This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is not correct. The best analog recording media have signal to noise ratio around 70 dB without noise reduction (ie. dynamic filtering). With noise reduction > 90 dB SNR is possible but you get artifacts as a tradeoff that depend on the noise reduction method.
Analog sources can quite trivially have > 100 dB SNR. A simple example would be a high quality oscillator that's switched on and off.
This is a bit of a simplification in that it only considers the variation in short term loudness. You need to additionally consider the difference between the short term loudness and quietest audible element at that moment (somewhat less than 70 dB). Not coincidentally this 70 dB combined with 20 dB loudness variation is close to the CD limit of 93 dB (3 dB lower than the theoretical 96 dB due to dithering).
24 / 32 bits is of course extremely useful for recording and processing audio as you don't need to optimize the recording levels nearly as closely (and risk clipping) and avoid excessive noise accumulation over various processing passes. There are even recorders that combined multiple converters internally to record the entire dynamic range possible with room temperature electronics so that the resulting SNR is always optimal without ever clipping until the operating voltage limits of the recorder itself are exceeded.
More options
Context Copy link