Perhaps perhaps - apparently (some of) Daft Punk's Random Access Memories was recorded on analog tape. And without wishing to present opinion as fact, that is the best sounding album of the year.

Of course, the final thing is delivered to you on a CD (well, you can get the vinyl, but I happen to have the CD) and it sounds amazing. And I think that is just down to talented musicians playing and talented engineers engineering and so-on, and all of them caring deeply about creating something that sounds incredible. And crucially, not creating something that just sounds good on FM radio.

I know - similarly people who claim that their tube amp sound better, when there were probably upwards of a hundred opamps in the recording and mixing chain before it hit their tubes.

Record are wonderfully cool objects, and anyone who still plays them does it because they love them. In my home town, people still record onto 7" singles, and release them locally, and I buy them because if you're listening to a band like this one then the crackles and pops add immeasurably to the experience.

First, you're just talking about compression, which is fine and is used in recording regularly.

Second, I agree completely.

Third, transients. In recording, the compression and subsequently the mastering should take care of these. When recording with 24 bit audio, the headroom is astronomical. In playback, where would they come from?

Fourth, also quite true. But no longer.

Yes, if you want to hear a mosquito and a jackhammer at the same time. Not sure what music you're listening to, but I'm sure glad I'm not your neighbour.

That doesn't mean you are hearing ultrasonics - there are modulation effects and other audible frequencies that are generated by 'ultrasonic' transducers that are produced as well as the ultrasonics. It's certainly quite a claim to suggest that you could year 27kHz signals - what was generating them?

Can software be art?

Sounds like you're pigeonholing yourself here - just keep going until you fail, and then pick yourself up and start again. I good friend of mine makes work that might be thought of as 'technological'. Worrying about whether or not other people will like his work hasn't stopped him, and it shouldn't stop you.

The tube thing is only valid if you drive the amp until it clips - and sure, a tube amp clips nicer than an op-amp based system. But why are you driving your amp to clipping in the first place? Just turn the damn thing down a bit, and it'll sound fine.

When you 'ripped' the songs from vinyl, you passed them into an ADC and subsequently compressed the data into an MP3, right?

Was that a studio-quality ADC? Or a cheap USB ADC that came built into a cheap record player? Highs sounding too 'bright' sounds like it might be poor filtering in the ADC, and possibly even aliasing effects.

Apologies if you undertook the whole enterprise using professional equipment, but I'd imagine that most people who use those 'USB turntables' probably get equally disappointing results.

That's just not true. Most DACs generate an output voltage from a digital input. Many DACs don't even know the sampling rate that they're being driven at, you just send them samples at some rate, and they change their output as fast as they're able to. Normally you put some filtering after that, and you're done. A higher-quality DAC system will up-sample in software and run the actual DAC at a much higher rate - resulting a much higher-quality output. I guess that up-sampling might use sinc or something, I don't know - perhaps that's what you meant?

What about phase?

Modern high quality DACs will perform this signal reconstruction in software, and upsample to 192kHz. The analog filter stages after that point are almost unnecessary, and the signal will be spot on. It is not erroneous to claim that the stair-steps don't exist, they most certainly don't exist in signal reconstruction theory, and only exist when you attempt to physically realise a DAC system.

Oops that should have had a strikeout in it.

Anyway - Idiocracy is obviously not a documentary, and it's central premise, that the stupid reproduce more, is as much a load of shit as it always was.

Thomas Malthus thought along similar lines. He was wrong too.

you should check out the documentaryhateful diatribe against the poor Idiocracy.

I expect he'll find a way.

EVERYTHING you can do in life boils down to a) taking actions b) saying words c) sleeping. There's nothing more that you, as a human, can do with your life.

Now, I'm not totally sure what point you were trying to make, and I certainly don't intend to discuss it with you any further, but a funny thing happens when you 'boil things down'; You lose what it was you were talking about in the first place. Boiled down to dust like that, nothing has any meaning, and discussion ceases to be possible or profitable for either party.