There’s a mad scientist on the second floor of the Marriott Hotel at the Rocky Mountain Audio Fest…and this morning I managed to pry myself from my sales table and visit Room 2006. A couple of friends independently suggested that I visit James Lee McDaniel and find out what he’s doing. Ron came by and dropped off copy of the 36 paper the Instrument Quality (the name of the company) provides.<\/p>\n
The basic idea behind his new development is the use of math to store vector representations of analog audio waveforms…using digital computers. What does that mean? I relate it to the difference between Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop. I do a fair amount of graphics and have my students recreate a corporate logo using vectors…bezier curves…instead of individual pixels. That could be applied to audio waveforms too. <\/p>\n
In a photographic image, each pixel displays an individual “picture element” of one single color. Millions of these pixels comprise a photo. With simple graphics like logos, it is preferable to use vectors…or mathematical representations of lines, curves, and colors…instead of pixels. Vectors can be infinitely scaled whereas a fixed resolution pixel image cannot.<\/p>\n
The same thing happens with fonts. A font is made up of a series of complex formulas that describe the geometry of the letters and numbers. It’s not until you rasterize the fonts into pixels that you fix the resolution…and avoid having to include the font with your document when you want a printout.<\/p>\n
James McDaniel is taking the same approach to representing audio waveforms. Think of the groove of a vinyl LP as the waveform that needs to be captured and reproduced. The shapes are not that different than the curves and lines of a fancy font. Can math be used to describe those undulations with 100% accuracy? Yes, it is possible. But it takes amazing amounts of computing power and storage.<\/p>\n
I asked James to give me a guesstimate about how much data is required to accomplish his goal. He said each second of sound for a single channel would chew up between 200-400 Mega Bytes. A stereo album would require 1.5 terabytes. To deliver recordings done this way, James is going to offer Linear Tape Open format data backup tapes. This archival format can store 2.6 terabytes of data…perfect for 2-3 albums of “infinite continuous numerical analog masters”.<\/p>\n
Instrument Quality introduced their “Numerical Analog Converter (NAC) at the RMAF…and James told me he hopes to be able to demonstrate it at AXPONA 2016. He doing something interesting…probably impossible to achieve but interesting.<\/p>\n
Time to head back to Los Angeles.<\/p>\n
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