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dhtreptow wrote:

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Livius1 wrote:

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I think the point being made is that if the original elements are in less than stellar condition then HD can do nothing more than emphasise those deficiencies.

I guess I'd rather have that then, warts and all. I just can't see the value of further degradation of an already compromised source. I could argue all the more reason to wring every last drop from it.

On audiophile message boards, a question that often comes up is do you listen to the music or the equipment? Some people are more sensitive to noise, and choose to only listen to music that's has excellent recording and playback. There's even something called audiophile music that's acoustically simple enough and orchestrated to limit the harmonics between instruments because harmonic interaction causes or sounds like a certain kind of blur. (Is there a filmphile genre where the whole point is to cater to the equipment?) Then there's people like me that listen to old jazz recordings that have large amounts of noise but still prefer to have it played back as faithful as possible so we can hear more of what was originally played by some great musicians that we just can't hear any other way.

Things aren't as simple as just noise or decay. There's different kinds. Take tape hiss as an example. A recording may have more hiss than music over the tonal range that it affects. Any time you have more noise than music, things get dicey. But it doesn't mean that it's hopeless to playback as neutral to the flawed master as possible. First, the noise only hides parts of the music. The rest of the music can still be played back clearly for the most part. For example, the bass instruments can still be played back relatively cleanly. Tricks like enhancing the lower midrange helkp to to mask the hiss, but have detrimental effects on other parts of the music. Second, we can still hear the music in the same frequency range even if its volume is lower than the hiss, so anything done to reduce the hiss will affect the music underneath it.

If all noise in old films were consistent across the screen, such as might happen if silver-halide crystals spread out and distorted over time, then at some point there might be more noise than detail, and it might make sense to use a lower resolution scan or compression across the board. (Is crystal spread even possible? I've read about this, but don't believe it's real--maybe I just don't understand the mechanism that causes it. I mean, the crystals aren't in a suspension after development. Or are they?) I think the only case where compression or lower resolution scans is clearly noncontroversial is in the particular case where the crystals spread or a low resolution film was used so that there just isn't any more detail below the scanning resolution. This has now become possible with HD, where SD didn't have the resolution to ever worry about this case. Any other case is less clear. Using this kind of technique on noise that affected only limited portions of the film (in the same way that tapre hiss only affects a portion of the musical spectrum) would affect the detail or presentation of the rest of the film. Whether you prefer it or not seems to be a matter of individual tolerance. Hence, you have people that will never listen to some of the old jazz master musicians. You also have people who think audiophile music is a tasteless waste.

A useful example is a scratch. Does it make sense to mask a scratch by blurring the entire picture? Before you equivocally say no (or yes), consider that each person has a different tolerance to different kinds of noise.

One thing I learned doing some technical research on things related to HD, is that even the oldest B&W film can resolve 4 or more times the detail of the best color film--50 or more in the most theoretically biased comparison--although the average resolution (typical resolution? grain size? I don't know the right way to say it) across the surface is supposed to be more or less the same. (B&W crystals are as much as 1/50 the size of color, but uneven dispersion in the emulsion means you can't rely on it.) When I choose an amplifier or source for music, it tends to be one that resolves the most detail, even though these tend to sound bland to other people. I want to hear the minor vibration caused by the second violinist twitching her nose. While I don't always understand most of the tradeoffs people make, I do understand some of them, and have come to respect this as a personal choice...

Well... To a point... I still snicker at people who think lossy music sounds just as good as lossless when played back on an appropriate system. And sometimes I even argue with them. What I find is a variety of real differences between people and situations. Some might listen to music that's electronic, and therefore has less natural detail to begin with. Others listen as background music, maybe while mowing the lawn or jogging. Others listen intently, and have a background in recording or as a musician, and naturally focus on certain aspects of the music. or particular instruments. Others just soak in the spiritual zen of it obliviously. Noone's really been able to map these personal choices, idiosyncrasies, and preferences to how people choose music or equipment. You end up with a whole bunch of silly ideas, some loosely based on science (or science-fiction) or pure nonsense. It's a hard way to communicate, but that's what were stuck with.