The Ampex ADD-1 digital cutting delay was introduced at the Audio Engineering Society convention in May 1979. It uses 16-bit digital audio with a sampling rate of 50 kHz and an audio lowpass filter that cuts off above 20 kHz. It was patented in 1980 as U.S. patent number 4348754.

I am not a purist myself, and as long as the music sounds good, I am personally happy, however, having said that, I do believe that the end-user having spent their hard earned money, deserves to know what they’re buying

This truly is an Audio Masterclass! Thanks for spelling this out and actually explaining how these recordings have been and are done. Too much emphasis is being placed on how “all analogue”is so much better…and not enough on the progress of new technology in recording. As you say, “we are living today not yesterday.” Brilliant work as usual. Cheers!

The amazing Thing is: After 40 Years-the good old Compact Disc ist still good enough for everything.

Thanks for the video! I own some DDA vinyl records from the Dutch band Doe Maar. They were chosen by Philips to help promote the first CD-players. So the recording was done digital while most sales were still analog LPs.

8:50 A good analogy you can also use is the actual video you're watching now. Chopped-up reality is presented as frames that you see as smooth motion. Love your channel, sir. Your calm, rational, fair and technically correct discussion is enjoyable.

Thanks again. If it was just purely getting the best sounding music to the masses (affordable, durable) CDs won every time.  But CDs go above and beyond that for most music enthusiasts. I'm biased after purchasing hundreds of LPs in the 70s and a good part of the 80s then finally having the opportunity to have an affordable media (CDs) that rivaled the $1000 turntable with Japanese LP pressing's  sound quality. CDs were all that they were hyped up to be,  when they were done correctly.

You truly make my day publishing the facts of digital in the praised golden age of analog and the effort to get the facts. I have been in the pro scene for a while in the analog to digital transition time of the 1980s, also as concert organizer and I am still a music lover. I love to hear the most out of the music with good recordings on good playback setup. So, I know music production from stage/studio to the speaker of the listener.
With presenting the dig. delay for lacquer cutting you give a reason for detecting no good vinyl beginning the mid 1970s. I prefer original releases, regardless vinyl or CD, but I do not like new Vinyl because of price and to many bad releases. Keep on dispelling myths of believers and telling the true stories. It is all about music culture and workers like you, and not of believing in technology.

Very nicely done, thank you!

Thinking about the end bit. Such debates were heard during transition from Edison gramophone (purely acoustic) to RCA Victor (assisted by electricity) which pre-figure the analogue/digital debate. It's all to some extent sociology, some humans/societies become more fundamentalist than others and people wind up at different ends. All digital media like CD are fundamentally deterministic in what you will get out of the end. In analogue you can push things by making better kit but with falling off and diminishing returns. If there were a reading list I'd suggest 'Perfecting Sound Forever' by Greg Milner especially for the early historical stuff covering up to the naughties.

This looks like the Mobile Fidelty (aka Mofi) issue, many audiophiles who have long argued that "analog is better" or "they can hear the difference between analog and digital", not to say the "specialists" and journalists telling people the MoFi releases are the best there is for analog. Latter they learned that MoFI either use DSD sources or convert the master tape source material into digital DSD files before remastering and pressing the LP's.

😂your image of vinyl fans is hilariously right on and made me laugh out loud. Mostly because I am one but also try not to take myself too seriously. Love the videos!

Thank you for another Masterclass episode, I'm glad you explain these things so clearly instead of just fighting for a certain side as people often do, leaving us wondering about the truth.

The first CD I bought was Dire Straits Brothers in Arms. DDD sounds beautiful almost 40 years later. 😃

You touched the issue of the loudness war. For me that was the turning point in pop music, and is infinitely worse to my music enjoyment than digitization ever was.
If there's something that audiofiles and non-audiofiles probably agree on is that digitzation means filtering because of the Shannon-Nyquist theorem. That's needed to prevent aliasing during the recording stages, but there's no need for it during the reproduction stages.
I own a non oversampling, non analogue filtered DAC. I appreciate the aliasing problem, but I simply can't hear any difference between a OS and an NOS output. Sure, on a 100 MHz bandwidth oscilloscope, I can see the difference, but I can't hear it. To me this means that what many audiofiles think they hear is not actually what they do hear.
To me the vinyl revival is just like the valve/tube equipment revival/continuation, quite similar.They distort in a way we find pleasing, but it may not actually be truthful in a HiFi sense.

Call me evil, if you want, but I absolutely LOVE the fact that there are hardcore analogue-vinyl-enthusiast-audiophiles out there who will now be fretting about whether their "pure analogue" 1970s LPs might have been mastered with the 12-bit Ampex ADD1 😂😂😂 Priceless!!!  
I truly don't believe that any of these self-proclaimed "audio experts" (especially audio reviewers) would be able to tell the difference between an LP played "live" and the same LP recorded to my 25 yr old DAT machine...let alone a modern "audiophile grade" AD/DA conversion. They're all "full of it" as far as I'm concerned. Still...if these muppets are also prepared to spend $1k on a 1-metre interconnect...maybe I should just get onboard the audiophile train and start selling my own brand of absurdly-priced cables?! After all, there's literally no way they'd be able to tell the difference (aurally) between a $30 alibaba-special and a "genuine audiophile-grade" interconnect. I could definitely put my principles aside for a 3000% profit! 😂

I’m trying to shed some light about the frequency response of vinyl. My understanding is that vinyl couldn’t exceed 20KHz because of the following factors…some geeky stuff for anyone interested 😊
I tried to post also links for everything but YouTube is deleting the comment.

Recording
Studer A800 series (the most successful recording machines)has a frequency range of 50Hz-20KHz

Mastering stage
Ampex ATR100/102 has a frequency range of 35Hz-28KHz just in only configuration - at 30ips (within +/- 2db) using Ampex 406/407/456 tapes. In any other configurations it’s up to 20 KHz

Some tapes themselves couldn’t record more than 20KHz
ATR Ampex Master Tapes specs are showing this.

Neumann VMS80 could go up to 20KHz, because that was the maximum frequency of AKS80 - the unit module responsible for the delay preview.

About cutting lathes, in the 90s I think, Linn bought two used lathes, reworked them and used them to re-issue some 1960s analog recording on their label. If anyone at Linn reads this, I hope they would comment.

I have one of these records (Ravel Piano concerto and Bartok’s Concerto for orchestra).  Linn Records also launched in analog a group called The Blue Nile. These records sound amazingly good, even by today’s standards… on a proper turntable.

Thanks. Great video.

From Studio Sound 1979 November, p40:
"AMPEX....ADD-1  Audio digital delay unit for disk mastering preview (2-channel). Allows a standard tape recorder to be used as the mastering machine, the standard output being fed to the lathe preview input and the ADD-1 input, while the delayed output of the ADD-1 becomes the programme input to the lathe cutter amplifiers, suitably delayed. Delay time may be preset up to 5.12 s in 5ms increments, while the digital delay uses 16-bits for 90dB dynamic range with samples frequencies of 25kHz, 50kHz or 100kHz. The unit is totally compatible with half-speed cutting. Frequency response is 5Hz to 18kHz +/-0.5dB, to 20kHz -1.5dB."