Skip to main content

Notice

Please note that most of the software linked on this forum is likely to be safe to use. If you are unsure, feel free to ask in the relevant topics, or send a private message to an administrator or moderator. To help curb the problems of false positives, or in the event that you do find actual malware, you can contribute through the article linked here.
Topic: "Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle (Read 151290 times) previous topic - next topic
0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

 

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #326
I remember JA offering recordings with non-random content below 16 bit, but I do not remember seeing any actual links. Have I missed anything?


"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #328
Cutting LSBs is fine, but cutting MSBs leads to serious distortion due to clipping.


Not in my experience. Have you tried this for yourself with a recording that has correlated information in bits 17-24?  I think the word "clipping" is being misused here.

As "Notat" wrote in a recent message: "If we hear anything that is signal dependent in the LS bits, that's very strong evidence that there's information in those bits - reduced entropy indicates presence of information."

That's the point I was making at the AES workshop: that with _some_ 24-bit recordings, there are valid signal data in bits 17-24.

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #329
I think the word "clipping" is being misused here.


The phenomenon is not only something comparable to clipping but exactly the correct term. It might be easier to comprehend for you when you realize that stripping the MSBs is equivalent to digital amplification (multiplication by 2^n, n=number of bits), hard into 0dB, followed by attenuation (division by 2^n) back to the original level. This is a paramount example for digital clipping, there is not the slightest misuse of the word.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #330
Cutting LSBs is fine, but cutting MSBs leads to serious distortion due to clipping.


Not in my experience.


You need to open your eyes up and look at what happens to *any* waveform when you start stripping off the MSBs.

Quote
Have you tried this for yourself with a recording that has correlated information in bits 17-24?


Yup.

Quote
I think the word "clipping" is being misused here.


I think that if you actually look at a wave that has had the first few MSBs zeroed out, I'll bet that you'll say to yourself: "Why that wave has been clipped"!

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #331
I think the word "clipping" is being misused here.


The phenomenon is not only something comparable to clipping but exactly the correct term. It might be easier to comprehend for you when you realize that stripping the MSBs is equivalent to digital amplification (multiplication by 2^n, n=number of bits), hard into 0dB, followed by attenuation (division by 2^n) back to the original level. This is a paramount example for digital clipping, there is not the slightest misuse of the word.


Thank you. Yes, it does appear I was incorrect. The question then becomes: is the residue random in nature, ie white noise, which when clipped is unchanged, or is it still signal-related, in which case the 8 LSBs did contain audio data and not random bit switching?

John Atkinson
Editor, Stereophile

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #332
The phenomenon is not only something comparable to clipping but exactly the correct term. It might be easier to comprehend for you when you realize that stripping the MSBs is equivalent to digital amplification (multiplication by 2^n, n=number of bits), hard into 0dB, followed by attenuation (division by 2^n) back to the original level. This is a paramount example for digital clipping, there is not the slightest misuse of the word.

Not exactly correct. Clipping should imply saturation for samples outside the allowed range. What happens here is that out-of-range samples are wrapped back into range. Sort of an amplitude aliasing thing. Sounds very nasty but does not totally whiten or clobber the information.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #333
Notat is correct. It's not clipping at all.

If you clipped it like this, you'd certainly hear something related to the music afterwards, whatever the original contents of the 8LSBs.

Cheers,
David.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #334
Could someone enlighten me?

1. If I amplify a sequence of samples n bits over what their containers can hold, I get digital clipping. The top n bits fall over board. I guess no one wants to challenge that.
2. If I attenuate the same sequence afterwards by the same amount, the resulting sequence will be identical to the original sequence with (n) MSBs blanked and (total - n) LSBs untouched.

How does 2. invalidate the term "clipping"?

If the DAC has a little headroom above its rated bitdepth (many do) 1. and 2. should lead to comparable spectral components after DA conversion.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #335
The phenomenon is not only something comparable to clipping but exactly the correct term. It might be easier to comprehend for you when you realize that stripping the MSBs is equivalent to digital amplification (multiplication by 2^n, n=number of bits), hard into 0dB, followed by attenuation (division by 2^n) back to the original level. This is a paramount example for digital clipping, there is not the slightest misuse of the word.

Not exactly correct. Clipping should imply saturation for samples outside the allowed range. What happens here is that out-of-range samples are wrapped back into range. Sort of an amplitude aliasing thing. Sounds very nasty but does not totally whiten or clobber the information.


I see your point, and its important as far as it goes. However, we're still talking about massive ruination of the wave form and applying huge amounts of nonlinear distoriton. I know of no standard that accepts or recommends applying massive nonlinear distortion to a signal in order to recover information about small components of it. 

BTW there are natural situations that have similar results such as old-style ladder DACs that are missing a lot of codes that are next to each other. I don't recall anybody ever recomending using broken DACs  to measure low level detail like crossover distortion.  The usual recommendation was to fix them so that they were linear and monotonic!

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #336
Removing MSB bits will result in a very distorted sound wave with large transients (square waves), a simple representation is a 8 bit signal (0-255 for simplicity with no -), if the upper 8th bit is removed then anything above 128 will jump down to signal-128, so 126 and 127 would be ok, 128 would become 0 and 129 would become 1.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #337
Quote
Notat is correct. It's not clipping at all.


It is equivalent to listening to the isolated quantisation distortion introduced by truncating the 24b source
material to 16b.

If the residue is / sounds like just noise this means that the 24b original had a sub-16b innate noise floor, overwhelming any payload signal in the lower 8 bits. And that seems to be exactly what you get with the sample referred to above, admittedly tried only in a noisy office environment and with  cheap open headphones.

(edit)

Doing the same with 24b versus 8b reveals a crackling residue. Re-doing 24b versus 16b now (lunchtime, hence quieter environment and louder replay levels) reveals a high-pitched tinnitus-like signal that is keyed-on and -off, mostly in the right channel. So the residue is not strictly white.


"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #338
I was wondering, how am I able to set the top msb to 0?
Is there a tool that can do that?
I mean without amplifing the signal over 0dB and then reducing gain.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #339
Truncate to 16 bit. Expand again to 24 bit (i.e. all 8 LSBs are now zero). Subtract from 24 bit source (all 16 MSBs are now zero).

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #340
Truncate to 16 bit. Expand again to 24 bit (i.e. all 8 LSBs are now zero). Subtract from 24 bit source (all 16 MSBs are now zero).

Thanks Werner.
I tried it with some drum loops I got from the net and I hear besides hudge amounts of noise some drum sounds to.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #341
Has anyone attempted this with the samples provided which are actually on-topic to this discussion?
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=743399

Yes.

Bits 17-24 sound like white noise to me.

I've uploaded them next to the original...
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=86738

(It's still an 88.2kHz 24-bit file, though there are a lot of zeros in there, hence the comparatively small FLAC filesize for a noise-like signal which hits digital full scale - wasted_bits is very useful!).

Cheers,
David.

EDIT: I posted this without seeing the last 7 posts in this thread.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #342
It is equivalent to listening to the isolated quantisation distortion introduced by truncating the 24b source material to 16b.
I agree.

Quote
Doing the same with 24b versus 8b reveals a crackling residue. Re-doing 24b versus 16b now (lunchtime, hence quieter environment and louder replay levels) reveals a high-pitched tinnitus-like signal that is keyed-on and -off, mostly in the right channel. So the residue is not strictly white.
I don't think your software has done what you think it has. See the sample I posted.

FWIW In Cool Edit Pro, if you convert 24>16, and then subtract the 16 from the 24, you don't just get the 8LSBs. The undithered 24>16 in Cool Edit Pro isn't quite the simple bit discarding that you might expect, but actually rounds all values up (except zero!).

Even so, you still get something which sounds like it should (except for the jumps in amplitude on any zeros - which is still inaudible in a noisy signal), even though mathematically it's wrong.

Cheers,
David.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #343
I tried it with some drum loops I got from the net and I hear besides hudge amounts of noise some drum sounds to.
I don't think there's any doubt that you'll hear something for artificial signals, generated at 24-bits.

You can generate an artificial signal with real signal-correlated data to as many bits as you want.

A sine wave generated accurately to 32-bits or 64-bits would still have something signal-correlated in the last 8 bits, showing that 24 or even 56 bits just aren't enough.

Cheers,
David.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #344
Bugger. My tool's manual claims it truncates, but the resultant difference file sounds a bit dirtier than yours, which indeed is a rather clean kind of noise. To Be Characterised.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #345
I tried it with some drum loops I got from the net and I hear besides hudge amounts of noise some drum sounds to.
I don't think there's any doubt that you'll hear something for artificial signals, generated at 24-bits.

You can generate an artificial signal with real signal-correlated data to as many bits as you want.

A sine wave generated accurately to 32-bits or 64-bits would still have something signal-correlated in the last 8 bits, showing that 24 or even 56 bits just aren't enough.

Cheers,
David.


It was a recording of the famous Amen drum loop, so its not generated but recorded from LP.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #346
It was a recording of the famous Amen drum loop, so its not generated but recorded from LP.
I never knew that drum track was called that! The wikipedia page is a goldmine!

I'm surprised there's anything important in the 12th bit, never mind the 20th. I suspect something strange is happening, but who knows.

Cheers,
David.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #347
It is equivalent to listening to the isolated quantisation distortion introduced by truncating the 24b source
material to 16b.

If the residue is / sounds like just noise this means that the 24b original had a sub-16b innate noise floor, overwhelming any payload signal in the lower 8 bits.

I think it is safe conclude there's information in the LSBs if we hear a correlated signal there. I'm not convinced the converse is true. Just because we don't hear anything doesn't mean there's nothing important there. This is a non-linear process and so difficult to model how the signal is transformed. There are processes which will make information sound like white noise. Encryption is the obvious example.

Also be careful when discussing noise floor. There almost always is useful information below the noise floor.

"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #348
There almost always is useful information below the noise floor.


Below the summed/integrated noise: yes.

Below the spectrally-local noise density floor: no, not really. Try listening to a fade to
noise while monitoring it on a decent real time spectrometer.


"Audiophile" listening event @ Definitive Audio in Seattle

Reply #349
There almost always is useful information below the noise floor.


Below the summed/integrated noise: yes.

Below the spectrally-local noise density floor: no, not really. Try listening to a fade to
noise while monitoring it on a decent real time spectrometer.

Agreed.

And what you see depends largely on the signal content and the settings of the FFT (or similar).

You can use a longer FFT to "see" a pure tone further into the noise.

The ear's auditory filters cannot be adjusted in the same way .

In other words, it's quite possible to see something which is entirely inaudible - the apparently "lower" noise floor actually masks the "higher level" tone within the auditory filter in the ear.

Cheers,
David.