Digital BW, The Print

Hi Bruce,

> Oversampling and
> upsampling has always seemed like just more bandaids.

Not a bandaid at all.  ALL digital output requires some kind of filter to
smooth out the stepping, it's just part of digital to analog conversion....
I can explain it in detail if you like.  Digital upsampling is simply to
reduce the requirements on the analog output filters, which as you correctly
noted, have a "skew" problem with different frequencies traveling through
the filter at different timing, and therefore distorting the phase
relationship between frequencies.  This is solved by oversampling, which
does allows the use of first order filters, which inherently don't have near
the phase issue third order filters do.  I tend to use Butterworth filters
;-)

> Sure, would love to.

Any time.  Wish we had spoken more when you were up here!

> But the ML is not a mass market product. At a
> very steep price, it mitigates problems that cannot be avoided in
> affordable gear. And I wonder how it can sound better than a master
> tape:-)

Tape doesn't have as high a dynamic range as a CD does...most masters today
are not on analog tape, but on digital tape...which is an entirely different
beast.

> The
> carrier, audio or visual, has to be transparent to the source, the
> art, to be effective.

Yes, exactly!

> DVD doesn't, because it compresses data in areas that
> don't move. Drives me to distraction.

I agree with DVD...MPEG has always driven me crazy, because I can see the
glitches in it.

> I'd suspect the reason you don't sharpen is because you know what a
> good lens looks like, and USM doesn't always look kosher.

As I said in another post, typically, the issue isn't the scanner...it's the
exposure/development/lense, and unless all those are at their best, scanning
at 4000+ DPI is going to just reproduce those defects...kind of like playing
an 8 track through a $10k stereo...it isn't going to sound very good ;-)

Regards,

Austin