[DSD_Mastering]

A funny way I explained bit-depth to my wife was to imagine you had a beautiful landscape to color.... and they gave you 8 Crayolas! (8-bit).
Now think what kind of picture you could color with 16, 32 or the big 64 Crayola box! 

Or another analogy that I would use would be to imagine you were in a concert hall and every was making noise by talking and such (16-bit)... now think how good the concert would be if everyone shut-up! (24-bit). You automatically lowered your noise floor!

[Atlplasma]

I've been trying to think of an analogy that a nontechnical person might appreciate. How about this?

MP3, CD, and High Rez sound is sort of like frozen yogurt, low-fat ice cream, and full-fat ice cream. The stuff you download from iTunes or Amazon is the audible equivalent of frozen yogurt. If you just got to have something, it will do. Playing a CD provides a nice low-fat level of satisfaction, but you know something is missing. If you'd never had full-fat, it would be perfectly acceptable.

But playing high rez is like eating a nice big bowl of Haagen Dazs. Rich and creamy and oh so good.

So which would you rather consume?   

[eclein]

I've been reading along a bit and have just recently been able to listen to a bunch of hi rez files and my very first thought when I read the question was that its like blu-ray compared to DVD in a basic sense which is what the masses will understand then I read the crayon analogy and thought thats even better.

First of all as soon as we say "the masses" you need to realize that roughly 95% of them haven't sat down and listened to any music as critically as we do when we casully listen. Take that into consideration and the fact that the masses are just beginning to latch onto the blu-ray medium and I think the easiest terminology and phrasing to explain it to the masses would be to say its like Blu-ray compared to DVD.
 We can find holes in anything and there may well be holes in that analogy but it will strike a chord with a huge percentage of the masses that you may be addressing, in otherwords "its simple and they'll get it".

[stereocilia]

I'll give it another shot.  Low-rez is like reading text with most of the vowels taken out.  u cn uslly stll rd it bt smthng sms mssng when compared to the unabridged version.  As an added bonus, that in itself is slightly interesting, so you can talk about information redundancy or text messaging or wheel of fortune or whatever instead of audio since your audience doesn't give a crap anyway.

The crayon analogy is good.

[ted_b]

Good crayon analogy Bruce....see, that's why you get the big bucks!!   

[vhiner]

Another vote for Crayons.    You  can't take yourself too seriously when you're talking about crayons!

[pjchappy]

The crayon analogy is good.  Can someone come up with such a simple analogy for the sampling rate?


Paul

[werd]

I am not sure if i like the crayon analogy. Its makes me think of video rendering. There has got to be a better suited audio comparison than crayons. Its still better than anything i can come up with.

Since we are using crayons i would tie 8 same colored crayons together and it could be considered 8 x oversampling for a simple over sample analogy.

For frequency i would descibe a fish in an aquarium. A 22lb fish would need at least a 440 gallon aquarium to survive. You would still hear him flap around in that gallon size. It would make noise moving about and cause ripples at the top of the water. If you want that fish to grow to 30lbs you would need at least a 960 gallon aquarium. Even a bigger fish at 960 gallons his ability to stay unnoticed would be greatly increased. If you want that fish to grow to around 40 lbs you need at least a 1920 gallon aquarium. That size fish would be big and still have lots of mobility. It could swim around completely unnoticed or heard. No ripples in the water giving away its position....

[DSD_Mastering]

The crayon analogy is good.  Can someone come up with such a simple analogy for the sampling rate?
Paul

Yeah... you have to draw that picture with your Crayolas 44.1 thousand times a second! 

[HAL]

The sample frequency is the same idea as the refresh rate for TV or frame rate for movies. 

The higher the frequency, the lower the artifacts.  That is why they are going from 60Hz to 120Hz to 240Hz for the refresh rates.  Same idea as going from 24fps to 30fps to 60fps for frame rate on movies.

[kenreau]

I used this one since most of my friends are into photography in one way or another.  It can be like comparing photos from a single use disposable plastic camera to those of a 12 MP digital camera.

Kenreau

[werd]

Yeah... you have to draw that picture with your Crayolas 44.1 thousand times a second!

This is what i don't get. Does that crayola color represent a tone or batch of tones? I don't see how it can't be a bit and then represent a freq or pitch? I don't get it. Thats why i don't get the crayola analogy. Wouldn't using piano keys be a better analogy?

stumped 

[HAL]

The number of crayons would be the number of bits in the word.

The shades of colors of the crayons are like higher frequency resolution for higher sampling frequencies.  It would be easier to understand if you say you added more colors toward the blue end of the color spectrum that did not exist before.

[Atlplasma]

I tried the crayon analogy with a neighbor, and he seemed to get it. At the same time, I'm not sure he was convinced that paying $29.95 for a high rez album was a good investment.