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Topic: Can anyone ABX this? (Read 20419 times) previous topic - next topic
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Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #25
No, I´d assume because it wouldn´t make sense to filter them out when they are already there. At least, modern hardware is capable of playing that back without problems. It´s not like ultrasonic noise would cause the amp / the speaker to blow during playback. And it´s not like ultrasonic noise would introduce severe distortions (those frequencies do not desire that much power). That may have happened 40 years ago but not today. So why bother?

Well, speakers can be a bit fragile, but any decent speaker will filter those frequencies out anyway. Still I don't see why we shouldn't filter them out - As you say "Why bother". I assume most mastering engineers have the same opinion, especially those who have been mastering that cannot hear above 15khz... That's a problem when a sine at 16khz is hammering through my head because they didn't even bother to look for obvious problems in a spectrogram!

But it seems like these samples proves that there's absolutely no reason to use such high frequencies except for mastering purposes.
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #26
They weren't pop-ups, and it is unlikely that any plug in software would selectively remove text and graphics from a page based on their content.
Actually, such software exists, though it selectively removes text and graphics based on their name and source rather than their content.

Anyways, you were just commenting on how you couldn't get the files to work, which I think is a fair claim to make. If others can figure it out or are more familiar with these services, they may disagree, but it doesn't invalidate the fact that you had difficulty. Using the upload forum here would be superior, you are absolutely correct. As a matter of fact, it would be preferred. Certain hosting sites are blocked by the forum software because they are so horrible to use.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #27
Who knows, maybe someone actually can tell the difference? I mean here's from the Wikipedia article on ultrasound:
Quote
The upper frequency limit in humans (approximately 20 kHz) is due to limitations of the middle ear, which acts as a low-pass filter. Ultrasonic hearing can occur if ultrasound is fed directly into the skull bone and reaches the cochlea without passing through the middle ear. Carefully-designed scientific studies have been performed supporting what the authors call the hypersonic effect — that even without consciously hearing it, high-frequency sound can have a measurable effect on the mind.


As I recall, high levels of ultrasonic energy can cause people to become more irritable, even though they do not consciously hear anything.

Makes a great selling point for high sample rates, for people who feel that thay are not irritable enough.


In this case we have what appears to be a very craftsmanlike job of downsampling.  The spectra of the two files pretty much overlay each other, except for the obvious difference> 22 KHz.

Above FS/2 of the 16/44 file, there is a smooth continuation of the expected 12 dB/ocatve slope that is generally characteristic of acoustic instruments.  In this case the slope starts around 10 KHz. 

The recording itself does not sound good to me. I doubt that there is any part of it that was made in an acoustic space using acoustic instruments.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #28
Anyways, you were just commenting on how you couldn't get the files to work, which I think is a fair claim to make. If others can figure it out or are more familiar with these services, they may disagree, but it doesn't invalidate the fact that you had difficulty. Using the upload forum here would be superior, you are absolutely correct. As a matter of fact, it would be preferred. Certain hosting sites are blocked by the forum software because they are so horrible to use.


My point is that I eventually downloaded the files without difficulty.  The second and third attempts appear to differ only in terms of wall clock time.

There never was anything wrong with my software, hardware or procedures.

The target was moved until it could be easily obtained. ;-)

I guess the most signficant thing I've learned from this experience  is that some people are running their synths with really high clock speeds, for whatever purpose. Probably, they are doing it because they can. ;-)

 

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #29
In this case we have what appears to be a very craftsmanlike job of downsampling.

You talking about the samples from the OP? In case you are, thanks.  I did the best I could.

The recording itself does not sound good to me. I doubt that there is any part of it that was made in an acoustic space using acoustic instruments.

No, it's computer-generated music (from FL Studio, in fact). Tragically though that's probably the best (and maybe the only) way acoustic frequencies above 22 kHz can turn out digitised as cleanly as they are in this sample - with microphones or any other means of recording even if the equipment is capable of capturing frequencies of up to 96 kHz they'll probably be exposed to all kinds of interferences.

Like I said, what I especially liked about this sample is that all there is is all just musical content, all the way up to 96 kHz. Unfortunately, that basically means "not recorded but rendered".


edit: Also I would like to apologise for not uploading to the forum, I'm still sort of a noob here so I didn't even know that could be done.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #30
Who knows, maybe someone actually can tell the difference? I mean here's from the Wikipedia article on ultrasound:

Take a look at Hypersonic effect. Must supporting citations come from Oohashi. This topic has been discussed many times on HA.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #31
Who knows, maybe someone actually can tell the difference? I mean here's from the Wikipedia article on ultrasound:

Take a look at Hypersonic effect. Must supporting citations come from Oohashi. This topic has been discussed many times on HA.

I've read that already. I think ultrasonic effect is just a pile of horsecrap, but I've found a good sample containing HFC and wanted to see if anyone actually can tell the difference, just in case the ultrasonic effect is not a pile of horsecrap.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #32
If you are testing in Windows 7 (and maybe Vista), be sure that the "shared mode" sampling rate is 192khz, or else you'll never hear a difference even if you are a bat


I thought if you set it like that, ANYTHING (unless through WASAPI exclusive) you play will be resampled to 192KHz? Or am I wrong?

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #33
I thought if you set it like that, ANYTHING (unless through WASAPI exclusive) you play will be resampled to 192KHz? Or am I wrong?

I have never used Windows Vista nor Windows 7 myself, but why would that be a bad thing? The only way resampling to 192 kHz prior to reproducing the sound could damage the sound quality is if Microsoft wrote a REALLY awful resampling algorithm, which...

Hm, actually you make a good point.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #34
Here are the two samples:

192000 Hz, 24 bits/sample

44100 Hz, 16 bits/sample



Code: [Select]
foo_abx 1.3.4 report
foobar2000 v1.0.3
2010/06/07 15:40:10

File A: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrador\Mis documentos\Downloads\Sample_192000Hz_24bit.flac
File B: C:\Documents and Settings\Administrador\Mis documentos\Downloads\Sample_44100Hz_16bit.flac

15:40:10 : Test started.
15:41:18 : 01/01  50.0%
15:41:24 : 02/02  25.0%
15:41:51 : 03/03  12.5%
15:42:02 : 04/04  6.3%
15:42:36 : 05/05  3.1%
15:42:43 : Test finished.

----------
Total: 5/5 (3.1%)


Headphones Sennheiser HD 447. Soundcard Audigy SE 24/96.
foobar -> output -> 24 bits

The difference is quite simple to spot. Sample 192/24 has much clear, sharp sound. (I undertsand that it might sound like placebo or troll but there is ABX log)
Maybe there is something wrong with my hardware.
The other question is  how red book sample was downsampled.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #35
Uhmm...did you decide in advance to only try five times, or did you quit as soon as the probability dropped below 5%?

If the latter then this is not an acceptable way to perform the test. Not saying that you can't hear the difference, only that you are not following standard procedure.

One other thing - often the apparent difference is actually caused by a deficiency in the hardware used to reproduce the samples.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #36
If you are testing in Windows 7 (and maybe Vista), be sure that the "shared mode" sampling rate is 192khz, or else you'll never hear a difference even if you are a bat


is that really necessary when running Asio?


Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #38
One other thing - often the apparent difference is actually caused by a deficiency in the hardware used to reproduce the samples.

Indeed - I have witnessed this myself, and to be worse the problem was not even in my hardware but in the software and surprisingly that software was Adobe Audition 3.0.1! I have created a sample which contains only noise above 20 kHz, in fact this is the sample I'm talking about.

In Cool Edit Pro 2.1 when I played it back I've heard, of course - nothing. Whether my sound card or my speakers actually produced the sound I have no idea, but that is completely irrelevant because what's important is that when I played back that sample on my system - I heard nothing, regardless if it was my speaker's or my soundcard's inability to reproduce noises that high or my inability to perceive them.

However, when I loaded that very same sample in Adobe Audition 3.0.1 and played it back, it ended up sounding something like this. Unfortunately the only way for me to capture the noise that I was hearing was to let Adobe Audition play back the original sample and record the output with another application (not recording with microphone what came out of my speakers but directly recording the soundcard output), so this is not the perfect replica of the noise I was hearing but certainly close enough. It's obvious what's going on here - since Adobe Audition apparently doesn't even attempt to produce any noises above 24 kHz (the noises above that I ascribe to playback recording artefacts) which is a Nyquist frequency of 48 kHz sampling period, the inescapable conclusion is that it instead downsamples the output automatically on-the-fly to 48 kHz but without any filtering of frequencies above 24 kHz to prevent downsample aliasing, which on playback results in this noise.

Therefore, make sure that something like this isn't happening on your system neither because of the software nor because of the hardware you're using. To test if it's happening to you, download and play back the sample I was talking about (this one) on the system you were doing the ABX test on and with the same software you were doing the ABX test with and see if it sounds anything like this.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #39
Are you sure that you had configured Audition's audio output device correctly?

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #40
Are you sure that you had configured Audition's audio output device correctly?

As a matter of fact I did try it and never succeeded to make it reproduce 192k sampling rate samples properly but now that you asked I decided to try again and with some tedious tinkering managed to force it into doing it but at the moment it seems incredibly unstable because it already fell back to the previous faulty behaviour twice and I just can't seem to figure out what makes it fall back to it. Regardless of that though it serves as an example that software faults are possible even if you have a fully capable hardware, meaning that it's possible the above ABXing is invalid.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #41
Headphones Sennheiser HD 447. Soundcard Audigy SE 24/96.
foobar -> output -> 24 bits

The difference is quite simple to spot. Sample 192/24 has much clear, sharp sound. (I undertsand...

I understand the Audigy SE 24/96 cannot handle 192/24 (or 24 /192) samples without.. re-sampling?

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #42
If you are testing in Windows 7 (and maybe Vista), be sure that the "shared mode" sampling rate is 192khz, or else you'll never hear a difference even if you are a bat

I thought if you set it like that, ANYTHING (unless through WASAPI exclusive) you play will be resampled to 192KHz? Or am I wrong?

Use an exclusive mode media player? Else you are correct, in shared mode everything that is NOT at the selected rates, gets resampled.