Lavry QUINTESSENCE

The Lavry stuff is pretty amazing...but I'm not sure anything is worth $8k

The majors are now archiving everything at 192 so converter manufacturers have to support it.

yup, that's the way I see it too JK

In all seriousness, I'm a little confused, what do you guys mean? (you could be totally right, i just am not sure what you mean?) Most majors are running things through consoles right? doesn't it make sense to archive 2 track masters in the highest quality available? Most converters sample up to 192k, it shouldn't be a big deal, most people bounce in multi formats anyhow no...? I agree if your tracking/mixing ITB, it's a little weird to up sample from ? I don't for a second understand why a major recording in this day and age would record anything under 96k at least, which would still be an up sample.
For me, once this never ending build is over, anything i'll be mixing through my console to 2 tracks, will get a bounce to 192k, no biggie, why not?

how'd he come up with 60k? i don't know of any 60K converters? 8) When did he say that? was he referring to truncation errors? that's not really a problem as much with the processing power available these days.
For me, I can hear a sig diff between 48 and 96 on my rig, i could give a shit less what anyone says to the contrary, on the other hand, i personally cannot hear a diff between 88.2 and 96k. I think peeps should use what ever makes them feel comfortable and confident in their process, no matter the res/bit depth.

Tony, I think this is the paper that's being referred to:

www.lavryengineering.com/pdfs/lavry-white-paper-the_optimal_sample_rate_for_quality_audio.pdf

I think you're right Tony, that as technology improves higher sampling rates with more accurate clocks may not suffer degradation. But I'm not sure if there can be an actual sonic improvement by recording even more supersonic frequencies that we can't hear. Of course, some hypothesize that though we can't hear these frequencies, they may still somehow affect our perception of the music. That hasn't been demonstrated in any objective reproducible test that I'm aware of, but I don't think that it's been definitively disproved either.

I think the "majors" wanting things at 192 is a combination of marketing and misunderstanding. There is so much fundamental misunderstanding of sampling theory, as displayed everyday on Gearslutz. Since most non-technical people still think of sampling using either a stair-step or a pixel density analogy, then to them it seems obvious that more samples would increase accuracy of the reconstructed waveform. And in a sense they are correct, the original waveform will be more accurately reproduced, just not in a way that would have any affect on frequencies within the range of "normal" human hearing.

Actually, the paper I linked to is his non-technical no-math version. It takes a couple of minutes to read, and it shows why thinking "bigger is better" doesn't necessarily apply to everything, including sample rates. Math making your stomach hurt shouldn't translate into facts making your stomach hurt. I think it's a worthwhile read, unless you're a real anti-Lavry zealot.

I don't think Ethan is pushing that Soundblasters trump Prism's. I think that he's more pushing that the difference between low end conversion and high end conversion is minor in comparison to other things in the chain. Maybe I'm wrong though.

I know, I'm just giving you a hard time.

The majors are in a bit of a panic because lots of important analog master tapes are finally becoming unplayable. They probably did a bit of testing and decided 192 didn't seem to do any harm or could even be a bit better using the converters they tested. Implementation is everything in the digital world which is all a question of chip, analog stage and power supply design.