Is DVD Audio necessary ?
Reply #25 – 2004-03-31 11:24:35
This is true to an extent, but considering that Philips are very interested in making their format look good, surely we must call into doubt the fact that their research is impartial. By carefully selecting and throwing away results, even an otherwise statistically correct study can be significantly skewed. While I don't know if this goes on at Philips (I hope not) and don't want to accuse them of anything, manipulation of statistics is a sort of industry standard. Judging by the kind of underhandedness that goes on at drug trials, I don't think we could trust a report published by a company with an interest in the outcome. Good point. I agree with you, don't trust officially published reports from companies that have an interest in the conclusions. At the other hand, it is the only source which you have as an outsider. There is an audio standard war going on and funny to mention is that Philips was also involved in DVD-Audio for a small percentage. Cheap commercial trick to ensure business in the future. For me, only listening related stuph do interest me and the mathematical explanation behind it. Theoretical there is no way of saying that the current digital standard, ie, 16 bits 44k1, is not good enough. Sampling theorem. But the sampling theorem assumes 2 things: ideal Nyquist filtering and infinite "bit-resolution". And 16 bits is far from infinite. In my humble opnion it has nothing to do with dynamic range but more with resolution and bandwidth. The established format (16/44k1) has a noise floor of 213 nV/sqrt(Hz) and this is quite high in comparison with 24/96 (576 pV/sqrt(Hz)) but still lower than a common audio amplifier.