an Audiophile perspective, yes, there is a difference ... a rant

[rain shadow]

Evan E[/url]":3j6kt9tq]You're totally missing out on the mellow, more human warmth of my wax cylinders.

My chamber orchestra is sufficient for my audiophile needs at home. When out and about, I have a minstrel follow me and play the popular music of the day.

 

[Evan E]

rain shadow[/url]":sblg18l9]

Evan E[/url]":sblg18l9]You're totally missing out on the mellow, more human warmth of my wax cylinders.

My chamber orchestra is sufficient for my audiophile needs at home. When out and about, I have a minstrel follow me and play the popular music of the day.

♪♫ Bravely, brave Sir Robin... ♫♪

 

[Kalessin]

analogika[/url]":37ssygw2]

DaveB[/url]":37ssygw2]
You can pick up an Audio Techmica belt drive turntable for $80 shipped. I connects to any stereo or computer, so for $80 all in you can play with vinyl.

http://www.techbargains.com/audio-technica-atlp60-deals#newsID459066

Not very expensive or inconvenient, is it?

You can also rig up a turntable with a salad spinner and a coathanger holding a postcard for even less, at only slightly lower sound quality.

Still missing the point.

For a site ostensibly about the "technical arts," the lack of faith in analog audio is... disturbing.

 

[houkoholic]

bflat[/url]":17fcx0cg]I think everyone involved in the audio(phile?) hobby would benefit from a few courses in signal processing. Learn the math, be able to translate between frequency and time domains, understand bandwidth and information limits, Fourier transforms, classify variables and their effects, etc. Maybe then the mystery of audio will be clarified, but of course you will also lose the magic.

I'm an electrical engineering graduate with signal processing background first before I got into the whole audio thing many years after I graduated and have enough disposable income to start dabbing into higher end equipment. Because of that I "peaked" really quickly - took me about 1 year in to it to realise that this hobby is so full of shit and snake oil, and another year after that to get my "end game" headphone setup and have no more desire to buy new shinnies.

Now-a-days I know where all the "bad" sound comes from - it's during the music production - and ain't no amount of high end equipment - analog or digital - is going fix that. As for equipment, as those who understand would say, the money you pay pass the point of mid-tier equipment for high-end equipment should be for things like features and build quality, rather than expecting "night and day difference in sound".

I have a lot of younger friends around me whom are just getting into "high-end" audio recently - I actually spend a good few hours explaining digital audio and some simple EE to them so they won't get sold over-priced crap by the snake oil salesman. None of them has been ever sold an "upgrade cable" as a result ever since - and I'm proud of my work.

 

[oldlabguy]

bflat[/url]":144iojqk]I think everyone involved in the audio(phile?) hobby would benefit from a few courses in signal processing. Learn the math, be able to translate between frequency and time domains, understand bandwidth and information limits, Fourier transforms, classify variables and their effects, etc. Maybe then the mystery of audio will be clarified, but of course you will also lose the magic.

I dunno I just listen for enjoyment, I think my wife would be worried if I measured my perimeters before going to bed....

 

[bflat]

houkoholic[/url]":1w23ci8l]
Now-a-days I know where all the "bad" sound comes from - it's during the music production - and ain't no amount of high end equipment - analog or digital - is going fix that.

That is the truth. There have been far too many albums that I really enjoyed before I got a good sound system that I have difficulty listening to now. With a revealing and capable stereo I am just left wondering what the heck the mastering or recording engineer was thinking! They must be deaf to actually want these albums to sound so bad. But what is probably happening is that they were targeting the lowest common denominator; making it sound "good" on crappy headphones, OEM car systems, or portable speakers, so the mix lacks all bass, highs, and any separation between instruments. On poor sound systems you don't really notice the difference between badly and well mastered.

And I'm not even thinking about loudness war victims where the digital file (CD etc) is actually CLIPPED! That is just inexcusable, there is no possible reason to clip your mastered track.

On a nice stereo skipping from a poorly recorded track to a well done one is like taking ear plugs out, or coming up from under water; it just feels refreshing and so crisp and clear. Sometimes I just wish there was a way to restore the lost detail to good songs, badly recorded. Waiting for the remaster isn't always an option...

 

[Me I'm Counting]

Kalessin[/url]":8tmo06lr]

analogika[/url]":8tmo06lr]

DaveB[/url]":8tmo06lr]
You can pick up an Audio Techmica belt drive turntable for $80 shipped. I connects to any stereo or computer, so for $80 all in you can play with vinyl.

http://www.techbargains.com/audio-technica-atlp60-deals#newsID459066

Not very expensive or inconvenient, is it?

You can also rig up a turntable with a salad spinner and a coathanger holding a postcard for even less, at only slightly lower sound quality.

Still missing the point.

For a site ostensibly about the "technical arts," the lack of faith in analog audio is... disturbing.

Key word here.

 

[Kalessin]

Me, I'm Counting[/url]":3qouygdq]

Kalessin[/url]":3qouygdq]
For a site ostensibly about the "technical arts," the lack of faith in analog audio is... disturbing.

Key word here.

Nothing wrong with that. Most things that have an "art" to them usually take a little faith.

 

[cogwheel]

Kalessin[/url]":1v0595gc]

Me, I'm Counting[/url]":1v0595gc]

Kalessin[/url]":1v0595gc]
For a site ostensibly about the "technical arts," the lack of faith in analog audio is... disturbing.

Key word here.

Nothing wrong with that. Most things that have an "art" to them usually take a little faith.

Art is mostly¹ about aesthetics, also known as opinions of taste. Faith, on the other hand, is about belief in things without evidence, and that is absolutely not the same thing. Ars leans very much towards things needing evidence to actually establish their truth, which is antithetical to faith.

¹ The rest of art is about technical execution, which clearly doesn't involve faith, and mere existence, and I doubt you'd just take a painter's word that their painting exists - you'd want to see the painting.

 

[smartalco]

bflat[/url]":3v2u1bzm]But what is probably happening is that they were targeting the lowest common denominator; making it sound "good" on crappy headphones, OEM car systems, or portable speakers, so the mix lacks all bass, highs, and any separation between instruments. On poor sound systems you don't really notice the difference between badly and well mastered.

++

I can't for the life of me remember where I read this article, but I did read something a few years ago about how many producers were basically targeting the best sound they could make on iPod headphones. Basically the success of the iTunes store and iPods made it so such a large quantity of listeners were using shitty headphones they figured they'd sell more sounding good to that demographic than bothering to make it actually sound good.

 

[Kalessin]

cogwheel[/url]":ygyhmyal]

Kalessin[/url]":ygyhmyal]

Me, I'm Counting[/url]":ygyhmyal]

Kalessin[/url]":ygyhmyal]
For a site ostensibly about the "technical arts," the lack of faith in analog audio is... disturbing.

Key word here.

Nothing wrong with that. Most things that have an "art" to them usually take a little faith.

Art is mostly¹ about aesthetics, also known as opinions of taste. Faith, on the other hand, is about belief in things without evidence, and that is absolutely not the same thing.

When people say "there's an art to doing ____" it doesn't usually mean that the activity is literally making "art." It often implies that the activity involves some intangible skill or judgment that isn't easy to explain based on evidence. It could be argued that faith is needed in both the doing and the acceptance of ____..

Ars leans very much towards things needing evidence to actually establish their truth, which is antithetical to faith.

Occasionally, Ars also leans toward using evidence to argue things that one already believes are true, which is a subtly different thing.

¹ The rest of art is about technical execution, which clearly doesn't involve faith, and mere existence, and I doubt you'd just take a painter's word that their painting exists - you'd want to see the painting.

Even if we were talking about painting, you'd have to take on some kind of faith that the painting has some intrinsic value beyond being a bunch of pigments smeared on a backing that sells for x amount of money.

 

[bflat]

smartalco[/url]":2imsrumv]

bflat[/url]":2imsrumv]But what is probably happening is that they were targeting the lowest common denominator; making it sound "good" on crappy headphones, OEM car systems, or portable speakers, so the mix lacks all bass, highs, and any separation between instruments. On poor sound systems you don't really notice the difference between badly and well mastered.

++

I can't for the life of me remember where I read this article, but I did read something a few years ago about how many producers were basically targeting the best sound they could make on iPod headphones. Basically the success of the iTunes store and iPods made it so such a large quantity of listeners were using shitty headphones they figured they'd sell more sounding good to that demographic than bothering to make it actually sound good.

There was one particular album I picked up last winter that I really enjoyed. Listening on the cheap stereo in my winter car (09 nissa versa) made it sound as good as any other album I own. Once I got around to listening at home, or in my summer car (with a nice after market stereo) I was shocked to discover that the album sounded exactly the same as on the cheap systems. The album itself had the frequency response and clarity of the stock stereo in an econobox...the mastering was done that way on purpose! It was horrible, and truly ruined my listening enjoyment on the better systems.

 

[Hat Monster]

Once I got around to listening at home, or in my summer car (with a nice after market stereo) I was shocked to discover that the album sounded exactly the same as on the cheap systems.

You're saying that your "Nice after market stereo" has no difference in its playback quality compared to the cheap systems. The call works both ways - you can't have a "difference" on some music but not others. The playback system doesn't know what you're feeding it, it treats everything the same.

 

[bflat]

Hat Monster[/url]":3azxs5gq]

Once I got around to listening at home, or in my summer car (with a nice after market stereo) I was shocked to discover that the album sounded exactly the same as on the cheap systems.

You're saying that your "Nice after market stereo" has no difference in its playback quality compared to the cheap systems. The call works both ways - you can't have a "difference" on some music but not others. The playback system doesn't know what you're feeding it, it treats everything the same.

I'm saying that the extended frequency response of the after market system is unused by the track. ie. they mastered a completely band limited recording.

Also when listening to a good recording on a bad system, the definition and separation between instruments is difficult to hear. When listening on a better system, it becomes clearer. With this bad recording, the better system didn't make it clearer.

I have to assume you are being purposefully obtuse; the better system accurately reproduced the poor quality recording. It is just that a cheap system could also acceptably reproduce the poor quality recording since it was so band limited, and muddy already.

And yes, to keep this about measurable factors, I could (and did) look at the album in audio software and was able to see clipped waveforms, lack of dynamic range, and FFT to see a limited frequencies present.

 

[Hat Monster]

I have to assume you are being purposefully obtuse; the better system accurately reproduced the poor quality recording. It is just that a cheap system could also acceptably reproduce the poor quality recording since it was so band limited, and muddy already.

The cheap system would not be just as good as a better system, until a certain cutoff. It'd be crap all the way through.

And yes, to keep this about measurable factors, I could (and did) look at the album in audio software and was able to see clipped waveforms, lack of dynamic range, and FFT to see a limited frequencies present.

But you said band-limited. Now you're moaning about dynamic range. These are different things, and present different issues. A heavily clipped recording has very harsh highs (the clips are momentarily very high), but you said it was "muddy".

 

[cogwheel]

Kalessin[/url]":1os6ztq9]When people say "there's an art to doing ____" it doesn't usually mean that the activity is literally making "art." It often implies that the activity involves some intangible skill or judgment that isn't easy to explain based on evidence. It could be argued that faith is needed in both the doing and the acceptance of ____..

When people say "there's an art¹ to doing _____", they either mean that doing "_____" isn't well understood enough yet (though it is capable of being understood with more research) that doing it well relies on intuitive guesswork, or they mean that they are expressing an opinion of taste on various ways of how that thing is done. Faith never enters into it except when you have no evidence that a person has done a work or how they've done that work and you're taking their word for it. In that case, the faith is directed towards the validity of a claim, which is orthogonal to actual actions or skills (except maybe the skill of lying).

Kalessin[/url]":1os6ztq9]Even if we were talking about painting, you'd have to take on some kind of faith that the painting has some intrinsic value beyond being a bunch of pigments smeared on a backing that sells for x amount of money.

The valuation of the work of art itself is merely a reflection of aggregate opinions of taste combined with a factual judgement of authenticity. The only place faith enters into it is in your belief of the validity of what the purveyor puts forth as the monetary value, and that's something that can be independently verified via authenticity research and open auctions.


¹ Note: I'm ignoring the case where a person uses "art" in this phrase as a synonym for "skill". It should be obvious that being skilled in a task doesn't involve faith², unless you want to use "faith" as a synonym for "ignorance".

² I'm ignoring the pedantic case of a preacher, where having faith can be helpful in convincing other people to share your faith in something intangible and unfalsifiable.

 

[bflat]

Hat Monster[/url]":wtc46ipv]

The cheap system would not be just as good as a better system, until a certain cutoff. It'd be crap all the way through.

Perhaps I'm not being as clear as necessary for such a pedant. It didn't sound as good, nor the same. But when the album sounded bad, I assumed if was from the poor playback system. Months later (ie. not measured, nor A/B tested) played back on a better system, it still sounded bad, meaning that the recording is bad. The point I was trying to make is that recording quality varies extremely, but you need a better system to notice the better recordings. A crap system makes everything sound like crap, good and bad recordings.

But you said band-limited. Now you're moaning about dynamic range. These are different things, and present different issues. A heavily clipped recording has very harsh highs (the clips are momentarily very high), but you said it was "muddy".

You have to be purposefully obtuse; but if not than maybe this is a lesson of how words don't explain sounds well. If I still kept the files I would post data plots...but I can't be bothered. Let me break it down for you:
1. The waveforms were clipped on the CD. This demonstrates bad mastering/recording and is probably an effect of overly strong compression.
2. there was no dynamic range. Again, overly strong compression. The quiet notes were nearly the same level as the loud notes so there was no impact to a drum hit, for example.
3. The recording was band limited meaning there was little present above ~12-14khz in the file. There was also little below 100hz, where you expect kick drums and bass to live.
4. As a result of the clipping there was harsh high frequency audible noise that wasn't intended to be in the recording. This lead to harsh sounding highs as you indicate. The high frequency harshness is strictly a reproduction issue and not something measured in the digital file; ie an artifact or aberration.
5. Again back to #2, with all instruments the same volume, and #3 limiting presence effects, the entire recording sounded muddy as in it was difficult to pick out individual instruments.

Is that fucking clear enough for you?

 

[HO]

 

[Kalessin]

cogwheel[/url]":1vr4k2n9]

Kalessin[/url]":1vr4k2n9]When people say "there's an art to doing ____" it doesn't usually mean that the activity is literally making "art." It often implies that the activity involves some intangible skill or judgment that isn't easy to explain based on evidence. It could be argued that faith is needed in both the doing and the acceptance of ____..

When people say "there's an art¹ to doing _____", they either mean that doing "_____" isn't well understood enough yet (though it is capable of being understood with more research) that doing it well relies on intuitive guesswork, or they mean that they are expressing an opinion of taste on various ways of how that thing is done. Faith never enters into it except when you have no evidence that a person has done a work or how they've done that work and you're taking their word for it. In that case, the faith is directed towards the validity of a claim, which is orthogonal to actual actions or skills (except maybe the skill of lying).

Well, if the activity relies on intuition, then you need at least some kind of faith in the intuition. If on the other hand one believes something is understood enough or that one has enough evidence (or that further research will yield the condition) that intuition isn't needed, then that would also seem to imply a certain faith. And suppose you base your judgment on evidence from the work itself. That can tell you about the choices that were made, but can it tell you whether the "right" choices were made, beyond the most obvious cases?

In the case of opinion or taste, don't you need to place at least some faith in the person's opinion (if you want to take it)?

Also, I'm not sure which claim(s) you mean with respect to "validity." It would be helpful if you would explain a little more about what you meant.

Kalessin[/url]":1vr4k2n9]Even if we were talking about painting, you'd have to take on some kind of faith that the painting has some intrinsic value beyond being a bunch of pigments smeared on a backing that sells for x amount of money.

The valuation of the work of art itself is merely a reflection of aggregate opinions of taste combined with a factual judgement of authenticity. The only place faith enters into it is in your belief of the validity of what the purveyor puts forth as the monetary value, and that's something that can be independently verified via authenticity research and open auctions.

Are you asserting that the painting (and art in general) has no intrinsic value?

¹ Note: I'm ignoring the case where a person uses "art" in this phrase as a synonym for "skill". It should be obvious that being skilled in a task doesn't involve faith², unless you want to use "faith" as a synonym for "ignorance".

It isn't obvious at all. As I alluded to earlier, a skilled practitioner often has to make decisions based on limited knowledge and capabilities.

² I'm ignoring the pedantic case of a preacher, where having faith can be helpful in convincing other people to share your faith in something intangible and unfalsifiable.

I'm not sure pedantic is the right word here. But okay.

 

[Jehos]

Kalessin[/url]":3m9275sn]When people say "there's an art to doing ____" it doesn't usually mean that the activity is literally making "art." It often implies that the activity involves some intangible skill or judgment that isn't easy to explain based on evidence. It could be argued that faith is needed in both the doing and the acceptance of ____..

Nah, "there's an art to it" means there are so many complex parameters that took so long to master that I'm not going to bother explaining it to you right now.

It doesn't mean there isn't an evidence-based explanation, it just means that explanation is hard.

For example, there's an art to smoking brisket. Most pitmasters can't explain it, because they're not as smart as Harvard engineering students. It doesn't mean there's not a perfectly good scientific explanation.

 

[Kalessin]

Jehos[/url]":3trv7y8m]

Kalessin[/url]":3trv7y8m]When people say "there's an art to doing ____" it doesn't usually mean that the activity is literally making "art." It often implies that the activity involves some intangible skill or judgment that isn't easy to explain based on evidence. It could be argued that faith is needed in both the doing and the acceptance of ____..

Nah, "there's an art to it" means there are so many complex parameters that took so long to master that I'm not going to bother explaining it to you right now.

I suppose that's true for some cases and for some people. But there really is an art to a lot of things that go beyond not wanting to bother explaining.

It doesn't mean there isn't an evidence-based explanation, it just means that explanation is hard.

For example, there's an art to smoking brisket. Most pitmasters can't explain it, because they're not as smart as Harvard engineering students. It doesn't mean there's not a perfectly good scientific explanation.

It's usually possible to come up with evidence-based explanations post hoc, if you try hard enough. Whether they actually tell you anything you wanted to know is a different matter...

 

[Hat Monster]

It's usually possible to come up with evidence-based explanations post hoc, if you try hard enough. Whether they actually tell you anything you wanted to know is a different matter...

If you don't have evidence, then you don't have anything to explain (or you need a better experiment, but that's not the case here). Phenomena without evidence is religion, this is its usually singular difference from the scientific method.

 

[random_slacker]

oldlabguy[/url]":123x6yuf]

I dunno I just listen for enjoyment, I think my wife would be worried if I measured my perimeters before going to bed....

How many perimeters do you have, don't most people have just one????

 

[Richard Berg]

Non-Euclidean architecture FTW

 

[SDplus]

I gave up years ago talking about Audio on Ars Technica.
I have worked as a Sound Engineer in studios, acted as producer on recordings. Learned everything about the technical aspects of audio. Even took courses (and held lectures) about human hearing.
I've built all sorts of audio equipment even.
I still hear the tangible positive differences in audio quality between a mediocre setup and a high quality one in home settings.
I have a friend that gladly sinks $20k on a monaural amp alone, to me that is insanely over the top, but that is the point... "to me".
I tend to hold at a price/performance ratio that is sensible "to me", which is way lower than my friends equipment.
Still I can appreciate that his setup can reveal more detail than my setup. But not that much more, and it has probably more to do with his speaker-choice than anything else.

I do not subscribe to most audiophilia nonsense of digital cables or using expensive racks to hang cables above the floor and stupid shit like that (Let's not even get in to power-cables and black stickers and strips of tape).
In the analogue chain there is a base level of quality you have to rise above though, but the price for that level is not what most Audiophiles think it is.
Just look at all the crap cables and signal paths audio goes through in a studio. And sure, often this means the source audio actually sounds like crap, but a little BBE sonic maximizer and phase correction (yes it's the same thing, but I thought not everybody knows what BBESM is) on the signal and it sounds fine again.
This is however mostly not the kind of recordings Audiophiles tend to listen to.

I would not discuss the matter here anymore though. Because it is a place where numbers is the game. People who want to discuss how art influence them emotionally have little room here.
I just thought of the comparison with visual art. The usual resolution of a bitmap is rather imprecise description. I would rather compare it to showing a painting in a room bathed with Sunlight, Then in a room with a fluorescent tube-lamp, or illuminated by a warm-white light bulb, or even a black-light. It will give pretty different experiences of the work. This is a better "analog" to the experience of audio. And there is no way to tell how the artist experienced it themselves. And the trick here is that some paintings are done in open air. It might have been cloudy, or it might actually been made for a black-light. For Audio it is the same thing. At a base you want most recording to not suck. Then if you optimize, you do it for the type of recording you mostly like to listen to. And that IS possible. Is it worth it for you? Can people voice expression about this without being constantly asked about "give me the facts" when in the beginning no one wanted to prove anything else than voicing an experience?

So, I have a little experience from all walks in the field of Audio. I want a good setup. I appreciate it. But I use it to listen to my record-collection and audio-files. I do not "usually" use the record collection to listen to my equipment. That is the level I like, but even at that level you get scorned on these forums, so I usually stay away.
And there is really no international place for that level of care anywhere on the web. There is a Swedish forum that is pretty level-headed, but other than that one there is only crazy in one direction or another...

Anyway, This is my opinion on the matter, not that it matters for anyone but me.

 

[Hat Monster]

People who want to discuss how art influence them emotionally have little room here.

They have their place. You just made that post, did you not? Here, of all places?

People who believe that the experience can only be bought, that has no place here.

Audio quality is measurable, quantifiable, definable.

And entirely not necessary.

I'll still sit back with the first cans I ever rebuilt, cracked and flaking with a vibration mode they really shouldn't have, with a cigar and a port just because that's the emotional nice place. At that time, I don't care about the stereo crosstalk or unbalanced soundstage. I'm sure practically everyone here would have their listening comfort zone in such a way. Not perfect, and they know it's not. Part of the charm.

 

[redleader]

SDplus[/url]":1i89k4v1]I gave up years ago talking about Audio on Ars Technica.
I have worked as a Sound Engineer in studios, acted as producer on recordings. Learned everything about the technical aspects of audio.

For someone who knows "everything" about audio, you have made some interesting posts here:

quote:
I'm not sure you understand Nyquist.

Nyquist is based on false premises. It's entirely irrelevant. Frankly, anyone still referring to Nyquist as some kind of proof of anything relating to audio quality hasn't been paying attention actually.

44.1 or 48 can not reproduce anything up to anything close to 20K. Only if you digitally construct a sine wave will it be possible. And still, the DAC would have no idea if it is a sine wave, a triangle wave, a Square wave or a sawtooth, for example. It is impossible. If you take a complex music signal, anything above 10K will be purely guesswork for the DAC, and only the samples that happen to correlate well in phase of the original signal could provide some measures to make better guesswork. This is exactly what better DACs do. And they are pretty good at prettying up the signal. But it's still just cleaver filtering to fool us.

The sampling theory is a lie. Nyquist made it all up

SDplus[/url]":1i89k4v1]
Jitter are also introduced by uneven burning. The data actually comes correct but in an slight uneven pace, and that is more troublesome than you might think, and it's quite devastating to the audio-quality, and that is why you never should burn faster than your burner can do it without speed-stepping, and without track-gapping.

Burning CDs devastates audio quality because "jitter"

SDplus[/url]":1i89k4v1]
To me the difference is very clear. Really, 48K is insufficient. You get a theoretical 24 Khz range, but most of it will not look like the original signal. Basically everything above 10KHz in a 48K recording will be slightly modulated noise that somewhat follows the original signal (It actually starts lower than that). Most people don't care about that though. We are so easily fooled by noiseshaping, but it's really easy to hear once you know how it effects the sound. Then there's other sampling rate bi-products that either is very obvious (at least to me) or filtered out with other equally obvious bi-effects. But those are there for any sampling rate, just with some different twists. As I said in the other thread, I can teach anyone to hear those things in a couple of hours, question is if you'd really care or not.

A bunch of words you don't even understand

SDplus[/url]":1i89k4v1]
I would not discuss the matter here anymore though. Because it is a place where numbers is the game. People who want to discuss how art influence them emotionally have little room here.

You're welcome to say whatever you want, but if you don't understand what you're talking about, people are going to correct you. With even a couple seconds of searching anyone can easily see just how often you need to be corrected. That is the point of a public forum. Its not your diary, its a place for discussion and learning.

The way I see it, you can become bitter and complain about people trying to help you, or you can take their knowledge and learn from it. The choice is yours.

 

[Kalessin]

Hat Monster[/url]":xtdjpnvk]

It's usually possible to come up with evidence-based explanations post hoc, if you try hard enough. Whether they actually tell you anything you wanted to know is a different matter...

If you don't have evidence, then you don't have anything to explain (or you need a better experiment, but that's not the case here). Phenomena without evidence is religion, this is its usually singular difference from the scientific method.

Arguing by assertion can also be an art.

 

[DriverGuru]

redleader[/url]":3dkvxgrk]

Nyquist is based on false premises. It's entirely irrelevant. Frankly, anyone still referring to Nyquist as some kind of proof of anything relating to audio quality hasn't been paying attention actually.

44.1 or 48 can not reproduce anything up to anything close to 20K. Only if you digitally construct a sine wave will it be possible. And still, the DAC would have no idea if it is a sine wave, a triangle wave, a Square wave or a sawtooth, for example. It is impossible. If you take a complex music signal, anything above 10K will be purely guesswork for the DAC, and only the samples that happen to correlate well in phase of the original signal could provide some measures to make better guesswork. This is exactly what better DACs do. And they are pretty good at prettying up the signal. But it's still just cleaver filtering to fool us.

The sampling theory is a lie. Nyquist made it all up

And Shannon and Hartley were in on it!

Never mind that it (along with later derivative work like Shannon's noisy channel coding theorem) is one of the fundamental principles of practically all modern electronics. Including, of course, SDplus's internet connection and the hard drive in his computer.

 

[Hat Monster]

Without that bastard Shannon, I'd be able to compress and recompress and recompress until every single piece of data was one bit.

We're better off if he was wrong!

 

[houkoholic]

Damn it I know I couldn't trust my internet connection at home because I get uneven upload speeds on 100 year old copper wires, jitters all over the place, probably flipped some words inside my important emails too! *shakes fists*

I kept asking the telephone company to put silver wires from the exchange to my home so that my bits will arrive jitter free but they just won't listen, but I JUST KNOW BETTER from all the stuff I learn from audio forums!

 

[Jehos]

Kalessin[/url]":24xu16rs]

Jehos[/url]":24xu16rs]

Kalessin[/url]":24xu16rs]When people say "there's an art to doing ____" it doesn't usually mean that the activity is literally making "art." It often implies that the activity involves some intangible skill or judgment that isn't easy to explain based on evidence. It could be argued that faith is needed in both the doing and the acceptance of ____..

Nah, "there's an art to it" means there are so many complex parameters that took so long to master that I'm not going to bother explaining it to you right now.

I suppose that's true for some cases and for some people. But there really is an art to a lot of things that go beyond not wanting to bother explaining.

It doesn't mean there isn't an evidence-based explanation, it just means that explanation is hard.

For example, there's an art to smoking brisket. Most pitmasters can't explain it, because they're not as smart as Harvard engineering students. It doesn't mean there's not a perfectly good scientific explanation.

It's usually possible to come up with evidence-based explanations post hoc, if you try hard enough. Whether they actually tell you anything you wanted to know is a different matter...

Ah, the "you weren't THERE, man!" argument.

Do better.

 

[Cool Modine]

Hat Monster[/url]":ueq65o0a]Without that bastard Shannon, I'd be able to compress and recompress and recompress until every single piece of data was one bit.

We're better off if he was wrong!

Sounds like the basis for another Douglas Adams starship propulsion technology, joining bistromath and infinite improbability...

 

[Kalessin]

Jehos[/url]":dl5ngpl5]

Kalessin[/url]":dl5ngpl5]
It's usually possible to come up with evidence-based explanations post hoc, if you try hard enough. Whether they actually tell you anything you wanted to know is a different matter...

Ah, the "you weren't THERE, man!" argument.
Do better.

No, that isn't what I said at all. Try reading next time.

 

[keltor]

I notice that this thread like others about "audio" always end up bashing the engineers. And end up talking about how engineers were targeting the best sound on iPod headphones ... it's just not true. In a simplistic fashion, there's three people who are deciding "how" it sounds, the artist(s), the producer(s), and the engineer(s) and they do so based on their own "tastes" and do so using the monitors and headphones in the studio and as far as I have ever seen, they are never going, "oh damn how can we make this sound really good on iPod heaphones ..." Everything about how each record is recorded is just about how it "sounds" to those people and then how the buying public buys it and then because these are all business people, they think about how that album that sold really well in a similar genre sounded and then they apply that to the next recording they make.

All goes back to the whole "Death Magnetic" controversy again.

 

[SDplus]

redleader[/url]":cyf7t328]

SDplus[/url]":cyf7t328]I gave up years ago talking about Audio on Ars Technica.
I have worked as a Sound Engineer in studios, acted as producer on recordings. Learned everything about the technical aspects of audio.

For someone who knows "everything" about audio, you have made some interesting posts here:

quote:
I'm not sure you understand Nyquist.

Nyquist is based on false premises. It's entirely irrelevant. Frankly, anyone still referring to Nyquist as some kind of proof of anything relating to audio quality hasn't been paying attention actually.

44.1 or 48 can not reproduce anything up to anything close to 20K. Only if you digitally construct a sine wave will it be possible. And still, the DAC would have no idea if it is a sine wave, a triangle wave, a Square wave or a sawtooth, for example. It is impossible. If you take a complex music signal, anything above 10K will be purely guesswork for the DAC, and only the samples that happen to correlate well in phase of the original signal could provide some measures to make better guesswork. This is exactly what better DACs do. And they are pretty good at prettying up the signal. But it's still just cleaver filtering to fool us.

The sampling theory is a lie. Nyquist made it all up

SDplus[/url]":cyf7t328]
Jitter are also introduced by uneven burning. The data actually comes correct but in an slight uneven pace, and that is more troublesome than you might think, and it's quite devastating to the audio-quality, and that is why you never should burn faster than your burner can do it without speed-stepping, and without track-gapping.

Burning CDs devastates audio quality because "jitter"

SDplus[/url]":cyf7t328]
To me the difference is very clear. Really, 48K is insufficient. You get a theoretical 24 Khz range, but most of it will not look like the original signal. Basically everything above 10KHz in a 48K recording will be slightly modulated noise that somewhat follows the original signal (It actually starts lower than that). Most people don't care about that though. We are so easily fooled by noiseshaping, but it's really easy to hear once you know how it effects the sound. Then there's other sampling rate bi-products that either is very obvious (at least to me) or filtered out with other equally obvious bi-effects. But those are there for any sampling rate, just with some different twists. As I said in the other thread, I can teach anyone to hear those things in a couple of hours, question is if you'd really care or not.

A bunch of words you don't even understand

SDplus[/url]":cyf7t328]
I would not discuss the matter here anymore though. Because it is a place where numbers is the game. People who want to discuss how art influence them emotionally have little room here.

You're welcome to say whatever you want, but if you don't understand what you're talking about, people are going to correct you. With even a couple seconds of searching anyone can easily see just how often you need to be corrected. That is the point of a public forum. Its not your diary, its a place for discussion and learning.

The way I see it, you can become bitter and complain about people trying to help you, or you can take their knowledge and learn from it. The choice is yours.

Thank you for proving my point.
Edit: Especially since you are famous for misinterpreting, taking things from old post, twist them out of context and basically yourself not knowing the whole story. I wasn't going to say it. But you really should just do like me and stay out of these things here. It really doesn't help anyone...
Edit2: I could counter all your idiocy here and put these things into context and timeframe, and actually explain a few things to you. But you in particular would not be able to read it correctly. And actually I could probably myself only frase everything exactly correctly in Swedish anyway. For example. I never claimed Nyquist was wrong, I claimed he made assumptions about human hearing when he did his paper that since has proved incomplete. And that in in more modern times things are used in soundcreation that Nyquist cannot compensate for. It's like The discovery of gravity, It isn't wrong, but there is a lot more to it than things falling to the ground.
Trying to ridicule people with methods like yours is extremely unfair and more than a little Psychopatic in its tendencies. I'm guessing you are into politics a lot.

 

[redleader]

SDplus[/url]":3f4szorv]
Edit: Especially since you are famous for misinterpreting, taking things from old post, twist them out of context and basically yourself not knowing the whole story.

Is even one of those quotes not correct? I mean, yes I spent 30 seconds searching your posts, and its possible the first 3 I found weren't representative, but you did say that copying CDs reduces their quality did you not?

SDplus[/url]":3f4szorv]
I never claimed Nyquist was wrong, I claimed he made assumptions about human hearing when he did his paper that since has proved incomplete.

Well, then you're wrong for several reasons:

Nyquist did not prove the sampling theorem, that would be Shannon. Its named after Nyquist, but he didn't actually write the paper, nor prove anything.

The sampling theorem is provably correct using no assumptions other than algebra. Its not possible for it to be proved incomplete without algebra being wrong.

The sampling theorem makes no assumptions about human hearing because it has nothing to do with human hearing. It is a fundamental part of our reality, like causality and thermodynamics (with which it it shares a lot in common). You cannot prove it incomplete using human hearing anymore than you can lift yourself into orbit by pulling on your shoe laces.

So lets review, you believe you know "everything" about audio, and have proven algebra incomplete by finding bad assumptions in a paper you claimed to have read but that does not actually exist.

----

I'm going to share an observation I've made a number of times over the years. As one gradually achieves mastery of a subject their faith in their own understanding of it steadily decreases because they come to understand its true complexity. The less you understand something, the more simple it seems. The more you understand it, the more impossible it becomes. The people with Ph.Ds and years of study are the ones who will never say they understand all of audio because they've learned enough to understand its complexity. In contrast, its the state of near ignorance where someone understands just the first bits of a topic, but does not yet grasp even a hint of its complexity where they feel that they know it all.

Consider carefully the depth of your understanding and precisely why you think audio is so easily grasped, and why you are so eager to dismiss people who bring up complexity as irrelevant.

 

[SDplus]

WTF.
It is exactly the way I feel about your posts. You repeatedly prove that you are unaware of several technical terms that people in the field has written papers about for decades, then calls my posts full of shit. I post one thing here that was just a general opinion-piece about how I percieve audio, AS A RESPONS TO THE OPENING POST, I have not read most of the other stuff discussed here, and you decide to focus on bringing up stuff in this thread that are Totally not on topic or relevant, to prove something I simply can not understand emotionally, It was a pure unadulterated personal attack from nowhere for no reason whatsoever.

I actually ALWAYS claim audio is complex beyond most other things. It is not easily explained, and that is exactly why my tendencies to use hyperbole in some threads gets hacked on for not being exactly historically or technically correct. Which is true for almost everything ever discussed on any topic on any forums. But instead of trying to understand what people actually mean, some people feel the need to rip things apart based on intentionally (as it seems) assuming the worst possible interpretation of anything stated.

Trying to converse lightly on a subject should not lead to out of context cross referencing and talk about absolut technical and historical accuracy i every detail. It's not possible in normal conversation. Noone can write that fast and much, and if they could. Noone would read it. So Why? Why constantly do that.
I actually have amassed a great deal of knowledge about the subject of Audio. I am not complete, but it is a very well working knowledge driven by a life-long interest. And when I decided to learn about the biological aspects of human hearing and the tests done at medical labs in conjunction with Stockholms Tekniska Högskolan. I was completely blown away about how little ANYONE knows about this.

So, I can not for the life of me understand how you have come to the conclusion that I think Audio is easy?

And NO, Copying CD's does not TYPICALLY reduce quality, but jitter ( http://www.apogeedigital.com/knowledgeb ... is-jitter/ ) is a factor that has to be thought of, as even making a CD-copy could get that if you do not care for it. There is a reason why every CD-reading and copying software has a setting for Jitter-free reading. It is technically easy to detect and to re-read correctly at a slower pace. But if you ignore it the CD-copy can have reduced quality.

Edit: I just thought of something. Lets pretend we have the exact same technical knowledge on a subject. Then we both have a Myers Briggs test, It shows that we are basically complete opposite personalities. Then discussions like this would probably happen even if the knowledge were exactly the same. Just because we value completely different aspects of that knowledge differently, and decide to express it completely differently. I play loose with absolute details sometimes, because for most people (including me) don't wnat nor need all the exact phrasings as long as the point is taken. I guess that is an absolut no-no for you. When I talk about Nyquist for example, it his name on the theorem, if you start tossing all other names involved in the bowl, then perspective is lost. Unless you are actually teaching a class. I am not teaching a class here. No-one is. If it is needed it gets asked for. And no. I'm not going to do it. I need preparation for that, and I don't care for that level of technical involvment most of the time. And if I do, I want to do it in Swedish.

 

[Richard Berg]

I actually ALWAYS claim audio is complex beyond most other things

Modeling the full transform function from a loudspeaker's voltage input to a human's perceptual loudness is complex. Deriving the clipping threshold of a non-ideal op-amp from Maxwell's equations is complex.

Transmitting a 20KHz signal on a metal wire is easy. Making a bit-perfect copy of a CD is easy.

There is a reason why every CD-reading and copying software has a setting for Jitter-free reading. It is technically easy to detect and to re-read correctly at a slower pace. But if you ignore it the CD-copy can have reduced quality.

Jitter is a property of the signal bus used to convey bits. It is not (and indeed cannot) be stored in the bitstream.

Put another way: the clock that drives SATA and the clock inside a DAC play very, very different roles. One does not affect the other.

 

[SDplus]

CD-audio is an old technical solution that is not easily reduced to only a bitstream. Jitter exists, and it can lead to faulty readings. That's just a fact. When it comes to CD-Audio you have obviously missed a few chapters. Most other digital audio formats and methods does not have that problem. However, I admit that if you do read without jitter consideration 100 CD's, there is probably only one or two that leads to errors. CD just isn't that robust. But it is mostly robust enough.

Edit, Damn, I wrote more, but it got lost. I did an edit up there.