{"id":2173,"date":"2013-12-22T12:50:28","date_gmt":"2013-12-22T20:50:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/?p=2173"},"modified":"2013-12-22T12:50:28","modified_gmt":"2013-12-22T20:50:28","slug":"living-with-clipping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/?p=2173","title":{"rendered":"Living With Clipping"},"content":{"rendered":"

This morning I stopped at SuperCuts after trying to get my cell phone replaced at the AT&T store. Got to be a clean cut adult during the Holiday season and I was due for a more than a trim. While I was sitting in the chair, I got to thinking about a track that I had downloaded the other day from HDtracks. I get their newsletters and happened to notice a special deal on the recently announced Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame inductees. Cat Stevens is one of those nominees. I signed onto my account and purchased the 96 kHz\/24-bit PCM version of the album.<\/p>\n

When it came time to download the album, the HD Downloader insisted on an upgrade before proceeding. I agreed to have the new version of their downloader installed on my Apple Mac Pro. The install seemed to go fine but I was unable to sign into my account using the updated app. The password worked just fine on the actual web page, but I was stuck and unable to download the files. I wrote a note to HDtracks (finding the contact information proved somewhat difficult, but I found an email on my purchase receipt) about the issue and got a prompt reply explaining that I had to change my password, clean my machine of any past versions of the downloader and reinstall the latest version. I did all of these things…got a few error messages but the files did download. I have the album at 96\/24 in my HDtracks folder. <\/p>\n

The “Tea for the Tillerman” album was recorded and released in November of 1970…my senior year in high school. It was a big hit among my friends and was a regular part of my playlist for a very long time (AR-100 turntable, HeathKit Receiver and Electro Voice Speakers). I was glad to get a chance to acquire this album once again.<\/p>\n

I was also curious to do a little analysis on the files and am very pleased to say that they sound really good. The Wiki page states that, “In January 2012, a hi-res 24\/192 kHz version was remastered using an Ampex ATR100 and a MSB Technology Studio ADC by Ted Jensen”.<\/p>\n

The liner notes provide the provenance of the album:<\/p>\n

“Tea for the Tillerman was recorded over the summer period in 1970, at Morgan Recording Studios in Willesden, and Island Studios in Basing Street. We were in-and-out of the studios over a five-month period, while Steve [Cat Stevens] was touring and promoting in-between times. Both albums were recorded onto 3M or Studer machines on 16 track two-inch tape at 15 inches per second with Dolby noise reduction and mixed onto quarter-inch tape at 15 ips with Dolby. The Album was mastered at Sterling Sound in New York by Lee Hulko, and recently re-mastered there by Ted Jensen.”<\/em><\/p>\n

As it happens I’ve owned a 3M 56 16-track 2″ analog machine. And I’m very familiar with the Dolby A noise reduction used at the time. The very wide tracks of the 3M machine made it a favorite for drums and the professional Dolby system reduced tape hiss by about 10 dB. I was able to sell my 3M 56 deck some years later for more than I paid for it. It was a truck and capable of producing very high quality sound. The “Tea for the Tillerman” album sounds first rate…for a standard definition recording [Note: What I wouldn’t give to be able to capture that project using my own purist approach in real HD-Audio].<\/p>\n

\"cat_stevens_spectragram\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 1 – The Spectragram of “Father and Son” for Tea for the Tillerman [Click to enlarge]<\/p>\n

The amplitude plot and spectragram show a good amount of dynamic range…I measured it at around 30-35 dB. This is a number that we would expect for an analog tape project of this era. The frequency response tops out at about 30-35 kHz but there’s a faint tone just under 30 kHz. It could be some oscillation in the transfer path…not a big deal. But it is obvious that purchasing the 192 kHz wouldn’t add anything to the fidelity of the project. <\/p>\n

I’m pleased that they transferred it at 192 kHz. It does assure us that absolutely nothing on the analog tape was lost…but it does nothing for the sound on our systems. I would love to hear that original transfer before Ted did his thing on it.<\/p>\n

\"clipping_tftt_f_s\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Figure 2 – Close up of the amplitude vs. time waveform showing clipping [Click to enlarge].<\/p>\n

Where I do have a problem with the transfer and download are the clipped samples that occurs on a number of tracks. I’ll talk about clipping in both the analog and digital domains tomorrow and what it means when you download a digital file. Got to run…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This morning I stopped at SuperCuts after trying to get my cell phone replaced at the AT&T store. Got to<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2174,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[83,40,316,172,57,393,395,70,26,289,42,251,227,169,394],"class_list":["post-2173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-what-is-hd-audio","tag-analog-tape","tag-analog-vs-digital","tag-audio-archiving","tag-audio-resolution","tag-audio-specifications","tag-cat-stevens","tag-clipping","tag-hd-downloads","tag-hd-audio","tag-hdtracks","tag-high-resolution-audio","tag-high-resolution","tag-hra","tag-mark-waldrep","tag-tea-for-the-tillerman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2173"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2177,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2173\/revisions\/2177"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2174"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realhd-audio.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}