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Topic: Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/ (Read 400754 times) previous topic - next topic
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Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #300 –
Quote from: putanik on
...SACD vs. CD difference is so apparent that I smile at requests of measuring it with statistics...


Dear putanik

How do you know the contents of the SACD and CD compared were originally the same and not treated differently in the studio?

If you can't be sure about that your test is not valid.

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #301 –
Quote from: putanik on
Dear Axon, I am a mathematician specializing in adaptive audio processing and an audio expert, and I've been doing it for 25 years quite successfully. Unless you can demonstrate with proper scientific arguments that I am not competent, I would like to ask you be careful with words. Just state that your opinion is different and that will be fine.


Can you point us to some of your published work in your guise as 'audio expert'?  I'm hoping it rises to a better evidentiary standard than the 'work' you have presented here in support of audible difference between redbook and hi rez audio -- which has so far been hypothetical or anecdotal.  Since you claim to have tested a goodly number of subjects under blind conditions, surely you could report one or a few undoubtedly 'positive' results, perhaps in a JAES article?

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #302 –
Quote from: putanik on
Dear Axon, I far as I am aware there is no single theory of hearing that has been universally agreed upon, and in absence of it ... arguing is more or less just an exchange of opinions, and a honest attempt to move towards better understanding of what is the fine mechanics of audio perception.


Regardless of what you are or are not aware of, the ultimate sensitivity of the human hearing apparatus has been tested and examined over and over again, and the results are both consistant and reliable.

Given such information, and given the knowledge of what kind of levels reproduction systems can provide, it is quite easy to figure out a maximum bit depth.

It is also easy to figure out what kind of bandwidth, but not exactly what kind of filters to use to achieve that bandwidth.

It is, further, easy to point to the clearly supported work that shows the minimum noise level possible at the ear drum in a 1-atmosphere (earth standard STP) setting, and that sets yet another lower limit for what the auditory system can possibly detect.

Such people as Fletcher, Zwicker, Stevens, and the like have provided a large body of data that has been confirmed over and over, by a host of researchers.

Do you have any evidence that more than 19 bits makes any sense whatsoever for final presentation to the human being in any standard kind of sound system? If so, let's hear it.

Furthermore, in any average listening space, do you have any evidence that more than 16 bits is at all necessary?

Thank you in advance for substantive, testable, measurable evidence.

Quote from: putanik on
PS> similarly... you know that there is on-going long-bearded mess around de-essing. it is very funny. many people believe that we do not produce sounds with f>20k because we do not hear them. well... we do. "s" and "f" spectrum spreads high. at least up to 48k - measured myself. and if the slew-rate of your front-end circuitry and its filtering abilities are not so good, then distortions come. very audible. very easily simulated. record hi-feq with fast B&K mics, and then use matlab to simulate slew-rate limiting and poorly filtered aliasing. write back to .wav. listen. enjoy, if you can:-)



Ok, now, please tell me something:

How much of that 40kHz signal propagates through 10 meters to your ear from the source, not counting the 1/r^2 loss, of course?

How does that compare to what travels to your ear at 4kHz? or 400Hz?

What happens at 46% RH, 20C?

What happens at 20% RH, 20C? (earth standard atmosphere)

What do you suppose the base noise level at the eardrum is?
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #303 –
I guess this has been said before, but what the heck... Along the chain of sound propagation:

1. I do agree that many sound sources produce a good deal of energy at infra-sound frequencies. This is a necessary condition for hirez audio to make sense, but not enough on its own.

2. What is the frequency response of the most preferred and valuable studio microphones above 20kHz?

3. What is the distance and HF loss for typical recording sessions where "hifi" argueably counts the most? According to This link, the loss at 22 meter at 40kHz can be ~6dB compared to lofreq.

4. What is the trend of fletcher-munson curves at frequencies below 20kHz? If we were to make a prediction based on those, then add some dB in case we are wrong, how many dB attenuation compared to 2kHz do you think?


If instruments like violin output 1-2% of their total energy between 20kHz and 40kHz, then is attenuated by 3-6dB due to HF airloss, then 6-12dB due to microphone response curve, then we really have to have quite obvious sensitivity to be able to appreciate it in our livingroom?



The real test is if any material containing significant ultrasound content (such as white noise, sines or carefully recorded music), played back on a high-linearity high-bandwidth system (such as headphones) makes it possible for the listener to reliably identify a lowpass-filter inserted into the chain at 18, 20, 22 or some other cutoff-frequency. My gut-feeling as well as understanding of present work is that somewhere around these frequencies, even good listeners start to hear no difference.

-k

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #304 –
After X years have passed, and DVDs are considered "Small"  at 4.7GB (or 9.4 dual layer), with other disc-formats supporting 25-100GB and beyond, at some point in time the distribution rate for common audio will increase.  Plenty say it's nothing more than a waste of space, which may be true in many/most cases, but if things were distributed on, say, DVDs, we would have roughly 6.5x the amount of space to store the music.

If all other things are equal (meaning similar prices, no *DRM*, etc), and the only difference is the data rate of the media, I will always opt for the higher rate.

Everyone can *pottentially* win with "high res" formats.  If you want something that is as close as possible to the original, that would be the form it is presented in.  If the source media rate is something you consider "too high", you are always free to reduce it.  Knock yourself out, downsample it, truncate it, your the boss!  Why stop at 44.1/16?  You might be able to reduce it to 32khz/12bit and still find it acceptable.  Once you get it down to 32/12, find a lossy encoder that can further package it for you.

Having said that, I personally do not want to see any new format take hold if in addition higher sampling rates & bit depths, it brings new consumer headaches (*DRM*).

Since the only high-res formats I am aware of (SACD & DVD-Audio) have iron chains everywhere---I will stick with redbook CD for the forseeable future.

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #305 –
Quote from: Woodinville on
How much of that 40kHz signal propagates through 10 meters to your ear from the source, not counting the 1/r^2 loss, of course?
Concert halls could consider charging audiofile rates for the front row seats  .
Many recording mixing and mastering engineers are using hi-res audio like 24/96, 24/192 and dsd. Interestingly enough I don't know a single one that uses super tweeters (say >30 kHz) for monitoring. Apparently, if there is an audible advantage in using hi-res audio at all, it's probably not the extended bandwidth.

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #306 –
Quote from: SirChristof on
Everyone can *pottentially* win with "high res" formats.  If you want something that is as close as possible to the original, that would be the form it is presented in.


Out of curiousity, what doyou mean by "as close as possible to the original"?

In a 2-channel CD we reproduce two of literally millions of measurements of some combination of the sound pressure and the sound velocity at a given point.

The original has all that information contained in it, not just two points that we provide. How is raising the sampling rate going to improve this?
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #307 –
Quote from: Woodinville on
Out of curiousity, what doyou mean by "as close as possible to the original"?


Simply that, all other things being equal, a 96/24 recording is closer to the analog source than 44.1/16.

(and if material were distributed at that rate (96/24), and you are 100% convinced it has no benefit whatsoever, nothing is stopping you from downsampling it for your own purposes, which was my original point)

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #308 –
Quote from: knutinh on
I was under the impression that most recording studios use 24/96, 24/88.2 or at least 24/44.1 as it is readily available and inexpensive and suitable for the kind of dynamic processing that they are into.


I was referring mostly to amp +speakers as limiting factors.

Quote
Do you mean that the full potential of hirez/lorez recordings cannot be exploited using a pair of headphones, a good DAC connected to a DVD-V/DVD-A/PC source and a good headphone amplifier?

if you have GREAT headphones with almost any brand-name soundcard IF windows does not play with sound, and source is on the same fs as DAC in soundcard should work. just good headphones ... as you know, membrane moves as 1/f^2, so deep base+mid/hi-freqs may produce bad IMD in one-speaker cans - unless they are great.

Quote
I am thinking more like large-scale, controlled, AES-type scientific tests that should quite easily be able to get positive resultat from a properly conducted ABX test. IF (and that is a big if) this really matters to human hearing. My gut-feeling is that it does not.


My gut feeling led by my experience is different. AES-type ABX testing was many time laughed at, for example, see http://www.stereophile.com/features/113/

but ... why don't you walk into a hi-end audio place and ask them to show you the best speakers on a sample SACD? spend there an hour, and then we'll see if you gut feeling changes. or, have you already been there?

cheers,
putanik.

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #309 –
Quote from: putanik on
but ... why don't you walk into a hi-end audio place and ask them to show you the best speakers on a sample SACD? spend there an hour, and then we'll see if you gut feeling changes. or, have you already been there?

cheers,
putanik.

If you can produce a SACD + a CD where both are products of the exactly same hirez master, and both are purely downconverted to take full advantage of the respective format.

Of course, I will also have to have some means of gain-matching the two streams down to fractions of a dB.

If you are basing your knowledge on listening to the SACD-mixes out there vs the CD-mixes out there, shurely you must see that this can be biased information?

My gut-feeling stems from doing home-studio work and getting a real down-to-earth view on the qualities of my own hearing, combined with a MSc thesis on digital filters involving blind listening tests showing me that audiophiles are not always the best people for listening.

I have got a SACD/DVD-player, but I have no clear conclusion as to the few titles that I have heard. May be that I am victim to the reverse placebo-effect.

-k

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #310 –
Quote from: Light-Fire on
Quote from: putanik on



...SACD vs. CD difference is so apparent that I smile at requests of measuring it with statistics...


Dear putanik

How do you know the contents of the SACD and CD compared were originally the same and not treated differently in the studio?

If you can't be sure about that your test is not valid.


Dear Light-Fire, yes, you are right, I can not be sure. What i can say ... i have quite a few recordings of the same Ombra fedele by Vivica Genaux. HM disks include SACD and CD versions. She also recorded the same aria for EMI/virgin in Bajazet. I easily distinguish between EMI and HM versions (i can't say about artistic merits, but EMI is much worse in technical terms). I can not distinguish between SACD and CD versions of HM - except that SACD makes me loose my breath and forget of the moment being.

As a pragmatic mathematician ... I can't imagine a reason why anybody would spend his/her time on altering CD version vs stereo SACD, especially in classical music, where profits are 0.
 

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #311 –
Quote from: putanik on
As a pragmatic mathematician ... I can't imagine a reason why anybody would spend his/her time on altering CD version vs stereo SACD, especially in classical music, where profits are 0.

As a mathematician you seem unusually relaxed in terms of proving causality, comparing apples with apples and lacking general scepticism (towards both the industry as well as sceptical people like myself).

How do you come to the conclusion that the two signalpaths below "must" be identical except delilvery medium, and that any difference that you observe is caused by CD being inferior to SACD? How do you know that other differences are conscious, and not caused by some random mishap, or cost-cutting?
[source1]->[pre-proc1]->[delivery-medium1]->[playback-device1]
[source2]->[pre-proc2]->[delivery-medium2]->[playback-device2]

As a mathematician, can you shortly give me a mathematical analysis of the benefits of DSD vs LPCM in terms of:
1. Technical/functional terms
2. Subjective/perceptual terms
3. As an effective means of producing high-quality modern music

-k

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #312 –
Quote from: Woodinville on
Regardless of what you are or are not aware of, the ultimate sensitivity of the human hearing apparatus has been tested and examined over and over again, and the results are both consistant and reliable.


o-o.

Quote from: Woodinville on
Do you have any evidence that more than 19 bits makes any sense whatsoever for final presentation to the human being in any standard kind of sound system? If so, let's hear it.


I do not understand your question. At the moment, I am not aware of any A2D/D2A having more that 19 TRUE bits. 20 bits -> 122 dB ~ .7e-4% IMD/linearity error. nobody claimed it - yet. AKM's AK4394 claims only 100 dB THD, and that's quite typical now. Could you please explain yourself?

Quote from: Woodinville on
Furthermore, in any average listening space, do you have any evidence that more than 16 bits is at all necessary?


That' what I wrote to K: in average listening space 16 bits are ample.


Quote from: Woodinville on
Ok, now, please tell me something:
How much of that 40kHz signal propagates through 10 meters to your ear from the source, not counting the 1/r^2 loss, of course? How does that compare to what travels to your ear at 4kHz? or 400Hz? What happens at 46% RH, 20C? What happens at 20% RH, 20C? (earth standard atmosphere) What do you suppose the base noise level at the eardrum is?


Why asking what we both know? why don't read again what I wrote, please - when you use "slow" mic (close distance assumed) then...


Quote from: knutinh on
Quote from: putanik on

As a pragmatic mathematician ... I can't imagine a reason why anybody would spend his/her time on altering CD version vs stereo SACD, especially in classical music, where profits are 0.

As a mathematician you seem unusually relaxed in terms of proving causality, comparing apples with apples and lacking general scepticism (towards both the industry as well as sceptical people like myself).

How do you come to the conclusion that the two signalpaths below "must" be identical except delilvery medium, and that any difference that you observe is caused by CD being inferior to SACD? How do you know that other differences are conscious, and not caused by some random mishap, or cost-cutting?
[source1]->[pre-proc1]->[delivery-medium1]->[playback-device1]
[source2]->[pre-proc2]->[delivery-medium2]->[playback-device2]

As a mathematician, can you shortly give me a mathematical analysis of the benefits of DSD vs LPCM in terms of:
1. Technical/functional terms
2. Subjective/perceptual terms
3. As an effective means of producing high-quality modern music

-k


Dear K, as a pro mathematician, i do not believe in math, and quite aware of its limitations. don't you know the anecdote about mathematicians, ending with "their answers are as precise as useless"? what about my skepticism ... you run to conclusions a bit too fast:-)))

I did not came to any conclusion.  I wrote - I do not hear the difference that may be attributed to different mastering/mixing. that's it.

I already wrote that for me DSD/PCM of sufficient bit depth/speed are essentially the same.

best regards,
putanik.



Quote from: knutinh on
If you are basing your knowledge on listening to the SACD-mixes out there vs the CD-mixes out there, shurely you must see that this can be biased information?


I readily admit I am biased.  (am i the only one?) Yes, most of audiophiles ... I agree with all you said and politely avoided to state directly.

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #313 –
Quote from: putanik on
Dear K, as a pro mathematician, i do not believe in math, and quite aware of its limitations. don't you know the anecdote about mathematicians, ending with "their answers are as precise as useless"? what about my skepticism ... you run to conclusions a bit too fast:-)))

I believe that mathematics can give quite precise answers - but that mathematicians are not always the right people to ask the question that is to be answered ;-)
Quote
I did not came to any conclusion.  I wrote - I do not hear the difference that may be attributed to different mastering/mixing. that's it.

"SACD vs. CD difference is so apparent that I smile at requests of measuring it with statistics"

That is exactly the same statement that I frequently get from the audiophile crowd when they dont want critical questions about their magic pyramids, green markers, voodo-power-cables etc.
Quote
I already wrote that for me DSD/PCM of sufficient bit depth/speed are essentially the same.

Is that for you as a subjective listener in a blind experiment, for you as a listening conusmer, or as a mathematical analysis of the dsp that occurs in dsd vs lpcm systems?

-k

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #314 –
Quote from: knutinh on
The real test is if any material containing significant ultrasound content (such as white noise, sines or carefully recorded music), played back on a high-linearity high-bandwidth system (such as headphones) makes it possible for the listener to reliably identify a lowpass-filter inserted into the chain at 18, 20, 22 or some other cutoff-frequency. My gut-feeling as well as understanding of present work is that somewhere around these frequencies, even good listeners start to hear no difference.

-k


Dear K, most people will not distinguish the sound of the music sampled at 192 and it, filtered with 12 kHz LPF. It sounds pretty much the same. it feels different, that's the problem. and here I am as clueless as you - why and how???


Quote from: Kees de Visser on
Quote from: Woodinville on
How much of that 40kHz signal propagates through 10 meters to your ear from the source, not counting the 1/r^2 loss, of course?
Concert halls could consider charging audiofile rates for the front row seats  .
Many recording mixing and mastering engineers are using hi-res audio like 24/96, 24/192 and dsd. Interestingly enough I don't know a single one that uses super tweeters (say >30 kHz) for monitoring. Apparently, if there is an audible advantage in using hi-res audio at all, it's probably not the extended bandwidth.


Please excuse me for replaying instead of Woodinwille... concert halls do charge a lot for premium sitting (mid of 5...10'th row). LaScala : 170 e vs. 12 e. (http://www.teatroallascala.org/public/LaScala/EN/venditaBiglietti/prezzi/AcquistoBigliettiOpera/prezzi_opera_scala/index.html)

some of very good recording engineers use poor radioshack speakers. what does it prove?

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #315 –
Quote from: putanik on
Quote from: knutinh on

The real test is if any material containing significant ultrasound content (such as white noise, sines or carefully recorded music), played back on a high-linearity high-bandwidth system (such as headphones) makes it possible for the listener to reliably identify a lowpass-filter inserted into the chain at 18, 20, 22 or some other cutoff-frequency. My gut-feeling as well as understanding of present work is that somewhere around these frequencies, even good listeners start to hear no difference.

-k


Dear K, most people will not distinguish the sound of the music sampled at 192 and it, filtered with 12 kHz LPF. It sounds pretty much the same. it feels different, that's the problem. and here I am as clueless as you - why and how???

I believe that I can pick out 12kHz lpf filtered material in a blind ABX. I have never tried though.

But I can (or could) track sines up to about 17kHz. From there on I could not tell if the tester had the amplitude on or off.

My thing is that even if the difference manifests itself as a "feeling", then logically, an ABX test should reveal it. If a well designed ABX test gives a 0-result, then the most likely mechanism in my view really is that we are fooling ourselves.

The notion that humans are some kind of objective measurement devices always astonish me. Throughout our lives, we are making all kinds of desitions based on emotions, "gut-feeling", believes and hopes. There are countless stories in the hifi industry about cheap components being wrapped into "ultra-hifi-clothing" receiving standing ovations from the hifi journalists.

This is what makes it difficult to figure out what is "really going on", and probably why the hifi crowd cannot accept scientific findings - they dont match their belief system. Try explaining a religious person that according to this or that empirical evidence, certain statements in their religious book seems to be imprecise. You will never win that discussion because the core of religion is believing, not proving.

The goal of science the way that I see it (and I was never any good at scientific philosophy at uni) is to design systems for observing, describing and modelling the world that minimize the subjective biasing from the researchers. Eliminating is probably impossible, but if the goal is to understand how stuff works, then we should strive to remove bias from researchers trying to make a name of themselves.

A great tool then is to make every step repeatable so that anyone with the right equipment can try to repeat the experiment. Of course, there may be hidden factors that cause the outcome to be more or less randomised, but this should make it a lot harder to form a scientific career upon falsifying tests. As long as the empirical evidents can be trusted, then anyone reading a paper are quite free to read, calculate and think about the logical conlusions of the author and debate his findings.

The difference to hifi-stuff is so obvious. Everyone is claiming large differences, measurable differences, plots showing differences (but no axes...). But no one ever brings proofs to the table. Hardly anyone of the
"big names" in mainstream audiophile circles are represented in AES or some other reputable journals. And everyone is argueing over what is better. In between we have all kinds of snake-oil producers making profit on people with less critical view of the world.

regards
k

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #316 –
Quote from: knutinh on
I believe that mathematics can give quite precise answers - but that mathematicians are not always the right people to ask the question that is to be answered ;-)

please do not tell that to other mathematicians - so many of us believe that we are the closest to truth under the sun, and they will be so offended by you:-)))

Quote
That is exactly the same statement that I frequently get from the audiophile crowd when they dont want critical questions about their magic pyramids, green markers, voodo-power-cables etc.


oops... sorry. yes, you are right, my degree of self-confidence [in this case, in my hearing abilities] is not a proof for you. but ... i trust and will trust my ears, even if the rest of the world calls me moron;-)))

Quote
Is that for you as a subjective listener in a blind experiment, for you as a listening conusmer, or as a mathematical analysis of the dsp that occurs in dsd vs lpcm systems?


as a mathematician. SACD/DVD-A differences are minor, effect unsure.

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #317 –
Quote from: putanik on
as a mathematician. SACD/DVD-A differences are minor, effect unsure.

I agree. The difference between CD, DVD-A and SACD are minor and the effects are unshure.

My view is that a system that try to revolutionise the industry by effectively changing all the rules, should have a clear benefit. Sony and Philips are asking everyone (producers as well as consumers) to change all of their gear to gain some obscure benefit. While giving Sony and Philips a new income source after they lost the CD hegemony to Toshiba. They blatantly ignore all of the critical voices from the tech world. "We are stronger than you, our propaganda division will crush any scientific evidents against us, any needed proofs will be made up if we cant find them, either you are with us or against us"

Kind of reminds me of a certain other "CEO"...




A LPCM-system on the other hand, while its benefits are dubious, will easily integrate with current production gear. Also, even DVD-V is able to take full benefit of the current AD and DA technology and then some. I agree with the notion that whatever is needed, the world will move forwards. I dont know if 3d gui menus and transparent windows makes me more productive at work, but Windows Vista will be that way, and this will benefit hardware producers and the circle keeps spinning.

-k

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #318 –
Quote from: knutinh on

The catch about this diagram is that, due to the way our hearing works, the neat 10k square-wave will sound exactly the same as the 10k sine. If you could hook an oscilloscope at the acoustic nerve, you would get exactly the sine, no matter which signal was fed. There is no way for energy beyond 20kHz to be coupled into the 'human sum signal', because there are no perception cells for above this frequency.

But yeah, in terms of signal processing, the 10k square is reproduced more exactly. It's just that a human will hear a 10k square as a 10k sine.

The filters needed for 44k can be a problem, as this is the point where manufacturers tend to 'save money', especially with crappy soundcards (non-flat frequency response, ripple, and aliasing may be the consequences, but even this will be near unaudible).

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #319 –
Quote from: putanik on
I do not understand your question. At the moment, I am not aware of any A2D/D2A having more that 19 TRUE bits. 20 bits -> 122 dB ~ .7e-4% IMD/linearity error. nobody claimed it - yet. AKM's AK4394 claims only 100 dB THD, and that's quite typical now. Could you please explain yourself?


Lavry AD122-96MKIII claims 126dB THD (0.00005%), and 127dB SNR unweighted.

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #320 –
Quote from: Axon on
Quote from: putanik on
I do not understand your question. At the moment, I am not aware of any A2D/D2A having more that 19 TRUE bits. 20 bits -> 122 dB ~ .7e-4% IMD/linearity error. nobody claimed it - yet. AKM's AK4394 claims only 100 dB THD, and that's quite typical now. Could you please explain yourself?


Lavry AD122-96MKIII claims 126dB THD (0.00005%), and 127dB SNR unweighted.

I am not into current DAC specs. Is this done using a single chip, or stacking several?

-k

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #321 –
Quote from: knutinh on
Quote from: Axon on

Quote from: putanik on
I do not understand your question. At the moment, I am not aware of any A2D/D2A having more that 19 TRUE bits. 20 bits -> 122 dB ~ .7e-4% IMD/linearity error. nobody claimed it - yet. AKM's AK4394 claims only 100 dB THD, and that's quite typical now. Could you please explain yourself?


Lavry AD122-96MKIII claims 126dB THD (0.00005%), and 127dB SNR unweighted.

I am not into current DAC specs. Is this done using a single chip, or stacking several?

-k

I think that unit is all-discrete, actually.

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #322 –
Quote from: putanik on
As a pragmatic mathematician ... I can't imagine a reason why anybody would spend his/her time on altering CD version vs stereo SACD, especially in classical music, where profits are 0.

If SACD really has absolutely no benefit to audio quality, as I believe, then the only way to show a difference to the customer is to cripple the redbook mix. This has, in fact, happened in the past - see Stereophile's analysis of the DSOTM SACD release. The RB layer was vastly inferior to both the SACD layer and an early RB release from a few years back.

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #323 –
Quote from: putanik on
My gut feeling led by my experience is different. AES-type ABX testing was many time laughed at, for example, see http://www.stereophile.com/features/113/

Stereophile, of course, being the center of academic and thoughtful debate on the matter. Seriously, can you do any better than that? At least point to an academic paper newer than Lipshitz.

Quote
but ... why don't you walk into a hi-end audio place and ask them to show you the best speakers on a sample SACD? spend there an hour, and then we'll see if you gut feeling changes. or, have you already been there?

I've been to a hifi store twice: once to audition turntables (and buy one), and once for a Head-Fi meet. I can confidently say that in both situations, hires (either via vinyl or SACD/DVD-A) didn't do anything at all special for me, compared to redbook. So your experience runs contrary to my own.

Why 24bit/48kHz/96kHz/

Reply #324 –
Quote from: Axon on
Quote from: putanik on
I do not understand your question. At the moment, I am not aware of any A2D/D2A having more that 19 TRUE bits. 20 bits -> 122 dB ~ .7e-4% IMD/linearity error. nobody claimed it - yet. AKM's AK4394 claims only 100 dB THD, and that's quite typical now. Could you please explain yourself?


Lavry AD122-96MKIII claims 126dB THD (0.00005%), and 127dB SNR unweighted.


very interesting... do they have data sheet detailed description how and what they measured, like BurrBrown has for pcm4202 http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pcm4202.pdf and pcm1792a http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pcm1792a.pdf? a minor problem ... front sheet for those specifies "marketing" specs of 118/132 dB dynamic range, but when you look inside, you find numbers like 0.0004% (-107 dB) and -105 for THD+N (which both mean 17.5...18 true bits). I have no problems coming up to our CFO asking for 1792 /4202 EVMs so that I can analyze them myself in whatever details i please... but I can't come to him asking for this Larvy ADC bearing pricetag of $7500.