DDR

OK, as long was we are not going to get dragged into a cables war, I'll bite.

Though I personally am fine with simply using the term 'resolution', DDR as a term makes a certain amount of sense, and is arguably more specific as to the type of resolution. I think it is related to but different from both dynamic range and signal to noise, both well known concepts. It is perhaps most closely related to if in fact not the same thing as auditory masking. pnix linked recently to a nice article on it in wikipedia, but we seem to have drawn opposite conclusions. (?)

Regarding the idea that if it cannot be measured it doesn't exist, that's not a reasonable argument if you look at it closely. 50 or 60 years ago, most of what we measure today was not measurable, does that mean it did not exist? Clearly some speaker systems of that vintage were better than others.

Agree with everything you've said.
 
actually mostly we have an easier time making measurements, processing massive amounts of data and cleverly displaying the numbers

but quasi linear systems identification and modeling have been major themes for quite a while now

Frequency/Time response duality, scope cameras were "known to the ancients"
storage 'scopes date to 1964 - over 50 years ago

I have seen Volterra Series in an 1950's Mech E Control Theory Handbook

SMTE IMD was a standard >65 years ago:
32. Read, G.W. and R. R. Scoville - "An Improved Intermodulafion Measuring System" Journal of the 45. Waddington, D.E.O'N- "Intermodulafion Distortion
SMPTE,February 1948.

33. Roys, H.E. - "Intermodulation Distortion Analysis as Applied to Disk Recording and Reproducing Equipment" - Proceedings of the IRE, October 1947.

Black's Negative Feedback patent was motivated by wanting in the 1920's to series hundreds of amplifiers in cross country long distance telephony, frequency multiplexing required low distortion to avoid wiping out S/N across dozens of voice bands packed together

Belcher's BBC Noise Fill Test, AP's FastTest are directly descended from Noise Power Ratio testing in Telcom and Radio Communications

Nyquist and others pretty much set down digital signal processing fundamentals by the end of the 1950's

if you are going to invoke "information capacity" you should be aware of (or have already been influenced by) Shannon-Hartley Channel Capacity Theorem


actually a good question would be what fundamental audio measurement today isn't based in 50+ year old theory, even anticipated in practice – perhaps in EE at large if not already audio standards

perhaps some data presentation like waterfall plots? Laser Doppler Velocimetry?
 
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Let it go on record then that Pnix considers recorded music as his reference against which he assesses system or component performance.

Its not surprising that you have become so focussed on some of the measurement issues as there is a fundamental difference in world view between you and some of those you are arguing with.

In this industry there are objectivists / technologists, music lovers, and audiophiles (allowing for the derogatory usage that is found here in diyaudio).

The music lover group care about the enjoyment of the music ahead of all else, and use live music as their reference.

Isn't this the point of this hobby? To create a sense of realism to enable an emotional engagement with the artist's performance?

I don't understand why you think all recordings would try to recreate a live event. Most recordings are created with artificial sounds or close miking so there is no real live event they could recreate.

Furthermore, stereo is not capable of recreating physical sound fields. The inventor of stereo, Alan Blumlein, realized early on that other mechanisms are at work.

The simplest form of a stereo recording is two microphones capturing the sound at two different locations. Each signal is then played back from one of two loudspeakers placed at ±30 degrees from the listener. Any reflections from the recorded space that would have reached a listener's ears from a multitude of angles is now projected from only two locations namely the speaker locations. Highly unnatural.

Stereo is also a highly artificial listening situation. Phantom imaging exploits an artifact of our hearing in order to make sounds appear at different locations. It is a type of signal that doesn't occur in nature.
A sound mixed to the center is played back from both loudspeakers. The left ear also hears the signal coming from the right speaker and the right ears also hears the signal coming from the left speaker. This is called interaural crosstalk. Two speakers radiating the same signal create an interference pattern. Small head movements cause level and time differences between the ears which leads to image shift and localization ambiguity. It also creates an uncorrectable dip at around 2kHz.
 
In its simpliest form it must be, it is the bottom limit of the dynamic range.

I would like to see a clear measure of that for speakers.

dave

'The bottom limit of the dynamic range'. What about the upper limit of the dynamic range? Shouldn't it be as high as possible otherwise the bottom limit couldn't be far away. Full range drivers are particularly bad at this.
 
Only requires one example to show the falsehood of that assertion.

If people were not complaining about jitter before the term was invented and tests were developed to measre to it, it would not have been quantified.

dave

My point was that you need to be able to measure something in order to correlate it to perception. 'DDR' lacks that correlation.
 
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'The bottom limit of the dynamic range'. What about the upper limit of the dynamic range? Shouldn't it be as high as possible otherwise the bottom limit couldn't be far away. Full range drivers are particularly bad at this.


bingo we have a winner.
that's what 'DDR' does. it's basic Marketing 101, eg takes a technical disadvantage and turns it upside down. Changes the whole conversation doesn't it.
 
Regarding the idea that if it cannot be measured it doesn't exist, that's not a reasonable argument if you look at it closely. 50 or 60 years ago, most of what we measure today was not measurable, does that mean it did not exist? Clearly some speaker systems of that vintage were better than others.

I didn't say 'if it cannot be measured it doesn't exist'. I've said if it can't be measured then 'the term is of no value'.
 
Could DDR be totally subjective? Some drivers are known to have 'tone'... but you must hear it to appreciate it. If someone can't hear it then, for that person, it doesn't exist.

Maybe there's no measurement for tone or DDR.

Could impulse response measuremens be an indication of how well a driver tracks impulses making it more likely to be more accurate (when combined with frequecy respose, of course).
 
frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
My point was that you need to be able to measure something in order to correlate it to perception. 'DDR' lacks that correlation.

Not yet having a correlation does not make the phenomenom any less real. There is far too little real scientific research that correlates what we hear to what is measured.

Ironically this last makes the use of uncorrelated measures a subjective choice and conclusions similarily subjective.

The whole point of coining the term DDR was to take all the varied terms used to try to describe this into something more technically correct, less audiophile reviewer flowery, and to lead to more measurements that would put an objective spot-light on it.

dave
 
you are smart enough to understand the question

do psychoacoustic codecs reduce the audible/subjective whatever you are calling DDR

if so is it always, or when do the compression algorithms start to impact this DDR

which is interesting given the vague formulation of DDR when you consider that psychoacoustic codecs only use ~6-7 bit per critical band


formal DBT testing drove the codecs to a degree not previously seen in audio development
 
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frugal-phile™
Joined 2001
Paid Member
do psychoacoustic codecs reduce the audible/subjective whatever you are calling DDR

Since one of the assumptions used when devising these is to throw away stuff that should be masked, i would say yes, a lossy compression algorithim would almost invariably reduce the DDR of the source material.

when do the compression algorithms start to impact this DDR

I expect they always impact the DDR, but depending on the resolution of the following chain out to the transducer it may still be higher than the device with the least DDR -- probably the transducer in most cases as long as the electroncs power supplies are not compromisesd orpushed past their limits, althou crossover distortion in Class B amplifiers could play a role.

The subject of lossy compression is probably one of the largest sources of real studies of human auditory perception.

dave
 
I don't understand why you think all recordings would try to recreate a live event. Most recordings are created with artificial sounds or close miking so there is no real live event they could recreate.

I didn't say what you wrote above.

My point is to really determine the accuracy of a loudspeaker we need a known reference. A studio created recording is an unknown because it doesn't exist outside of its electronically stored format in a way that it can be referred to outside of the reproduction chain.

Live music exists acoustically before it is stored, and can be used as the ultimate reference. So a subjective assessment of a loudspeaker against exposure to live music is the definitive test.

Anyway as I said previously there are two different world views doing battle here, and it doesn't seem possible for them to reconcile in a usefully informative way.