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Recording Silence [message #95280] Mon, 21 February 2022 17:11 Go to next message
Concorde is currently offline  Concorde
Messages: 149
Registered: December 2013
Master
Is there a way to record silence so completely that there is no way to tell if anything was even recorded?

We can have the best audio technology known to man, but can we do that?
Re: Recording Silence [message #95283 is a reply to message #95280] Mon, 21 February 2022 19:01 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Wayne Parham is currently offline  Wayne Parham
Messages: 18669
Registered: January 2001
Illuminati (33rd Degree)

I guess your question is really how to make the signal to noise ratio as high as possible, which is the holy grail of many amplifier makers. They want the passages in between music to be dead solid black quiet. If you have that and good dynamic range for transients, you have a great amp, provided the other obvious specs like distortion are good.

But if all you really wanted was a quiet recording, that's pretty easy in the digital realm. All sampled bits must just be zero. By definition, then, the recording is perfectly "quiet." Of course, we still have to be able to present that to the loudspeakers, which requires an amplifier chain, and that takes us back to the first paragraph.
Re: Recording Silence [message #95290 is a reply to message #95283] Tue, 22 February 2022 19:57 Go to previous messageGo to next message
gofar99 is currently offline  gofar99
Messages: 1895
Registered: May 2010
Location: Southern Arizona
Illuminati (5th Degree)
Hi, I agree with Wayne...but ask why?

Good Listening
Bruce
Re: Recording Silence [message #95313 is a reply to message #95280] Sat, 26 February 2022 08:36 Go to previous messageGo to next message
Concorde is currently offline  Concorde
Messages: 149
Registered: December 2013
Master
No real reason, other than the idea fascinated me. That, and if you have noise-canceling headphones and you have a recording of dead silence coming through them, would there be a noticeable difference between the two different lack of "sounds"?

Re: Recording Silence [message #95335 is a reply to message #95280] Thu, 03 March 2022 22:23 Go to previous message
Nouri is currently offline  Nouri
Messages: 157
Registered: November 2012
Master
It sounds like one and the same to me. I think you're getting deeper with this than current technology does. Like you're wanting to know if there is something more silent than silence.

Dead silence is dead silence and it can be achieved with the right equipment. But that's as far as it goes.

Sorry. Cool
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