Farewell to 8 Hz

There are those who say analog records just sound better than digital CDs or streams of music. When all is dissected, no one can really tell much difference. So why this media legend?

I've come to the conclusion that it's a biological proclivity, not one of perceiving fidelity. We prefer analog as comfortingly human.

Consider this: as AI matures, the "thinking" being programmed is that of "fuzzy logic," the back-and-forth between the limits that narrow and hone in on a solution. That is as human as the back-and-forth of our tympanic membranes, as sound waves (analog vacillations) strike them.

Thus, we are evolved for analog, yet we embrace the digital as our technology evolves. CDs beat out the hertz limits of records, so there the tech went. It is absolutely fascinating that the digital machinations are gravitating to analog, e.g., fuzzy logic, while our human endeavors are gravitating toward digital perception.

This is as ironic!

Analog ("wavy") humans are seeking the digital; digital computing is seeking the analog. So it is as paradoxical as it is ironic.

Considering my basis for this conclusion—hearing, oscillating ear drums and such—we know that the movement of ear drums mimics (mirrors?) those oscillating waves striking them. These are fluid movements. But digital is not fluid. Digital involves delivery of all-or-none packets (viz., 0s and 1s). This is like the double-slit quantum experiment when a force is delivered as both waves AND particles.

And then, there’s this:

The American music industry agreed on a standard of 440 Hz in 1926 for the note, A, for tuning, and some instrument manufacturers began to rely on this. In 1936, the American Standards Association also recommended that the A above middle C be tuned to 440 Hz. However, 432 Hz was what the ancient mathematicians used for A and, accordingly, the corresponding harmonic system. Why argue that, since we all agree that the square of the hypotenuse of a right triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides? And who said that? Why, Pythagoras, that’s who. (And the Wizard of Oz.) Also, interestingly, Pythagoras was the guy who said 432 Hz ruled the waves—not the slightly higher-pitched harmonics of 440 Hz, further augmenting violations of the natural order, as is dictated by the Music of the Spheres.

We are creatures of waves, even at 440 cycles per second; we navigate the universe on the tides of flow and ebb. Is it any wonder that analog embraces us better; that analog just seems friendlier? Is that why analog seems to sound better? Or is it that it just sounds more human? More comforting? Like the nurturing of a lactating mother.

But what do I know? I'm a hopeless romantic, and that's how lactating mothers got into my rant, here.)

Don't misunderstand me. I like my "devices." They're pretty and they're fun, and they make the camaraderie of writing on such vehicles as writing sites possible. However...

I check my feed. I am “fed” a picture of a lover's respite under the tree. Now THAT is analog. I am also “fed” a picture of persons consulting their digital streams. THAT is NOT analog.

As we embrace discrete packets of information, served à la carte on the smorgasbord of our “feeds” and abandon the wave of what's human, we venture off alone, according to the staccato of incoming data packets while ignoring the loss of the 8 Hz in life’s harmonics that surely must be important.