Yes. And about 50 years of subsequent research as well.
"Resolution" in the sense you use it is appropriate for a sampled undithered system, where two levels separated by less than one bit cannot be distinguished. The systems under discussion here do not fall in that category, and levels separated by less than one bit can be distinguished.
The common audiophile myth of information being lost "between the bits" is fed by this inappropriate terminology. Signal to noise is appropriate and unambiguous.
Yes. Ever hear of Critical Bands? What happens after the last (top) one?
Any listening test based on a single sine wave has lost its relevance to actual real world listening because of masking.
Musical sounds are far more complex than that.
I think you are reading a lot (that was never intended) into very few of my words.
For example, while levels separated by less than one bit can be distinguished in many cases, in many other cases they can't because of other perceptual effects such as masking.
This is why I object on the grounds of hair splitting - human perception is the ultimate standard, but it can be very complex.
One of the things about over simplified measures such as dynamic range is that while they are the wrong numbers when viewed in a more complex context, as you compare systems, they are in some sense equidistant from the right numbers. Then there is the slight matter of the confusion of actual usage.
If you don't want to damage your ears and do want to listen comfortably, a perceptually noise-shaped 16 bit noise floor is generally below threshold. And, if you look at actual examples of commercial recorded media, the recording's noise floor is north of that.
If you say so, that's good for you!
I don't see how relying on SNR and avoiding dynamic range helps audiophiles who want to believe the myth of music getting lost between the bits. IME they want to believe that digital is a sham, and they want to believe that regardless. We've got an active example of that in these threads, for example.
That is the reason why i propose-you to try this little test.
I used very often, on female voices, to use a home made equalizer adding a bump at 40KHz on analog tapes. With no impact at 20KHz. Everybody, in the studio always noticed the difference. It gives more "air".
For everything concerning human perception, I don't believe blind on the literature, more on my own experiences. Our senses are more complex than a simple "captor". There is a brain computing behind.
As an example, I begin to suffer of a cataract. Yesterday night, tied to verify what each of my eyes was seeing. Blur and haze. But, at the same time my vision was sharp enough, using my two eyes. It seems obvious my brain is able to eliminate lot of the defects of my eyes ... may-be by comparing the two? Like Lightroom or Photoshop is able to add sharpness, reduce the chromatic aberrations of a lens etc. by calculation.
I'm very bored by the attitude of all those pure "objectivists" in this forum. They obviously suffer from a lack of experience, and their religious attitude of "believers" for what they beleive to be "science", all along with permanent aggressiveness is far from what i was away from what I was taught to be a correct scientific attitude.
Hifi is a "make believe" game, an attempt to fool our senses to make them believe than something virtual (information) is real, in a very artificial way.
Numbers and scientific knowledge are tools to help-us to walk in the good direction (reduction of distortions etc.) but no more. At the end, only our senses can tell us if we are "nicely" fooled for our pure pleasure: Music, witch is an exchange of 'feelings'. That was the reason why i oriented my life from electronic and electro-acoustic design to sound engineering.
I cannot understand the reactions of some of you in front of the Richard's attempts for better understanding of phenomena. He is, for sure, more experienced than a lot of you, and very modest about. Passionate in measurements, this is a scientific attitude, he always verify with carefull listenings if what he find can have a 'subjective' value. The perfect attitude, on my point of view, and the reason why I'm very interested on what he is looking for... what correlate my own experience.
Last edited:
Of course you can't hear the difference between a 10kHz (or 7kHz, whatever is your personal cut off frequency/2) sine or square wave, old trick. Only requirement is that all the harmonics fall outside hearing bandwidth. For me that little test has been conclusive proof that reproduction of frequencies outside the hearing bandwidth is not necessary for sound reproduction.
Because of the very high selectivity of hair cells, 100rds to a 1000 dB octave filtering, it is fair to say our ears have build in brick wall filters, many of them.
Because of the very high selectivity of hair cells, 100rds to a 1000 dB octave filtering, it is fair to say our ears have build in brick wall filters, many of them.
Last edited:
If you could give a usable formal definition of that filter, I would try it. Your inability to do or even see a need to do so tells me about your technical expertise.
Nobody I know of can come close to creating on their own, out of their own experiences the wealth of relevant knowledge contained in extant Scientific publications, even just the part about hearing. I would say that anybody who seriously thinks this is true is hopelessly ignorant and/or conceited.
I don't know what a pure objectivist is. I suspect that no such thing can exist in the context of a human being. It may be a fabrication of poorly informed radical subjectivists.
Acoustic images are illusions but that does not free them from the constraints of science and engineering. Science does well with illusions, subjectivist fantasies notwithstanding.
I don't know of a recognized form of sound engineering that can exist without electronics and acoustic design. I think it is arguable that no such thing, as a practical matter, can possibly exist and be useful in these days.
No more than it would kill you, I guess.
One difference being, I'm apparently more self-aware.
So you are aware you come across as an **** all the time? And the inference being that I think I am being a rational human being?
Talking about technical expertise and aggresivity, can't you design by yourself a 1/3 oct equaliser centered at, says, 40KHz ? Or are-you ready to pay-me for my time lost for such a trivial design ?
Did I have anything to prove to you ?
http://www.esperado.fr/images/stories/protection2.php
http://www.esperado.fr/temp/VSSA/vssa-vs-vfa.html
http://www.esperado.fr/vssa-diamond/dvssa.php
Your opinion contradict my experience and, how i said, the ones of many musicians i and producers during years in various recording studios. BTW, I was not the only one to use this trick, learned-it from a very famous sound engineer in LA, that I verified and adopted for my own use ...
Best listened to from first gen vinyl with lots of water in the grooves.
I do miss luckythedog his run on his LP/stylus research was the best real tech stuff we've had in ages.
Last edited:
First off, I asked for a useful specification, not a finished design. You've had two chances and both are total failures because they became ego-trips. I'm losing patience.
Secondly none of your links addressed the current topic.
I guess you don't know that there are an infinite number of ways to implement a 1/3 octave eq, and that many of them produce response < 20 KHz that invalidates any relevant experiment of the kind we are talking about.
This experiment is often done incompetently and then it appears to yield positive results for audibility.
Do not forget ear intrinsic distortion --> intermodulations, though it is difficult to lead very high frequencies to the eardrum. So, at certain level and direction there might be a difference.
The roll-off at about 10KHz is the easiest to deal with..... the somewhat scrambled sound (less distinct and clear) as you progress above midrange is a LOT harder to fix (GD etc).
Get yourself one of these..... ML-9600 and listen to recorded files stored in 24/96 vs the burned CD version. You can do this right from the machine. You can even burn a disk at 24/96. And, no I am not going to do more tests using the machine.
View attachment 9600.pdf
Enjoy.... I've moved on from 16/44 CD's.
Interesting that Sony (an original CD promoter) is now promoting HiRes 24/96, finally.
THx-RNMarsh
Get yourself one of these..... ML-9600 and listen to recorded files stored in 24/96 vs the burned CD version. You can do this right from the machine. You can even burn a disk at 24/96. And, no I am not going to do more tests using the machine.
View attachment 9600.pdf
Enjoy.... I've moved on from 16/44 CD's.
Interesting that Sony (an original CD promoter) is now promoting HiRes 24/96, finally.
THx-RNMarsh
Last edited:
Of course... they milked the CD far longer than we wanted.... like keeping old video standard too long. But if consumers and designers had complained louder and longer, they might have moved to master quality sooner.... until then, i dropped out. But, its a moot point now. Now they have moved to standardizing 24/96... I will come back into the game and listen to music more often. And, finally really enjoy the sound as well as the music.
THx-RM
THx-RM
Last edited:
Absolutely, some new to sell to the suckers/consumers, they new they compromised the original design as the Managing Director of sony insisted upon fitting a particular Mozart concert in one disc. So the engineers had to drop the frequency to suit.
- Status
- Not open for further replies.