Indeed 44.1 kHz mathematically and perfectly represents sound waves within the human hearing range (by Shannon’s sampling theorem), so you’re limited by the recording and playback devices. The author failed to demonstrate an understanding of how digital sampling works and perpetuates this common misunderstanding despite the wealth of information available in 2026.

No other sampling rate was used, but before sampling the audio signal had to pass through anti-aliasing low-pass filters.

In the beginning, it was extremely expensive to make analog low-pass filters that were steep enough to block frequencies over 22 kHz, but to pass those under 20 kHz.

So many audio-to-digital conversions used cheaper anti-aliasing filters, with a narrower pass-band, which could be significantly lower than the 20 kHz promised by the CD technology. The CDs mastered in this way had a worse quality than claimed.

Even today, such analog low-pass filters would be too expensive, which is why now everybody uses much higher sampling frequencies for audio, like 192 kHz.

If a 44.1 kHz digital stream is desired, it is obtained through digital filtering and decimation, which are free of the constructive problems of analog filters.

But higher sampling frequencies where impossible in the early years of CDs, when the existing 16-bit ADCs barely reached 44.1 kHz.

Moreover, 16-bit DACs were very expensive, so the cheaper CD players used DACs with a lower resolution, like 14-bit DACs, which further reduced the quality of playback.

So for some years in the beginning, typical CD quality was not as good as advertised and as demonstrated by using equipment much more expensive than what was typical for consumer players or even in the recording studios with smaller budgets.

No. Red book audio spec is 44100hz.

And I'd wager this guy cannot tell the difference between 44.1kHz and native 192kHz in a controlled double blind study.

Virgin vinyls always had a good enough audio quality.

Their unavoidable defect was that the quality degraded continuously with the number of times you played them.

When played on a cheaper turntable, even playing them only 3 or 4 times could be enough for a noticeable degradation of the quality.

That is why before CDs most audiophiles who were not too poor played their vinyls only once, to transfer them onto an open reel magnetic tape, which was played from then on, to avoid wearing the vinyl record.

It's well above the rate you need to reproduce everything a human can physically hear; this is one of the big points that shows the author as a moron...

The change from cd to vinyl "sound" was largely about mastering, and cheap digital production technology being not that great. But you can find examples of the same master going to cd or vinyl, and there's no benefit to the vinyl.

And I say this as someone who enjoys the physical medium, huge art covers, and tube amps.

Well, vinyl records are an analog medium so their sampling rate is infinite. More important would be physical and electrical band limits of the original recording, cutting and pressing devices and of course the playback devices.

I feel that another issue the author ignores is that vinyl records degrade and their sound quality suffers. I vaguely remember that a typical vinyl record has about 8 “perfect” performances before its playback qualify steadily declines. This isn’t an issue with digital media.

> Basically, if you disagree with him about his quack medicine, you're a "pseudo-skeptic" just looking out for Big Pharma's bottom line.

The hallmark of the anti-intellectual is to attack your motivation instead of your evidence. This made it really clear to me that this is not a serious writer.

I genuinely think that was the worst example he could have possibly used. There might be something to electro-gardening, and everybody will agree that a tractor doesn't need to be a computer, but homeopathy just sells the placebo effect. There's no remotely plausible physical mechanism behind it. Makes everything else he's suggesting seem suspect, IMO.

Same. I was already getting hand-wavy vibes from the prose above it.

On that note, I recently learned how popular homeopathic medicine is in Germany. That was surprising to me given the stereotypes about German people being so... down to Earth. Can someone explain the apparent contradiction to me?

Yeah, this whole thing is bullshit.

Bring back older cars with poor safety and high energy costs? Seriously?

Distrust medicine and agriculture?

Wtf is this doing on HN?

This is the author :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Michael_Greer

> John Michael Greer (born 1962) is an American writer and druid who writes on religious, environmentalist, and occult topics.

The fact that this blog has such high readership is an indictment on our poor education system. Though, granted, it looks like a much older audience that is commenting.

>Many of us are alive solely because of technologies developed in the last 20-30 years

A really really tiny percentage of us is that. Make it 100 years and you got something. 150 years is even better.

The author is a snake oil pusher so I don't expect anything reasonable or useful.