THE ABSOLUTE STATE OF THE ART IN AUDIO, 2007
or
The Sao Win Cartridge Gets Even Better
©2007 The Anstendig Institute
Our last paper on the currently emerging audio archive problems points out that The Juilliard School Audio Department has used analog reel-to-reel tape recordings for their recordings and still does use them, even in this apparently digital world. That information backs up the information we have also related, that most serious recording studios and film makers usually have analog tape recorders running as a safety precaution when they make their high end digital recordings, and that some even produce their final CDs and DVDs, etc., from the analog recordings and not from the digital ones.
The upshot is that analog recording remains the dependable state of the art for sound recording, which would also mean that records remain the best source of audio sound, even better than reel-to-reel tape, at least with direct-to-disc recordings. Today, for the general public there isn’t even a truly high end recording medium available at all.
The final conclusion to make in all of this is that analog phonograph records and reel-to-reel tapes are still the state of the art in audio recordings and the Win-Labs’ phono pickup cartridges made by Dr. Sao Win are the present state of the art in audio sound playback for the world. Dr. Win’s latest hand made cartridges, the SMC Type 4, described in our paper “STATE OF THE ART IN SOUND REPRODUCTION, 2005”, are, therefore, the benchmark for all others. Nothing rivals these cartridges in mechanical precision or sound quality, and Dr. Win even owns crucial patents on the technology, which means that these cartridges will remain the state of the art for some time.
Dr. Win has made one new advance, which he is now working on, that will improve even the present cartridge and will certainly become the state of the art when finished. He has found a way to rework the cartridge body to allow him widen the magnetic fields, so that, in his words, the “motor has a wider field to move in” and that “widens the sound spectrum”.
The world did not pay attention to those people who recognized that digital audio was defective when it came out, that it has no standardization in emerging formats, and that it has no viable, affordable, commercially available recording medium for high quality sound recordings. In the face of ridicule and derision from a public that had already invested in digital, those people have been insisting that no one give up their analog recordings for CDs and DVDs. They have even been warning of the deterioration of audio tapes and the current dilemma finding machines on which to play those precious analog recordings. Now, even if those analog recordings are transferred to another medium before they are lost, that medium will not be the equal of the original analog sound. The sound quality and fidelity to the original will be compromised and the greatest, most refined treasures of the audio world, and probably of the whole world itself, will be lost.