It's entertaining how John slips it past folk. He said he doesn't rely only on his ears. He sends the goodies off to other folk to listen to.
Is there scientific rigor there? Sort of. He's not there to influence the folk. He probably doesn't get large quantitative data back, but it doesn't mean it's poor data for his uses.
He's doing the equivalent of using an open ended questionnaire. If his respondents send back similar reports, then he's got data to work with. It's simple data and doesn't require involved statistical work - but it's likely sufficient to his purposes.
Can't be the case for HDCD - that has coding that requires bit level accuracy. Even infrequent changes to the LSB will result in that HDCD light not coming on.
Yes, that's why they employ error correction. Best not to conflate raw error rate with error rate post ECC which is normally zero.
Single bit errors in large computer files have the potential to completely compromise the system. Anyone see it happening? The error rates are well documented, no surprises. ECC is used automatically in hardware.
The audio public finds us 'right'. That is why we are both well known, worldwide.
If I were from another society that, for example, did not normal use automobiles for transportation, I might first be amazed why many automobiles are so powerful, expensive, and exotic? After all, we can traverse most North American highways with 30 HP and still carry 4 people and some groceries. Why do we need more? We don't, not really, but it is certainly more pleasant to have more: room, power, and effortless performance. As we get more financially well off, and perhaps face a longer commute to our job, we might give ourself a 'perk' of something with 150 HP, just to make the daily commute more enjoyable, and then IF we get into autos as a serious hobby, we might next invest into a BMW or a Mercedes. And later, if we find ourselves well off from previous effort and investments, we might just go out an buy a big Porsche, Bugatti, or a Bentley. Why not?
It is often the same in audio equipment. You can get away with something cheap, or home made, but some people just don't have the time and they have plenty of cash, and they are accustomed to everything working and looking 'just right' This is where the big money comes in. Fit and finish, not the circuitry as much. Just accept an aluminum or a plastic box and prices drop significantly.
If I were from another society that, for example, did not normal use automobiles for transportation, I might first be amazed why many automobiles are so powerful, expensive, and exotic? After all, we can traverse most North American highways with 30 HP and still carry 4 people and some groceries. Why do we need more? We don't, not really, but it is certainly more pleasant to have more: room, power, and effortless performance. As we get more financially well off, and perhaps face a longer commute to our job, we might give ourself a 'perk' of something with 150 HP, just to make the daily commute more enjoyable, and then IF we get into autos as a serious hobby, we might next invest into a BMW or a Mercedes. And later, if we find ourselves well off from previous effort and investments, we might just go out an buy a big Porsche, Bugatti, or a Bentley. Why not?
It is often the same in audio equipment. You can get away with something cheap, or home made, but some people just don't have the time and they have plenty of cash, and they are accustomed to everything working and looking 'just right' This is where the big money comes in. Fit and finish, not the circuitry as much. Just accept an aluminum or a plastic box and prices drop significantly.
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Frank, it is more like 'winning races', or in this case, 'listening contests'. If we succeed, then the product will satisfy the audio reviewers, dealers and customers. If we DON'T succeed, the design will be remaindered off, quietly, and never again see the light of day. It happens to us, all the time. AND I have really, really tried to MEASURE the difference, and I can't find a consistent set of measurements that guarantee's success. I once thought it was 7th harmonic, so I got some really fancy test equipment to bring it out. NOPE! It is important, but not enough! For example, the Parasound HCA3500 measured just fine, but it did NOT even get a rating by 'Stereophile'. The JC-1, a slightly bigger brother (400W instead of 350W into 8 ohms) got an 'A' rating in 'Stereophile'. The original point of my being here on this website was to share what the 'important' differences are between the two, but I just can't get enough out to even debate it, without being 'shut-down' by what Charles would define as mid fi advocates. And it does get old, after a while.
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It's known as whole CD's of software, one bit off crash and burn. Try it some time. Or take a huge JPEG and flip a bit by hand and try to read it into Photoshop.
Scott,
I assume you are familiar with the bit rate error in solid state memory from gamma rays? Small but it is there.
Ever leave a computer running with a fully functional UPS? How long till it crashes? What is the cause? (Depends on what it is doing... Duh.)
Ever go to your back up CD's and find what did not burn right?
ECC is good but it is not perfect.
Scott, I haven't test photoshop for ECC what does it sound like?
How does it know a single bit error? ECC! But then a two bit error may pass. No source is error free.
How well ECC is done might affect the sound quality.
As I said it is just as hard to believe in detecting single LSB errors by listening as in perfect files. So it is nice to see the support for perfect files!
Ah, but he'll never define 'mid fi'. That's the point - its a religious term, non-falsifiable.
It is easy enough to define: 'mid fi' It is making a product to do as much as possible, yet at a very low price. It is usually mass produced, compromised by cost considerations, and has lots of features and is sold (at discount) in hi fi emporiums or over the internet.
Specs are nominal, but serious effort to make them meet them. The overall sound is usually congested, edgy, even muddled. Many automobile audio systems represent this level, very accurately, not all, certainly, but the vast majority.
Specs are nominal, but serious effort to make them meet them. The overall sound is usually congested, edgy, even muddled. Many automobile audio systems represent this level, very accurately, not all, certainly, but the vast majority.
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Yes, sure. And different spectral content. We had been discussing it here, and it resulted in this analysis:
Distortion in JFET input stage circuits
Scott,
I assume you are familiar with the bit rate error in solid state memory from gamma rays? Small but it is there.
Ever leave a computer running with a fully functional UPS? How long till it crashes? What is the cause? (Depends on what it is doing... Duh.)
Ever go to your back up CD's and find what did not burn right?
ECC is good but it is not perfect.
Scott, I haven't test photoshop for ECC what does it sound like?
How does it know a single bit error? ECC! But then a two bit error may pass. No source is error free.
How well ECC is done might affect the sound quality.
As I said it is just as hard to believe in detecting single LSB errors by listening as in perfect files. So it is nice to see the support for perfect files!
Ed, large CD files are essentially error-free. The error correction stuff does exactly what it says, correct the errors. There were some threads here where people compared large files from different CD's, home burned CD-ROMs etc, and all were bit-identical.
jan didden
Soft Errors in 1- and 2- transistor memory can be a lot worse than the Semiconductor firms claim. I was at one time responsible for the design of the largest [2-transistor] SRAM consuming fleet of computers in Europe, and witnessed it first hand.
The short version of the tale: single-bit soft errors are caused by alpha-particles, which are unavoidably included in the package epoxy. The SRAM makers mitigated the problem by enveloping the die in Kapton. This Kapton layer arrests alphas with modest energy, but not all [Thorium, from memory, gets through this]. However, the qualification test performed by all firms used Americium 241, and always found zero errors, but this is because the Kapton layer always stops these! In practical use, the errors are worse, at about one FIT (one failure in 1E9 hours, per device) for the SRAM chips of a few years ago.
This soon becomes one computer crash per day, when you have a large population.
Naturally, all of this took an extraordinary amount of effort, measurement, trips to Japan, corrective software, etc.
When your designs reach a very critical level, you learn to stop trusting data sheets, and what anyone else says, and measure things for yourself.
Certainly, please go ahead. It is very important for the incident to find out if the files are identcial or not. Identical is a bit multifacetted here, because anything from the below list could happen :
- complete files (I assume PCM data --.WAV, .AIFF, .FLAC etc) are identical on the binary, file-system level, byte for byte. The most stringent criterion, effectively more stringent than applicable. Most easily checked with DOS command "fc /b", in a DOS-box.
- the sample streams (returned in 16bit ints) recovered from the audio 'data chunks' (*.WAV lingo) of the files are identical, with the representation of the samples in the file not being of any importance (one could be in 32-bit float format and still would deliver the same values). That's audio stream data identity, the one that applies here. Checked by subtraction, giving true zeroes, of the audio data in a sound/wave editor.
- only one big consecutive block of the streams is identical (the center parts), a few samples at the start/end of the files are missing or different (can happen with rips from CD, or when the DAW-operator bounces versions manually). Still there is full audio data identity for the purpose of our comparison. Again best checked with a good wave editor.
- Streams are not bitidentical but rather have the sort and amount of differences that still leave the waveform intact, eg a gapless stream with NO totally wrong or missing samples from unrecoverable errors from the CD readout (with bounced files on hardisks this is irrelevant anyway). This is the point when it gets interesting, for example different dithering would give different "fine grain" in the sample data. That different data may lead to different perceived playback is for sure a no brainer to anybody, only topic would be if the difference has enough magnitude to become audible or not. I've subtracted a special case of different 24-bit ditherings recently (one having DC-offset), the difference was the LSB toggling after offset nulling and the audio contained in that bit was a fully distorted/compressed copy of the track. Could that be audible? In 16bit for sure, still not easily, IMHO.
As for the special case of ripping CD, it is a very proven fact that the better extraction tools which allow for the exact needed setting for the specific drive's read offset all give audio data identity and in most cases even file data identity for .WAV (when options to store non standard non-audio metadata in the file -- which is possible with .WAV -- are turned OFF). No need to worry about that. Otherwise the audio data streams might be offset a little but still are valid and correct. The chance that defects on a CD happen to be exactly such that bit errors would leak through unnoticed through the multiple error correction levels of CD-audio is not zero, but very close to 1/infinity, and even then this would be simple very occasional spot errors, no overall change in sound character.
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1 in 8 odds don't prove anything. At most they could be an indicator that there may be something worth investigating. But let's assume for a moment that the effect is real: the files really are bit-identical, and people really can tell them apart. We must assume that the data reaching the DAC is the same (that is what 'bit-identical' means) so it must be the timing which is different. This means that the timing depends on either meta-data (e.g. timestamps in the file headers) or context (e.g. block placement on the disc). This is an equipment problem, which could eventually be found and fixed.
Now let's assume that such equipment problems have been eliminated, but the effect persists. Then we would be talking about a little fairy which lives in each file. This fairy gets injured by data-preserving conversions or global NFB, and feels insulted by double-blind tests so pushes off. When happy, their normal state, these fairies enhance our listening experience, which is why we notice when they are missing. Of course, this only happens to those who believe in fairies! The rest of us have to cope with mere reproduction of a waveform to a reasonable level of fidelity.
Now let's assume that such equipment problems have been eliminated, but the effect persists. Then we would be talking about a little fairy which lives in each file. This fairy gets injured by data-preserving conversions or global NFB, and feels insulted by double-blind tests so pushes off. When happy, their normal state, these fairies enhance our listening experience, which is why we notice when they are missing. Of course, this only happens to those who believe in fairies! The rest of us have to cope with mere reproduction of a waveform to a reasonable level of fidelity.
While most certainly some people would in every case refuse to accept surprising audibility results, it would help to test on an accepted level of significance.
In your case, if you would identify 5 pairs (one tailed; actual p=0.031 for this result due to guessing) or 6 pairs (two tailed; actual p=0.031 for this result due to guessing) it would be much harder to call it just lucky guesses.
Otoh, by only comparing 3 pairs the chance for guessing is doubling if both possible identifications were accepted (two tailed; actual p=0.25).
Thanks PMA, VERY GOOD WORK!
It is a pretty good guess to get an 8:1 out of the blue. It isn't just once or twice, but Charles Hanson was giving an EXAMPLE of what we do for a living. We can make those sorts of comparisons with audio sound quality. We have trained ourselves to do it. We use these 'decisions' to effect the direction of the next group of products. Charles does it this way, more than I do. However, 15 years ago, I started a design partnership with Bob Crump. This led to the CTC Blowtorch, but also the mods to the HCA3500 to make it a really high quality design, the Parasound JC-1 and JC-2, and even parts of the JC-3.
Bob Crump is deceased now, died about 5 years ago, but in our 10 years of working together, we made progress. He could more easily hear the audio differences than I could, and he was the main contributor to what made the Blowtorch into a world class product, as well as the JC-1 and JC-2 into 'A' rated products.
It was his approach to audio design that I have the most difficulty conveying here, without catcalls and diversion.
It is a pretty good guess to get an 8:1 out of the blue. It isn't just once or twice, but Charles Hanson was giving an EXAMPLE of what we do for a living. We can make those sorts of comparisons with audio sound quality. We have trained ourselves to do it. We use these 'decisions' to effect the direction of the next group of products. Charles does it this way, more than I do. However, 15 years ago, I started a design partnership with Bob Crump. This led to the CTC Blowtorch, but also the mods to the HCA3500 to make it a really high quality design, the Parasound JC-1 and JC-2, and even parts of the JC-3.
Bob Crump is deceased now, died about 5 years ago, but in our 10 years of working together, we made progress. He could more easily hear the audio differences than I could, and he was the main contributor to what made the Blowtorch into a world class product, as well as the JC-1 and JC-2 into 'A' rated products.
It was his approach to audio design that I have the most difficulty conveying here, without catcalls and diversion.
My Solaris workstation was up for 9 years 24/7. I could run "diff " on randomly selected files and their copies for months at a time, why bother, as Charles says it's never enough.
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Many years ago when I was in IT we would routinely have PDP-11s running for a year doing distributed SCADA at power stations, before they were switched off for routine summer maintenance on the plant. You can imagine my amusement when I read that Microsoft had come up with a new operating system which was so stable that it could run for a week without rebooting!
Now your talking!
How about this Bristol, new ones go for $400,000 or more. Just think only $100,000 or so in repairs, real quality.
1989 Bristol Beaufighter - £39,500
Silver with black leather. Last owner 11 years, genuine 88,000 miles from new.
Rare lightweight lift-out front roof panel, superb all round condition with some
£67,000 spent over the last 15 years on maintenance and upgrades.
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