Myths, tricks and hey, that's neat!

I wonder if it could work to give the thread starter some administrative power over his thread so that posts designed to drag the whole thing down can be removed by the OP , and at their discretion prevent further posts if the member persists in distracting or destructive posting.
The thread's starter or for that matter anyone can report a post and have the moderators remove it along with reminding the group to please stay within posted bounds. To the best of my knowledge the OP, cannot remove a post on their own. However, my experience with the moderators for similar needs has been positive and swift.

A segment of rule number one -

"Threadjacking is the practice of taking over a thread by posting off-topic replies such that the original topic becomes diluted or lost. Off-topic posts, and replies to off-topic posts, can be a positive outcome of discussion, but must either be brief or be moved to another thread. If something interesting does arise that warrants extensive discussion — then start a new thread and link to it."
 
Global feedback ...
😊
 

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Limit yourself to reading books, and your problem is solved.
I guess my way of speaking is hard to understand. My problem, as you put it, is not referenced in that post. I was talking to Jan regarding HIS complaint ,and in a friendly way, in spite of the fact that he chose to ignore my first post without asking for any explanation by the way.

That anyone takes my posts here to be somehow disrespectful of Jan is unfortunate and has nothing to do with any fact other than they are misinterpreting my motivations for posting and that I have not yet understood how to put things in a way that communicates. Not much I can do but listen and learn - something it seems I was accused of being disinterested in.
The thread's starter or for that matter . . . . .
Howdy ! Yes, I know about that. I was just thinking about a way that might improve things, not that my idea necessarily would. But I sympathize with those who try to get a focussed discussion among like minded and hopefully more knowledgeable people only to get it blown into steam by a some looking to have a good time, not that they can be faulted either, just divergent interests.
Global feedback ...
😊
Exactly !
 
Great writing! I prefer the second article, which go right to the point and is clearer. Perhaps a second demonstration will have add to the argument, but the rest is perfect. Also I like that you point out the origin of the belief and why, in this case, it was misinterpreted.
 
When you say "what the human ear would hear" you are missing a VERY important part of hearing: the brain! The ear itself does not hear anything, it only senses pressure. Hearing is the brain interpreting signals from the ear.[..]
Most are not aware that the ear is in fact an A/D converter, it converts analog pressure variations in digital pulse trains that are send to the brain.
The brain somehow converts those pulse trains into an 'analog' hearing sensation. So don't tell me that only analog can sound good - it's digitized anyway! 😎

Jan
 
@jan.didden,

Norman Crowhurst, aside from his very technical published works, did some entry level articles for curious people about those new high technology of his time.

This (historical) articles got me started on this long journey. I wish i could have thanked this man maybe an hundred times since then.

Ps:
Some of Crowhurst books can be found there, including one about feedback implementation:
http://www.tubebooks.org/technical_books_online.htm
Yes that's Pete Millet's collection, very valuable! At the time when I was still publishing through Linear Audio I reprinted one of Crowhurst's books:

https://www.lulu.com/shop/george-f-...ircuit-design/paperback/product-1z9j877z.html
The book gives you all the tools to design great tube amplifiers.

It may be on the 'net as PDF but I haven't found it. Anyway, I like the smell of ink so there! 😎

Jan
 
Most are not aware that the ear is in fact an A/D converter, it converts analog pressure variations in digital pulse trains that are send to the brain.
The brain somehow converts those pulse trains into an 'analog' hearing sensation. So don't tell me that only analog can sound good - it's digitized anyway! 😎

Jan

About as digital as FM radio.
 
Jan, with all due respect, I think the style of the article is too academic and I am not sure if it would attract general public readers. Of course everything is correct.
Well, without scientifically profund articles like the presented one(s), the doors would be wide open for unsubstantiated myths, legends and other audiophoolish BS.

Thanks, Jan 👍 !
 
@MarcelvdG and @b_force
From what I know about the nervous system (which isn't a lot), nerve signals are pulse-like. Thus, they have more in common with a digital signal than an analog one. I think the analogy is fair and appropriate and Jan's mention of an ADC should (obviously) not be interpreted literally.

To support what Jan said, I ask you to read the first paragraph of this academic paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301008218300509
In case you cannot access it, I have pasted it below and highlighted the relevant passage:

1. Introduction and research approach​

Information processing is a fundament of life and, presumably, the major function of the nervous system. It is defined as the structural elements and (their) activities constituting the process responsible for establishing and maintaining reliable relationships between input and output (Raichle (2010); for recent thought-provoking alternative views on information processing as principal nervous system function, see Baluška and Levin (2016); Keijzer et al. (2013)). Since the major function of the nervous system is to process information, communication between nerve cells (neurons) within neural networks in the nervous system and between neurons and effectors cells in organs is considered essential for the functioning of complex animal organisms. Based on an enormous body of empirical and experimental evidence gathered over the last two centuries, neural communication, also called neural signaling, is currently thought to be of an electro-chemical nature. It consists roughly of two components, an intercellular and an intracellular component, which respectively correspond to one aspect of this electro-chemical chain of events. The intercellular component appears to be primarily based on the transmission of chemical signals, encoded by the graded release of e.g. neurotransmitters and neuropeptides. The variety in intensity of chemical neurotransmission depends, for instance, on the strength of the stimulus given; i.e., the energy delivered is a function of the energy applied (Bishop, 1956). The intracellular component of neural communication is electrical in nature. Neurons rely for their internal communication, that is receiving, integrating and spreading of information, on the rapid conduction of electrical signals, which are of an all-or-none nature. These digital signals are generally known as nerve impulses. More precisely defined: self-propagating waves of electrical activity that travel along the surface of nerve cells, thereby encoding and transmitting information within the nervous system (Patton and Thibodeau, 2015). The ability of neurons to generate and propagate nerve impulses is usually referred to as neuronal excitability, which is considered to be the primary (physical) characteristic of nerve cells. In this model of neural signaling and neuronal excitability, the all-or-none property of nerve impulses ensures the intracellular transport of “encoded” information with fidelity from the receiving end to the transmitting end of the neuron and forms the basis for the concept that considers nervous systems as digital counting mechanisms (Bishop (1956); for a recent review of analog forms of internal neuronal communication, see Debanne et al. (2013)).
 
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'Sounds better' is just an opinion, not a repeatable measurement.
It is measurable and called H2 cancellation. Second harmonic in the amplifier, given the correct speaker phase, can apply an offsetting asymmetry reducing second order distortion emanated by the loudspeaker over wide frequency ranges. Yes I've measured and yes the notion gets blown off here because it doesn't conform to treasured techniques. Five minutes looking at the time waveforms should be convincing enough.
Re: the article, it's not the concepts it's the nomenclature. If the intent is clarifying concepts for an audience interested in electronics nothing practical is lost by using more familiar notation.
 
Is a recording microphone absolutely unequivocally 100% identical to what the human ear would hear in that same space?
Not even apples and oranges. A single ear can determine elements of direction due to the modification of sounds reaching it by your body, the head related transfer function. Microphones capture none of that, turning complex vector data into a simple amplitude scalar.
 
@MarcelvdG and @b_force
From what I know about the nervous system (which isn't a lot), nerve signals are pulse-like. Thus, they have more in common with a digital signal than an analog one. I think the analogy is fair and appropriate and Jan's mention of an ADC should (obviously) not be interpreted literally.

To support what Jan said, I ask you to read the first paragraph of this academic paper:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301008218300509
In case you cannot access it, I have pasted it below and highlighted the relevant passage:

1. Introduction and research approach​

Information processing is a fundament of life and, presumably, the major function of the nervous system. It is defined as the structural elements and (their) activities constituting the process responsible for establishing and maintaining reliable relationships between input and output (Raichle (2010); for recent thought-provoking alternative views on information processing as principal nervous system function, see Baluška and Levin (2016); Keijzer et al. (2013)). Since the major function of the nervous system is to process information, communication between nerve cells (neurons) within neural networks in the nervous system and between neurons and effectors cells in organs is considered essential for the functioning of complex animal organisms. Based on an enormous body of empirical and experimental evidence gathered over the last two centuries, neural communication, also called neural signaling, is currently thought to be of an electro-chemical nature. It consists roughly of two components, an intercellular and an intracellular component, which respectively correspond to one aspect of this electro-chemical chain of events. The intercellular component appears to be primarily based on the transmission of chemical signals, encoded by the graded release of e.g. neurotransmitters and neuropeptides. The variety in intensity of chemical neurotransmission depends, for instance, on the strength of the stimulus given; i.e., the energy delivered is a function of the energy applied (Bishop, 1956). The intracellular component of neural communication is electrical in nature. Neurons rely for their internal communication, that is receiving, integrating and spreading of information, on the rapid conduction of electrical signals, which are of an all-or-none nature. These digital signals are generally known as nerve impulses. More precisely defined: self-propagating waves of electrical activity that travel along the surface of nerve cells, thereby encoding and transmitting information within the nervous system (Patton and Thibodeau, 2015). The ability of neurons to generate and propagate nerve impulses is usually referred to as neuronal excitability, which is considered to be the primary (physical) characteristic of nerve cells. In this model of neural signaling and neuronal excitability, the all-or-none property of nerve impulses ensures the intracellular transport of “encoded” information with fidelity from the receiving end to the transmitting end of the neuron and forms the basis for the concept that considers nervous systems as digital counting mechanisms (Bishop (1956); for a recent review of analog forms of internal neuronal communication, see Debanne et al. (2013)).
I am not gonna read the entire thing now, but there is a difference between digital and digital-like.

I have read similar things in the past, and in that case the researches and scientists called similar things also digital, mostly to just simplify the understanding of it, but a better word would have been digital-like.
The requirements of a real digital signal are just different.
In a similar way that PWM on itself is also not a digital signal.

I am not saying that here the case, but since you quote this article, maybe you can tell us? 🙂
 
@b_force I didn't say to read the whole article, only the first paragraph and I COPIED IT RIGHT INTO THE POST and highlighted the text of interest so anyone could quickly see the mention of "digital" signals in reference to nerve impulses. Indeed Jan is correct that the ear changes analog air pressure into nerve impulses, which are digital, and so the invocation of an ADC is completely on point.

Some posting here seem to think that Jan said that the ear is encoding data into some AES digital format or whatever. This is not the case. A "digital" signal can be in any form/format and what that is exactly is not important.
 
@CharlieLaub Yes, I did read, and I can read, that's not what I was asking, nor does it answer my question.

But I guess we just automatically draw conclusions from things.
Which is ironic, since @MarcelvdG just mentioned a page back how dangerous that can be when details are being overlooked.
So it's most definitely VERY important what someone qualifies as a "digital" signal.

I assume that you also didn't read the entire article than, otherwise that would have been an easy question to answer.

Quoting things without context can be very dangerous.
I will leave it in the middle for now, again far to OT.