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From: jdunn@polyslo.CalPoly.EDU (Jeff Dunn)
Newsgroups: sci.virtual-worlds
Subject: Re: Sensory Modalities (was Re: Musical Virtual Worlds)
Message-ID: <12189@milton.u.washington.edu>
Date: 3 Dec 90 15:14:01 GMT
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cgy@cs.brown.edu (Curtis Yarvin) writes:
>
>This thread is starting to set off my bullfudge meter.  Look.  The bandwidth
>of the optic nerve has been estimated at 1 Mb/s - and this has already been
>highly compressed by the retina.  (I am not an expert here, and I think this
>figure is slightly low - can anyone correct me?)  Perfect sound can be
>duplicated by 16-bit samples at 44Khz.

This is wrong.  Audio compact disks have a sampling rate of 44.1 KHz, which
has show to be a little low.  Audiophiles have long complained about the 
lack of proper high-frequency response.  In fact, I know a symphonic flautist
who says that he can't tell the different types of flutes from a CD recording.
This is probably why we have 8x oversampling CD players and green pens to 
paint the edges of our disks.

The studio standard for digital audio is 88.2 KHz, although I believe the
resolution is still 14 bits, just like CDs.  Also, those 14 bits are LINEAR,
you can get the same sound quality from few bits (12?) by using a logarithmic
scaling.  Beyond that, the concept "perfect sound" is hard to define - this is
a qualititative judgement that varies from ear to ear.

-jd
jdunn@polyslo.calpoly.edu

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                                 TALK HARD


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