposed uppermost limit of human hearing.  For archival purposes,
he felt that the recording process should preserve frequencies up to 35 KHz
instead of simply chopping off any and all frequencies over 20 KHz.  

Again, note that he emphasized the word "archival".

Paolo