Author Topic: Is digitalized analogue material a problem for Sonicvisualizer?  (Read 2849 times)

Apfelmatsch

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 12
    • View Profile
Hi,

(1.) someone told me, if I use analysis software (in general) that it doesn't work with analogue sources (i.e. studio/live recordings that maybe were first released on LP and then later for CD). I mean I can imagine, that it would interpret "noise" (hizzing?) as music and give wrong results...
but, if there is little noise in the recording they made the digitalized CD version of, would that be usable?

(2.) What parameters would be affected by analogue sources and what not?
(3.) I guess tempo will not be a problem, if there are no cracks that could be misinterpreted as beats in the recording, right?
(4.) Analysing the pitch could be a problem, right?
(5.) Dynamics would be a problem, right?

My questions are in regard to classical music (a Symphony).

I added numbers, so people can answer easier, if they don't want to quote.

cannam

  • Administrator
  • Sr. Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 273
    • View Profile
Re: Is digitalized analogue material a problem for Sonicvisualizer?
« Reply #1 on: September 09, 2015, 10:56:08 »
I think I agree with your suppositions.

Tempo, beat, and onset estimators will be seriously affected by crackles (or jumps!) in the source audio. Pitch analysis could be affected by play speed, wow and flutter, and potentially also sources of hum. The dynamic range of analogue source material is likely to be different from that of digital recordings, and noise such as tracking errors from loud passages in vinyl recordings may colour analysis of pitch, timbre, and dynamics.

Frequency bandwidth and EQ will also be narrower, but many methods consider only a limited bandwidth anyway (partly because it depends so much on the reproduction).

Tape hiss is unlikely to affect anything very much unless possibly it's loud enough to disturb methods that have explicit silence thresholds. (Many methods will filter constant noise, either explicitly, or implicitly through analysing spectral change.)