Photo/Video is another story, though. You can enlarge or print and really see the differences, even if in some cases its not realistic (people don't print very often billboard size stuff...)
On the other hand, you can't enlarge sounds. Maybe the closest to ''magnifying'' would be near field type system or headphones ? But then again, we also tried almost every type of equipment and the results was the same for all the listeners: 128kbps AAC v.s. CD v.s. HD 24/96 were impossible to identify from each other. Only positive and consistent identification was with the 64kbps MP3... but far from 100%!
Back in the days of Napster; we had some very poor 128kbps (that sounded like some junk 32kbps) but the question is: from where is that file coming from ?
Is it some 32kbps that was on a CD and then re-encoded in 128kbps... ?
That happened A LOT in the mighty era of CD-R... Bottomline: you need to control the source, you need to know from where it comes from. If information is lost (32kbps) there is no possible way to recover it.
I find the same. Not sure which it is either, but some of the recordings I have are very good and very enjoyable.
^ SSD will remain with us for storage for a while. Interesting technology nonetheless!
After having read Sean Olive's work on untrained versus trained listeners, and in the absence of any "critical listening" training myself, I'll assume I'm functionally deaf until otherwise proven.
Hard to disagree about a march towards higher bit and sampling rates, but we still have to move that data around and, in mobile environments, there's an energy cost with higher bitrates. And it doesn't mean that the recording side will be materially better either.
A very enjoyable thread. Thanks.
1. Comparable to wall-sized picture enlargement is the technique of yesteryear where you loop a signal around the device under test a few times (say, a Revox tape recorder) to multiply the damage.
2. Very enlightening to have a spare channel or two on a Behringer DSP DCX2496. You can set it to a narrow band (very high or very low, for example) to see what content lights the LED VU meter. I've been sent demo tapes that have been through MP3 treatment and sound great to the sender.... but the high frequency band LEDs never light! BTW, very uncommon to see content below 40 Hz even if you think your jazz bassist is profound and low (until you run the clip through a REW real time analysis and see exactly what's present). MP3 has that wonderful mellow tone colour!
3. Sometimes hard to find meaning in academic published journal research. A lot of ignorant stat usage. In particular, academic dummies sometimes don't understand the difference between practical significance and statistical significance. When listeners are very variable in their responses (or you mush together different classes of judgment), you will not get statistical significance and so you will conclude, "No cigar". But you really need to look at the numbers (not the stat test). Just how good was the guessing... as compared to you own concept of what constitutes "skillful" guessing.
4. I love Toole's great book. Lots of testing. Interesting, generally he finds no difference between amateurs and professionals in their tastes and in their sensitivity. Not clear to me when training helps ("listen for the tinkle on the triangle..."). Or when changes to one's own system can be reliably declared. For sure, the mind is really soft: often a friend will swear that their judgment is unassailable and they are CERTAIN their new speaker oxygen-free wires made a big difference.
Ben
1. Comparable to wall-sized picture enlargement is the technique of yesteryear where you loop a signal around the device under test a few times (say, a Revox tape recorder) to multiply the damage.
2. Very enlightening to have a spare channel or two on a Behringer DSP DCX2496. You can set it to a narrow band (very high or very low, for example) to see what content lights the LED VU meter. I've been sent demo tapes that have been through MP3 treatment and sound great to the sender.... but the high frequency band LEDs never light! BTW, very uncommon to see content below 40 Hz even if you think your jazz bassist is profound and low (until you run the clip through a REW real time analysis and see exactly what's present). MP3 has that wonderful mellow tone colour!
3. Sometimes hard to find meaning in academic published journal research. A lot of ignorant stat usage. In particular, academic dummies sometimes don't understand the difference between practical significance and statistical significance. When listeners are very variable in their responses (or you mush together different classes of judgment), you will not get statistical significance and so you will conclude, "No cigar". But you really need to look at the numbers (not the stat test). Just how good was the guessing... as compared to you own concept of what constitutes "skillful" guessing.
4. I love Toole's great book. Lots of testing. Interesting, generally he finds no difference between amateurs and professionals in their tastes and in their sensitivity. Not clear to me when training helps ("listen for the tinkle on the triangle..."). Or when changes to one's own system can be reliably declared. For sure, the mind is really soft: often a friend will swear that their judgment is unassailable and they are CERTAIN their new speaker oxygen-free wires made a big difference.
Ben
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Nope, early MP3s used the original ISO encoder. That's what it sounded like. Fraunhofer was a revelation. Only codgers recall that downloading a song at that time required manually splicing multiple files together with a hex editor and washing it through a binhex converter. And it still felt like magic.
BTW, how do you reconcile dismissing 24 bit resolution while lavishing praise on the benefits of a $9000 tweeter DAC? Seems counter intuitive.
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I don't doubt data compression will continue to serve a purpose for a long time, however personal storage isn't one of them. My Fiio X5 wil hold 256 GB of flash storage, at least 600 CDs in FLAC. Near 100 mbps download speeds over mobile is common here and carriers are under extraordinary pressure to compete on cost. If you look back over where we've been in so short a time it's difficult to see how MP3s will be used for anything but niche applications.
What should be more surprising to people is that our "feeling" is much stronger than our "ears"...
I have good ears, but given the chance to use my feeling, I will ignore whatever my ears tell me... (including null result)
Most people might not be able to differentiate 64kbps to 132kbps in an ABX but so what? Do you think they will enjoy their music equally well with both files? I don't think so...
I believe that this ability of the mind to "feel" the enjoyment is stronger than the ability of the ears to "hear" any difference... (that's why, we, experienced listeners, don't use only ears but "feeling" too in a blind tests)
I have been listening to compressed music for years (Using Nokia/Galaxy/Iphone), not even once I have the enjoyment I have had with CD. It takes me only few seconds after listening to CD to know what I have missed... Every time I fire up my CD player (or even CD from laptop) I always stand speechless in front of my speakers, and keep listening for hours... (never happened with MP3, never!).
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Interesting Thread, Jay as a designer you need to learn to be able to switch between your audiophile and music lover character. If you always listen as an audiophile i.e. at the shortcomings of the equipment or process, you will hardly be satisfied by the sensation that music offers and this turns to early listeners fatigue as you describe.
I have a problem with teaching people to listen for differences in processes because they lose the ability to just sit back and enjoy the performance.
Contrary to my bitching in the other thread, I have pretty decent sound cards in both my home and work machines and I listen to mostly MP3 from jazz radio or my own collection on a set of HD600s for probably 18 hours a day and enjoy it always.
What I have a problem with is the best of - subjectively there is no best of audio, it is just different each time you compare one thing to another, difference is choice else there will only exist one standard, on DAC, one player and one performance in the world.
You cannot compare enlarging jpgs n times because your result is not subjective, it is objective. You should compare it to a hand painting which is impossible to enlarge because its resolution is finite and objective.
Hope I did not waffle to far off base.
I have a problem with teaching people to listen for differences in processes because they lose the ability to just sit back and enjoy the performance.
Contrary to my bitching in the other thread, I have pretty decent sound cards in both my home and work machines and I listen to mostly MP3 from jazz radio or my own collection on a set of HD600s for probably 18 hours a day and enjoy it always.
What I have a problem with is the best of - subjectively there is no best of audio, it is just different each time you compare one thing to another, difference is choice else there will only exist one standard, on DAC, one player and one performance in the world.
You cannot compare enlarging jpgs n times because your result is not subjective, it is objective. You should compare it to a hand painting which is impossible to enlarge because its resolution is finite and objective.
Hope I did not waffle to far off base.
Give you an example of subjective rules over objective with the case of amplifier design. I have designed several amplifiers that has impeccable measured specification to the point that you can tel what colour plectrum the guitarist use.
After the design is frozen, you start listening to music that you actually like and find your foot not tapping and your head not bopping and your wife asks you did you buy a new CD. That is when you start modifying this impeccable system until the enjoyment is again reached only to find that you have detuned the impeccable objectives for more enjoyable subjective results. That happens to all and sundry, in audio there is no black and white all the time.
After the design is frozen, you start listening to music that you actually like and find your foot not tapping and your head not bopping and your wife asks you did you buy a new CD. That is when you start modifying this impeccable system until the enjoyment is again reached only to find that you have detuned the impeccable objectives for more enjoyable subjective results. That happens to all and sundry, in audio there is no black and white all the time.
I take exception to the insinuation applied in #3, especially given the irony found in #4, given Toole's academic background and predilection. I don't know your background, but you're taking a very convenient, privileged, and ultimately intellectually simplistic position to generalize my critique and throw a huge segment of the population under the bus by calling academics a lot of "dummies".
Actually I don't know whether you're synthesizing my critique right in the first place--which is more in the vein that what the paper's abstract states is not supported by the data.
Was I unclear about the importance of distinguishing between "statistical significance" and "practical significance"?
Ignorant of academic authors to talk only in terms of statistical significance and not let readers eyeball the absolute numbers. But common. And also common to see people cite articles of that sort, mentioning only the statistical significance conclusions.
My credentials mean nothing at all; only the value of what I lamely write.
Ben
Ignorant of academic authors to talk only in terms of statistical significance and not let readers eyeball the absolute numbers. But common. And also common to see people cite articles of that sort, mentioning only the statistical significance conclusions.
My credentials mean nothing at all; only the value of what I lamely write.
Ben
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I don't understand what you mean with "audiophile" character or "music lover" character. Or may be I do, but I don't think I have problem with switching state or whatever. I'm mostly "music lover". I listen to music everyday like you. But I prefer not to listen to music than listening to bad system or listening through headphone.
I don't think I'm interested in listening to shortcomings, why should I? May be I'm far from being an audiophile. I have many amps that is considered to be one of the best (have also built 2 or 3 of your amps), but I don't use it. I have many CD players but I listen to MP3. Is there an audiophile like that? May be not.
Fatigue to me is not about attitude. It is real and objective. If I turn on my best system, I will not be able to spend my time with my family, I will be submerged into the music all day and night.
My experience with the MP3 was a real and honest experience. It is still my favorite format, for reason that may be similar to your listening of MP3.
This I understand. I have observed this phenomenon for quite a long time. In simple words I believe it can be said like this: design the system for superior objective performance (as accepted by common standards), then tweak it to achieve a superior subjective performance. The result will be a subjectively good sounding system, but objectively will measure superior also.
But I think it is simply a matter of choosing the "right" objective, or measure the "right" things (which is subjective).
The remarkable thing is that on most blind tests, people can't tell things apart at all. Certainly not cables, not even DAC's or jitter, and barely power amps. I mean, we DIY-ers usually hear so obvious differences. Is there something wrong with the normal blind test procedure?
I think the A/B testing is unsuitable for testing audio gear. You are supposed to hear differences in a situation where you aren't accustomed with the speakers, and the whole testing situation may appear slightly hostile. I mean, people use to trust their feelings when judging audio stuff, and in a blind test, the only feeling you will get is uncertainty. It's not the intellect that judges audio. It's the same thing when a rally driver takes a corner. His body knows when to brake and how to steer.
Then we have another thing. Usually when we takes home a new amp, we use to hook it up to familiar speakers and it takes us perhaps a week to find out whether we like it or not.
But when it comes to data formats, I have the impression that it is much better with a state of the art DAC playing mp3's, than playing a 96/24 file on a computer sound card. My personal experience is that mp3 on 320kbit's is so good that you can play it on a state of the art, hi end system.
OK, I also use to design and build amplifiers for my own amusement, and I have found that there normally aren't any real correlation between the THD figures and how we think it sounds. Some distortion mechanisms are totally insensitive towards, such as 2:nd order harmonics. Other mechanisms that gives more complicated distortion patterns are more disturbing, such as feedback loops on overly complicated amps. I think it has to do with how the brain process sound. When it hears music that is overlaid with complicated distortion patterns, it cannot resist trying to make sense of them and to find out what they mean. Doing this, it takes away the attention from the musical perception. That's why amplifiers with a frequency dependent feedback loop usually sounds brighter. The distortion rises with frequency and the attention of the brain goes toward the anomalies - that are in the treble - and we perceive the sound as brighter.
I think the A/B testing is unsuitable for testing audio gear. You are supposed to hear differences in a situation where you aren't accustomed with the speakers, and the whole testing situation may appear slightly hostile. I mean, people use to trust their feelings when judging audio stuff, and in a blind test, the only feeling you will get is uncertainty. It's not the intellect that judges audio. It's the same thing when a rally driver takes a corner. His body knows when to brake and how to steer.
Then we have another thing. Usually when we takes home a new amp, we use to hook it up to familiar speakers and it takes us perhaps a week to find out whether we like it or not.
But when it comes to data formats, I have the impression that it is much better with a state of the art DAC playing mp3's, than playing a 96/24 file on a computer sound card. My personal experience is that mp3 on 320kbit's is so good that you can play it on a state of the art, hi end system.
OK, I also use to design and build amplifiers for my own amusement, and I have found that there normally aren't any real correlation between the THD figures and how we think it sounds. Some distortion mechanisms are totally insensitive towards, such as 2:nd order harmonics. Other mechanisms that gives more complicated distortion patterns are more disturbing, such as feedback loops on overly complicated amps. I think it has to do with how the brain process sound. When it hears music that is overlaid with complicated distortion patterns, it cannot resist trying to make sense of them and to find out what they mean. Doing this, it takes away the attention from the musical perception. That's why amplifiers with a frequency dependent feedback loop usually sounds brighter. The distortion rises with frequency and the attention of the brain goes toward the anomalies - that are in the treble - and we perceive the sound as brighter.
The test doesn't do that, a clever set of algorithms do that. You're bizarrely complaining that MP3 compression meets its design goals.
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