On YouTube, there are lots of videos where people show how great their turntable sounds.
These videos are usually accompanied by tens if not hundreds of comments where other posters say "wow - this sounds so much better than digital - you just can't get this wonderful warm sound with digital media" etc etc. The irony of listening to YouTube and saying how much nicer it sounds than digital seems lost on almost everyone!
So I just had to share it here.
e.g.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEUD50bq29M (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEUD50bq29M)
...I'm sure YouTube will happily link you to tens of others.
Funniest are the ones where the audio has been recorded through the mic on a mobile phone - and yet still some people listen to it and say "great - the warm analogue sound beats that horrible digital CD quality!".
Cheers,
David.
P.S. I'll grant you that some of these vinyl set ups sound very nice, and some of the tracks sound different from the released CD. The result might even sound nicer to some people on some systems.
Obviously master tape > vinyl > turntable > replay > YouTube > CD is the way to make a nice sound in the 21st century! master tape > CD just isn't "warm" enough.
(I joke, but there's obviously some truth in that - we're not well disposed to "accurate" sound it seems - or maybe recording and reproduction lose so much that adding some extra junk is preferable to faithfully re-producing the 2% of the original sound field that we have stored)
On YouTube, there are lots of videos where people show how great their turntable sounds.
These videos are usually accompanied by tens if not hundreds of comments where other posters say "wow - this sounds so much better than digital - you just can't get this wonderful warm sound with digital media" etc etc. The irony of listening to YouTube and saying how much nicer it sounds than digital seems lost on almost everyone!
I didn't look through all the comments, but the lack of people pointing out that audio heard through youtube is digital is odd. Maybe the OP is removing those comments?
I'll try.
They're kind missing the whole point that when their camcorder recorded it the sound became digital
It's like people trying to show how much better one display is.....on 360p youtube footage.
P.S. I'll grant you that some of these vinyl set ups sound very nice, and some of the tracks sound different from the released CD. The result might even sound nicer to some people on some systems.
Obviously master tape > vinyl > turntable > replay > YouTube > CD is the way to make a nice sound in the 21st century! master tape > CD just isn't "warm" enough.
(I joke, but there's obviously some truth in that - we're not well disposed to "accurate" sound it seems - or maybe recording and reproduction lose so much that adding some extra junk is preferable to faithfully re-producing the 2% of the original sound field that we have stored)
That kind of talk can get you burned at the stake around here. I'm sure if *I* said something like that I'd get a memo or two.
Too bad really. You raise some points that are worthy of discussion if they weren't taboo. Capturing the original soundfield as it relates to conventional stereo and/or multichannel recording and playback is an interesting and very unintuitive topic. I shall say no more on the subject.
That kind of talk can get you burned at the stake around here. I'm sure if *I* said something like that I'd get a memo or two.
"burned at the stake" - couldn't have put it better myself - I'd be there throwing coals on the fire too!
Seriously, I could ABX the track in the link I posted against, say, the same track on Spotify. Of course the positive result could be for any number of reasons (including the horrible and obvious YouTube artefacts).
Would it surprise anyone if it was sometimes trivial to ABX CD vs a 16/44.1 capture from vinyl?
Would it surprise anyone if it was generally impossible to ABX 16/44.1 capture from vinyl against 24/96 capture from vinyl?
So I don't think any of this is controversial.
I think the question becomes: where does the sound difference come from? If it's a mastering difference, then it's not necessarily anything to do with vinyl. If it's also noise + distortion + compression + euphonics (one specific kind of distortion!) + wow (another kind of distortion!) + EQ + ... you have to wonder if this positive effect can be simulated?
I also wonder if doing all that kind of thing wouldn't be nicer than smashing everything against the digital 0dB FS limit, while still giving a loud-ish and fuller sounding sound.
The thing is, I've got a few CDs and LPs that sound identical. So I don't believe that a recording should necessarily sound completely different (e.g. subjectively better)
just because it's on vinyl. If it does sound different, it seems to me that someone probably made it sound different.
Cheers,
David.
That kind of talk can get you burned at the stake around here. I'm sure if *I* said something like that I'd get a memo or two.
"burned at the stake" - couldn't have put it better myself - I'd be there throwing coals on the fire too!
Seriously, I could ABX the track in the link I posted against, say, the same track on Spotify. Of course the positive result could be for any number of reasons (including the horrible and obvious YouTube artefacts).
Would it surprise anyone if it was sometimes trivial to ABX CD vs a 16/44.1 capture from vinyl?
Would it surprise anyone if it was generally impossible to ABX 16/44.1 capture from vinyl against 24/96 capture from vinyl?
So I don't think any of this is controversial.
I think the question becomes: where does the sound difference come from? If it's a mastering difference, then it's not necessarily anything to do with vinyl. If it's also noise + distortion + compression + euphonics (one specific kind of distortion!) + wow (another kind of distortion!) + EQ + ... you have to wonder if this positive effect can be simulated?
I also wonder if doing all that kind of thing wouldn't be nicer than smashing everything against the digital 0dB FS limit, while still giving a loud-ish and fuller sounding sound.
The thing is, I've got a few CDs and LPs that sound identical. So I don't believe that a recording should necessarily sound completely different (e.g. subjectively better) just because it's on vinyl. If it does sound different, it seems to me that someone probably made it sound different.
Cheers,
David.
Throwing coals on the fire when you are the one burning? Sounds like a Monty Python bit to me.
I believe JJ has done some research on ::gasp:: "euphonic colorations" from vinyl and tubed electronics and has even come up with a digital simulation for tube euphonic colorations.
Mastering is a different beast altogether. I don't think one can invent a box that will simulate all the things that go into mastering.
You have a few CDs and LPs which sound "identical?" Interesting. Did you ABX them?
I think the big taboo you have spoken was this.
"we're not well disposed to "accurate" sound it seems - or maybe recording and reproduction lose so much that adding some extra junk is preferable to faithfully re-producing the 2% of the original sound field that we have stored"
The notion that less accurate playback of a recording may be prefered for legitimate reasons underminds the quest for accuracy based on the belief that objective measure of accuracy to the recorded source is an objective measure of excellence. And when one really considers the "original sound space" and what really happens in recording and playing back of music captured in that soundspace it becomes plainly obvious that there is no attempt in current commercial stereo and/or multichannel recording and playback to make a literal reconstruction of the original soundfield. What is being attempted (at least in many cases with live acoustic music) is an attempt to creat an aural illusion of the original acoustic event from a particular listener perspective. The system is in effect a "magic trick" or aural smoke and mirrors. That being the case one may ponder the role and value of "accuracy" in such a system rather than assume it is dogmatically sacred.
Oh boy, you got me talking about stuff no one here wants said....
@analog scott: I think you confused two things: The preference of an individual, and the goals of a mass market electronics.
It is true that people like to change the sound they hear. "Bass boost", "Bass and treble controls", "loudness", "10band EQ", "SRS WOW"...
Sometimes these tools are used to compensate for the hardware deficiencies. Many times, instead, they are used by feelings (Easy example: I had a young friend that sometimes, to boost the volume, would put all the eq sliders to the top, with all the distortion that it implied).
Now, what should a hardware (media and playback), by default, do? Should it have bass boost pre-applied? What would then do those that don't like it?
Do you understand that the flatter the reproduction (compared to the master tape), the bigger the possibilities for the end user to change (or not!) the sound to their preferences?
And, at last, there's the mastering, which you already said it's a completely separated topic. Mastering is also a preference (of the artist and/or mastering engineer), but should also be done in a way that it sounds good not only in their studio, but also on people's homes. (which implies, allowing some hardware distortions, or "preferences" of the user).
What I understand from 2Bdecided's post is that nowadays, it may be a selling point to add a "vinyl" and "youtube" buttons in amps and equalizers, so that people can "distort" the audio to something similar to what those two methods do. Once people get bored, (and money is made), the buttons can be removed again.
@analog scott: I think you confused two things: The preference of an individual, and the goals of a mass market electronics.
It is true that people like to change the sound they hear. "Bass boost", "Bass and treble controls", "loudness", "10band EQ", "SRS WOW"...
Sometimes these tools are used to compensate for the hardware deficiencies. Many times, instead, they are used by feelings (Easy example: I had a young friend that sometimes, to boost the volume, would put all the eq sliders to the top, with all the distortion that it implied).
I don't thnk I confused mass market anything in this case since I was not even considering that beast. I was thinking along the lines of audiophilia. I don't find the colorations found in a boom box or a gangsta car sound system with bass that can be heard five blocks away to be "euphonic." I hope I am not in violation of TOS #8 in expressing that opinion. I confess I have not done a double blind comparison between a gangsta car sound system and a high end sound system.
Now, what should a hardware (media and playback), by default, do?
I don't think there should ab a "default" position. I think equipment should do whatever it is designed to do. And I think designers should be free to design what they see fit and let the markert decide if they made choices desired by consumers.
Should it have bass boost pre-applied? What would then do those that don't like it?
Hopefully not buy it in the first place.
Do you understand that the flatter the reproduction (compared to the master tape), the bigger the possibilities for the end user to change (or not!) the sound to their preferences?
Strictly speaking from a personal perspective, I don't fancy myself to be the ultimate "mastering engineer" or engineer of euphonic colorations. Some of us like the specific changes offered by euphonically colored equipment and certain masterings. I'm not going to do that myself. So I am not seeking the most flat uncolored equipment or masterings as a rule. If the most flat uncolored mastering or the most flat uncolored piece of equipment paints a prefered picture in the final product I'll take it. But if not then it goes. So to answer your question, I understand it but it doesn't come into play for me.
And, at last, there's the mastering, which you already said it's a completely separated topic. Mastering is also a preference (of the artist and/or mastering engineer), but should also be done in a way that it sounds good not only in their studio, but also on people's homes. (which implies, allowing some hardware distortions, or "preferences" of the user).
What I understand from 2Bdecided's post is that nowadays, it may be a selling point to add a "vinyl" and "youtube" buttons in amps and equalizers, so that people can "distort" the audio to something similar to what those two methods do. Once people get bored, (and money is made), the buttons can be removed again. ;)
Something I would be all for provided it is done with an understanding of such preferences rather than synicism towards such preferences.
Strictly speaking from a personal perspective, I don't fancy myself to be the ultimate "mastering engineer" or engineer of euphonic colorations. Some of us like the specific changes offered by euphonically colored equipment and certain masterings. I'm not going to do that myself. So I am not seeking the most flat uncolored equipment or masterings as a rule.
@JAZ's point was that if the listener's equipment is as flat and uncoloured as possible, then it will best reproduce the cumulative artistic decisions recorded on the master tape. I would rather have my experience shaped by the makers of the recording, rather than by the makers of equipment. But then, I might also tweak it a bit (some Beatles CDs sound like they were mastered by Paul's mom, the bass is so prominent), so you have controls to fiddle, non-destructively.
Is the default sound output on Youtube still 64kpbs Mp3 at 22Khz?
It's a shame no one on Youtube has comment on this turntable demo (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4v40EHkV0I), which has some very obivous encoding artifacts.
On YouTube, there are lots of videos where people show how great their turntable sounds.
These videos are usually accompanied by tens if not hundreds of comments where other posters say "wow - this sounds so much better than digital - you just can't get this wonderful warm sound with digital media" etc etc. The irony of listening to YouTube and saying how much nicer it sounds than digital seems lost on almost everyone!
I didn't look through all the comments, but the lack of people pointing out that audio heard through youtube is digital is odd. Maybe the OP is removing those comments?
I'll try.
I've always find most Youtube commenters to be ignorant or just plain stupid. Just seeing some of the most subscribed Youtube channels, makes me more depressed.
Strictly speaking from a personal perspective, I don't fancy myself to be the ultimate "mastering engineer" or engineer of euphonic colorations. Some of us like the specific changes offered by euphonically colored equipment and certain masterings. I'm not going to do that myself. So I am not seeking the most flat uncolored equipment or masterings as a rule.
@JAZ's point was that if the listener's equipment is as flat and uncoloured as possible, then it will best reproduce the cumulative artistic decisions recorded on the master tape. I would rather have my experience shaped by the makers of the recording, rather than by the makers of equipment. But then, I might also tweak it a bit (some Beatles CDs sound like they were mastered by Paul's mom, the bass is so prominent), so you have controls to fiddle, non-destructively.
Really? I thought his point was "that the flatter the reproduction (compared to the master tape), the bigger the possibilities for the end user to change (or not!) the sound to their preferences." You know why I think that? Because that is what he said.
Really? I thought his point was "that the flatter the reproduction (compared to the master tape), the bigger the possibilities for the end user to change (or not!) the sound to their preferences." You know why I think that? Because that is what he said.
On the very slight chance that you are talking for the sake of knowledge, rather than victory, I would wonder how you would hear the effects of mastering decisions if your own equipment is distorting euphoniously?
Is the default sound output on Youtube still 64kpbs Mp3 at 22Khz?
It varies greatly. The HD content has good quality audio, and some poor quality imagery may be accompanied by decent sound.
I tried quickly looking what sort of settings or conversions Youtube offers when uploading, but I didn't find anything other than talk about moving to VP8. I haven't taken time yet to look for a method to extract the audio stream from an FLV, and see what's inside. I hear ffmpeg can do that?
Pretty sure I haven't heard any 64kbps/22KHz in a while for things like music video clips and HD content.
You have a few CDs and LPs which sound "identical?" Interesting. Did you ABX them?
I A/B'd them - years ago - and was amazed at the similarity. I remember trying to edit them together (on minidisc, which probably invalidates the comparison!) and found, with care, I couldn't spot the edit point. So, with what I had available at the time, they sounded the same.
I think the big taboo you have spoken was this.
"we're not well disposed to "accurate" sound it seems - or maybe recording and reproduction lose so much that adding some extra junk is preferable to faithfully re-producing the 2% of the original sound field that we have stored"
The notion that less accurate playback of a recording may be prefered for legitimate reasons underminds the quest for accuracy based on the belief that objective measure of accuracy to the recorded source is an objective measure of excellence. And when one really considers the "original sound space" and what really happens in recording and playing back of music captured in that soundspace it becomes plainly obvious that there is no attempt in current commercial stereo and/or multichannel recording and playback to make a literal reconstruction of the original soundfield. What is being attempted (at least in many cases with live acoustic music) is an attempt to creat an aural illusion of the original acoustic event from a particular listener perspective. The system is in effect a "magic trick" or aural smoke and mirrors. That being the case one may ponder the role and value of "accuracy" in such a system rather than assume it is dogmatically sacred.
Oh boy, you got me talking about stuff no one here wants said....
But my assumption (correct me if I'm wrong) is that your opinion goes like this: the known inaccuracy of your chosen replay system gets you a nicer sound, and maybe one that's closer to the original music.
Nicer is subjective and personal, so that's fine. Closer to the original music, in subjective, emotional, and maybe even sometimes an objective sense, is believable too. To give a simplistic example, you only need a recording that's a bit too bright, and a system with slightly less treble than it should have, and that system makes that recording subjectively and objectively closer to the sound of the original instruments.
Where I think the whole thing falls down is the idea that your replay system can somehow "improve"
all recordings. That can't be true, because different recordings are deficient in different ways. Some are damn near perfect (in my subjective opinion!), others are flat as anything. One non-accurate system can't "improve" them all - unless what you really subjectively prefer is the sound of
that system, recordings and accuracy be damned.
More destructively, if we accept that some recordings are far better than others already, and the technology already exists to get far closer to the original sound field (ambisonics, scientific design of speakers and rooms, essentially transparent digital capture of an almost arbitrary number of channels etc etc), then you have to question to wisdom of putting effort and money (as an individual, and an industry), in "perfecting" the art of dragging a piece of metal along grooves in a piece of plastic. We could be doing far better by concentrating on making existing two-channel recordings as good as the best, and by capturing more of the original sound field.
Instead we have people who believe that 44100 samples per second form a significant road block - even though you can hear how "superior" vinyl is when it's been stored as 44100 samples per second, and then mp3 encoded!
Cheers,
David.
Is the default sound output on Youtube still 64kpbs Mp3 at 22Khz?
It varies greatly. The HD content has good quality audio, and some poor quality imagery may be accompanied by decent sound.
Sometimes the "480p" version has
poorer audio than the "360p" version! It's a bit random - they played around with their encoding settings many times over the last couple of years, and videos
usually get stuck with whatever encoding was used when they were first uploaded.
Cheers,
David.
Really? I thought his point was "that the flatter the reproduction (compared to the master tape), the bigger the possibilities for the end user to change (or not!) the sound to their preferences." You know why I think that? Because that is what he said.
Which part of my sentence make you think that I am talking about mastering decisions? The sentence is written in a paragraph that talks about hardware (media where the audio is stored, and playback chain).
In other words: If the master was made using a tube amp, the master needs to be reproduced using that specific tube amp to be heard like the engineer heard it.
Else, if the master was made using an equipment that is able to not add any coloration by itself, then playing it on a relatively flat equipment will be nearer to what the engineer heard.
Now, I am not knowledgeable as to the equipment used in mastering, but I would bet that big studios' equipment tend to be flat. (Isn't that the characteristic of studio monitors?)
Really? I thought his point was "that the flatter the reproduction (compared to the master tape), the bigger the possibilities for the end user to change (or not!) the sound to their preferences." You know why I think that? Because that is what he said.
Which part of my sentence make you think that I am talking about mastering decisions? The sentence is written in a paragraph that talks about hardware (media where the audio is stored, and playback chain).
In other words: If the master was made using a tube amp, the master needs to be reproduced using that specific tube amp to be heard like the engineer heard it.
I think what you mean to say is that if a recording is mastered in a mastering environment with specific aphonic colorations, then to hear it as intended you'd need to use a playback environment with the same identical euphonic colorations. And that's right. The obvious problem is that euphonic colorations seem to be highly personal, so everybody would be dragged into owning audio systems with colorations that they may not like with other recordings but they'd have to have them if the wanted to enjoy those particular recordings.
Else, if the master was made using an equipment that is able to not add any coloration by itself, then playing it on a relatively flat equipment will be nearer to what the engineer heard.
Right. That's the nice thing about making things as uncolored as possible. Uncolored is always the same thing. Euphonic colorations are always highly personal.
Now, I am not knowledgeable as to the equipment used in mastering, but I would bet that big studios' equipment tend to be flat. (Isn't that the characteristic of studio monitors?)
Realty tends to wards uncolored, but not just that. If you're serious about mastering a recording for the general market, then you will base your work on how that recording sounds on a number of systems that you think are representative of what the paying customers listen through. IOW you might check your (hopefully) finished work on systems that you think are Representative of personal players, boom boxes, car audio, home audio, home theater, and home table radios, for starters. Along the way there is probably going to be at the very least some compromising in the bass area for some of the lesser systems. Highly compressed music often comes from trying to optimize the recording for playback in an office setting or some other highly casual listening situation.
Bottom line, only very esoteric audiophile recordings (as opposed to more mainstream audiophile recordings, as opposed to mainstream recordings) are likely to ever be mastered on tubed equipment, unless that tubed equipment is atypically uncolored. There was a time when people were very serious about building uncolored tubed equipment, but those days passed when the market for tubed equipment became dominated by audiophiles looking for the flavor of the month.
Really? I thought his point was "that the flatter the reproduction (compared to the master tape), the bigger the possibilities for the end user to change (or not!) the sound to their preferences." You know why I think that? Because that is what he said.
On the very slight chance that you are talking for the sake of knowledge, rather than victory, I would wonder how you would hear the effects of mastering decisions if your own equipment is distorting euphoniously?
I would love to fill you in on this one but it upsets certain moderators when *I* talk about such things. Let's just say I have made extensive comaprisons between the components in my system that I believe to be euphonically colored against components I believe to be relatively transparent and at least less colored. I have done so using a wide variety of recordings that I feel best cover the range of possibilities (such as various masterings)
Ultimately every playback system is colored. Ultimately every recording is colored as well. And (this is a big point to me) the very system of recording and playback in stereo or even multichannel is inherently colored or flawed. The question is are there euphonic colorations that are universally preferable/compensatory when in play with a wide range of recordings. It is pretty hard to answer that question definitively. There are many variables involved. I have to go with my experience.
The only "victory" I seek is to poke some of the folks here into thinking and questioning axioms they have possibly accepted as dogma without realizing it.
Ultimately every playback system is colored. Ultimately every recording is colored as well. And (this is a big point to me) the very system of recording and playback in stereo or even multichannel is inherently colored or flawed.
So far so good.
The question is are there euphonic colorations that are universally preferable/compensatory when in play with a wide range of recordings.
The answer to that question is pretty much no. You look at the marketplace and you find that the overwhelming proportion of equipment was designed, despite their flaws, to be as uncolored as possible. Vritually every piece of mainstream electornics is designed to be flat within a fraction of a dB over the audible range. Speakers are a little weird because of their interaction with the rooms that they are used in, but even so the notions of flat smooth response show up all over the place. The reason for this has already been given - flat response is always the same thing while euphonic colorations are personal and/or specific to a miniscule fraction of all listening environments.
It is pretty hard to answer that question definitively. There are many variables involved. I have to go with my experience.
Scott, you're on a fool's mission because you think that there possibly can be "euphonic colorations that are universally preferable/compensatory when in play with a wide range of recordings" in this day and age. In the days of vinyl, I think that there might have been some possibility of that because of the rather gross limitations of that medium. Today, no. You'd have to invent a universe where all there was is vinyl, for your basic ideology to have a chance of being relevant.
I just don't see any sense to comitting to redesigning the universe to protect some odd ideology that I picked up some where.
Nicer is subjective and personal, so that's fine. Closer to the original music, in subjective, emotional, and maybe even sometimes an objective sense, is believable too. To give a simplistic example, you only need a recording that's a bit too bright, and a system with slightly less treble than it should have, and that system makes that recording subjectively and objectively closer to the sound of the original instruments.
Yeah that is part of it.
Where I think the whole thing falls down is the idea that your replay system can somehow "improve" all recordings. That can't be true, because different recordings are deficient in different ways. Some are damn near perfect (in my subjective opinion!), others are flat as anything. One non-accurate system can't "improve" them all - unless what you really subjectively prefer is the sound of that system, recordings and accuracy be damned.
We are on to something here. I think you make a very interesting point that is very logical. But....I think the logic works only if one assumes that absolute transparency in the recording and playback chain assures us of the best results. Now I think this is where it gets a bit sublime. "best results." What constitutes "best results?" We really have to define our goals before we can move forward here. For me...best results are the most pleasing sound. Now let me offer some axiums of my own about "Hifidelity" I think the point of fidelity, in this case fidelity to an original acoustic event is based on the idea that the greater the fidelity the more pleasing the sound. I believe this was true in full when the idea of hifi first came into play in audio and is for the most part still true. But the very system of recording and playback is not a literal recreation of an original event. If it were and if the premise were always true that the original event is always more pleasing then it would be logical to always persue the path of maximum accuracy. But that isn't the case. Stereo and multichannel recording and playback does not attempt to accurately recreate the original soundfield of the original event. It is an aural illusion and is inherently imprefect in creating an aural illusion of an original event. So the question really is are there "euphonic colorations" that compensate for any of those "inherent" flaws in the system. If so then one can argue that euphonic colorations can "improve" the system of recording and playback.
More destructively, if we accept that some recordings are far better than others already, and the technology already exists to get far closer to the original sound field (ambisonics, scientific design of speakers and rooms, essentially transparent digital capture of an almost arbitrary number of channels etc etc), then you have to question to wisdom of putting effort and money (as an individual, and an industry), in "perfecting" the art of dragging a piece of metal along grooves in a piece of plastic. We could be doing far better by concentrating on making existing two-channel recordings as good as the best, and by capturing more of the original sound field.
I don't believe that work on improving recording techniques is impeded by work done on improving vinyl playback. Further more, all the work done on improving recording techniques will only pay forward. It will do nothing to help us enjoy Coltrane or Hendrix.
Instead we have people who believe that 44100 samples per second form a significant road block - even though you can hear how "superior" vinyl is when it's been stored as 44100 samples per second, and then mp3 encoded!
But those people and those beliefs really are irrelevant to progress made in recording technique IMO. OTOH The assumption that "accuracy" is inhenrently always in every way shape or form "better" in stereo or multichannel recording and playback is a problem if it isn't actually true.
Also keep in mind I am not an advocate of abandonment of accuracy. I would not suggest that anyone throw away their CDPs. I certainly have kept mine.
Really? I thought his point was "that the flatter the reproduction (compared to the master tape), the bigger the possibilities for the end user to change (or not!) the sound to their preferences." You know why I think that? Because that is what he said.
Which part of my sentence make you think that I am talking about mastering decisions? The sentence is written in a paragraph that talks about hardware (media where the audio is stored, and playback chain).
It was my impression you were talking about both hardware and mastering decidsions and anything that changes the sound. Here is the part that made me think so since you asked. "It is true that people like to change the sound they hear. "Bass boost", "Bass and treble controls", "loudness", "10band EQ", "SRS WOW"..." Those are things that can and sometimes do happen in mastering
I think it's not that important what mastering engineers use to monitor the sound. There are recordings from decades ago that were monitored on goodness knows what - modern systems reveal that the mastering engineers generally didn't wreck these recordings - we can hear details now that they never could, and they sound fine. Great usually. Mostly, even if they listened on a system with a 10dB peak in some frequency range, they didn't notch it out of the recording to compensate. Or if they did, it didn't get released, because the problem was obvious on any other system.
I'll put forward a hypothesis that I half believe:
When we listen to music at home, the following factors are different from a live performance:
1. we usually listen far quieter than the original real life performance
2. we can't see the performers (unless it's a DVD/BluRay - and even then, that's just a picture - not real) - either way, our eyes tells us that the performers are not there in the room with us
3. we have 1, 2 or 5.1 signal sources - none of these re-creates the original acoustic space
My guess is, some things in the playback chain which are non-ideal, and cause the reproduced audio to be less like that captured by the microphone, help in some subjective way to "compensate" for one or more of the above, and make many people think the result sounds more like (what they imagine!) the live performance (to sound like).
There are (IMO!) obvious psychoacoustic reasons why adding some kinds of distortion may help with issue (1), and possible reasons why the not-quite-perfect stereo imaging and subtle reverb-like effect of certain analogue media and electronics might help a little with (3).
I don't wish to overstate this though. A lot of vinyl fandom seems to be because people somehow enjoy clearly audible and objectionable noise and distortion because they grew up with it, and also a huge dose of placebo.
Cheers,
David.
I don't believe that work on improving recording techniques is impeded by work done on improving vinyl playback.
We'll have to agree to differ on this one.
The sensible audiophile* in 2010 (or even 2000!) should be able to buy and enjoy full with-height ambisonic recordings. They can't though, because part of the market is chasing vinyl, and another part is chasing higher sample rates, a tiny part is chasing 5.1 (which isn't much of an answer), and the largest part of the potential market doesn't give a damn about anything that's available.
* - and ideally, that wouldn't be an oxymoron!
Cheers,
David.
The sensible audiophile* in 2010 (or even 2000!) should be able to buy and enjoy full with-height ambisonic recordings. They can't though, because part of the market is chasing vinyl, and another part is chasing higher sample rates, a tiny part is chasing 5.1 (which isn't much of an answer), and the largest part of the potential market doesn't give a damn about anything that's available.
I wish! But really, the 'market' is no longer a place where enthusiasts try to accurately reproduce recorded sound. Instead it is a place where lots and lots of people are saying whatever it takes to make as much muny as possible in the shortest amount of time. Welcome to america!
That's the silliest thing ever to try to show sound quality over Youtube. You don't even need to ABX to tell that their streaming audio is of not good quality. I wish the music industry would push for an "audiophile" format. Everything is pointing at just going with a loudness war and digital downloads. Not to say a lossy compressed isn't good. MOST of the world that is buying popular music is not listening to it in a quiet environment, so they don't care about quality. That and they want instant gratification. What would be so bad about going higher bit depth and sample rate? I think 24/48 would be a nice upgrade in sound, and I would even pay extra for 24/96. To me the argument is for resolution. There CAN be times where a waveform isn't accurately represented at 44.1 khz. So (for me) it's about resolution, not maximum frequency. A song isn't just a constant sine wave. It would be awesome if one could contact a record company and order music in whatever format they wanted to, without the loudness added. I never enjoyed listening to music over a 5.1 system. Maybe if I dedicated tons of money to building a nice acoustic room for it, but it's cheaper just to get some decent headphones. It's not like if music is being performed for you that you are in the middle of the band playing, it would be on a stage in front of you. I am a fan of vinyl, bash me if you want. As far as newer music, it sounds better most of the time because it is not subject to the loudness war. I assume it is because titles are usually released at a later date, and more care IS taken (not the same mastering.) They (record company) probably figure "do what you want, it's vinyl, everyone downloads or buys CDs, and people want those loud, so make the vinyl how you want." Metallica's Death Magnetic just killed everything. I have a feeling it will never be fixed because it is a very small minority of people who care about quality. Most people figure it's just loud music so it should distort.
There CAN be times where a waveform isn't accurately represented at 44.1 khz.
I take it that you are referring to frequencies above 22.05kHz only?
I think 24/48 would be a nice upgrade in sound
It doesn't seem as if you've read our rules before posting. Please do so!
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=3974 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=3974)
If you want to claim an upgrade in sound the burden is on you to prove it, per TOS #8. If you can't then you have no business saying it.
There CAN be times where a waveform isn't accurately represented at 44.1 khz.
I take it that you are referring to frequencies above 22.05kHz only?
I'm not going to start an argument here, but no. If a song was just a single sine wave tone, then yes, but music is a mixture of sounds, and sounds of a mixture of waves. I just don't see what it would hurt to raise the bar in this world of INCREASING bandwidth. For the music industry it would be good. How long does it take to download an uncompressed CD anymore? MP3 was piracy's answer on dialup, making a whole album less than 100 MB.
I made a wave of high frequency (a sine of 10 khz and one of 15 khz) and mixed them in a 192 khz file, then downsampled to 44.1 and then back up to 192. It did not look the same as the original. That's just my own observations. A simple single sine wave will be unharmed in the process, though.
I keep all my music on a 750 GB hard drive, FLAC. I use AAC for portable. So I am not totally biased on the lossless part of things. There is just a big difference for me with sitting down in a quiet room with headphones at the computer versus using a portable in a car or some other noisy place.
I am able to ABX between a 24/48 and a 16/44.1. Towards the end of testing a bunch of times it gets harder, but I CAN. That just shows there's a difference, not saying which one is better, but different. Opinion doesn't seem welcome here, ban me. I'm not telling other's that that's what they need, it's just what I like, and what I want. I don't like skating on bare minimum, I like everything to be the best it can be, even if it is unnecessary and excessive.
I'm not going to start an argument here, but no. If a song was just a single sine wave tone, then yes, but music is a mixture of sounds, and sounds of a mixture of waves.
It's good that you aren't trying to start an argument because it seems pretty clear that you do not understand enough about digitizing analog signals to successfully argue.
I am able to ABX between a 24/48 and a 16/44.1.
Samples and log please!
I did this on foobar, is this acceptable? And how many tests, and how do I prove the files are what they are? Maybe you could point me to a better tester, because the log only showed what the results were, no technical info. The difference is so miniscule, maybe I have superhumans ears It takes a lot of brain power to tell the difference, but I can, but barely, and it's not a 100% result towards the end. I will arrive home in a few hours, and I will get to testing.
I made a wave of high frequency (a sine of 10 khz and one of 15 khz) and mixed them in a 192 khz file, then downsampled to 44.1 and then back up to 192. It did not look the same as the original. That's just my own observations. A simple single sine wave will be unharmed in the process, though.
It would seem that your resampling algorithm may not be up to it. Did you try the single tone example? Also, you said that it
did not look the same as the original. In what way? How were you looking at the audio?
... and how do I prove the files are what they are?
You could upload up to 30 seconds of each version of the sample in the uploads forum to allow others to duplicate your results.
This shouldn't even be discussed as a waveform image is not supposed to mean anything there. It was in Goldwave though. Not the best algorithm, but with a single tone it operates fine with resampling between those 2 rates. I'd imagine it would treat 192 to 48 better rather than 192 to 44.1 because of integer division.
I don't believe that work on improving recording techniques is impeded by work done on improving vinyl playback.
You're cherry picking one issue from among a great many that all have a common source - people who are wasting money on technological dead ends in audio.
If you add to the money wasted on trying to improve vinyl, all of the work done to address alleged problems that can't be ABXed, then you come up with a huge pile of money because it includesall of the tens and hundred of millions of dollars that were blown on things like SACDand DVD-A, plus about 80% of all the money spent on high end audio.
Yes, I think that about 80% of the money spent on high end audio is pure waste in the sense that it has no tangible benefits.
Further more, all the work done on improving recording techniques will only pay forward. It will do nothing to help us enjoy Coltrane or Hendrix.
Arguing that we should never spend money on things that can't fix the mistakes of the past is pretty strange, Scott.
I think it's not that important what mastering engineers use to monitor the sound. There are recordings from decades ago that were monitored on goodness knows what - modern systems reveal that the mastering engineers generally didn't wreck these recordings - we can hear details now that they never could, and they sound fine. Great usually. Mostly, even if they listened on a system with a 10dB peak in some frequency range, they didn't notch it out of the recording to compensate. Or if they did, it didn't get released, because the problem was obvious on any other system.
I'll put forward a hypothesis that I half believe:
When we listen to music at home, the following factors are different from a live performance:
1. we usually listen far quieter than the original real life performance
2. we can't see the performers (unless it's a DVD/BluRay - and even then, that's just a picture - not real) - either way, our eyes tells us that the performers are not there in the room with us
3. we have 1, 2 or 5.1 signal sources - none of these re-creates the original acoustic space
My guess is, some things in the playback chain which are non-ideal, and cause the reproduced audio to be less like that captured by the microphone, help in some subjective way to "compensate" for one or more of the above, and make many people think the result sounds more like (what they imagine!) the live performance (to sound like).
There are (IMO!) obvious psychoacoustic reasons why adding some kinds of distortion may help with issue (1), and possible reasons why the not-quite-perfect stereo imaging and subtle reverb-like effect of certain analogue media and electronics might help a little with (3).
I agree with everything you say above. hope it doesn't hurt your good standing here at Hydrogenaudio
I'm not going to start an argument here, but no. If a song was just a single sine wave tone, then yes, but music is a mixture of sounds, and sounds of a mixture of waves.
Nyquist was right, Shannon was right (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_sampling_theorem), and we've had this discussion many times before (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?act=ST&f=1&t=9311).
There's a little "FAQ" link at the top-right of the page. Try it
An audible difference between sample rates on your PC may say more about your PC/OS/drivers/soundcard/etc than the fundamental limits of 44.1kHz sampled audio.
Cheers,
David.
I did this on foobar, is this acceptable?
Could be.
And how many tests, and how do I prove the files are what they are?
16 trials is a good start.
Maybe you could point me to a better tester, because the log only showed what the results were, no technical info.
The results in the log are what we sant to see.
The difference is so miniscule, maybe I have superhumans ears It takes a lot of brain power to tell the difference, but I can, but barely, and it's not a 100% result towards the end. I will arrive home in a few hours, and I will get to testing.
Also, please upload 30 second samples of the two files that you were comparing so we can try to duplicate your results.
If a song was just a single sine wave tone, then yes, but music is a mixture of sounds, and sounds of a mixture of waves.
You are right that music is just a collection of sine waves.
Digital handles mixtures of sine waves just fine, thank you.
There CAN be times where a waveform isn't accurately represented at 44.1 khz.
You are right, a musical waveform as it exists in the air before being picked up by the microphone rarely if ever is accurately represented by 44.1 KHz sampling, in the technical sense.
Most of the microphones that are used for recording don't have anything like flat frequency response. Very many of them start rolling off as low as 12 KHz, some even lower. They also roll off quite a bit of bass. Very, very few if any microphones have flat response that can be compared to that of a CD player or an amplifier. They are rarely if ever used for real world recordings. Very few microphones that are usued for recording have flat response above 20 KHz. Many of them are very non-flat at all normal audio frequencies. Some popular microphones have response curves look like the profile of rough ground.
Oh boy, you got me talking about stuff no one here wants said....
Yeah, the fact that it's called EUPHONIC distortion shows just how very taboo the idea is.
And as for your self-satisfied belief that you're opening 'some of us' here up to something new -- here's what I wrote in 2008 on a RAHE thread called "Best way/quality to record vinyl".
Note especially the reference BACK TO HA...and the part in bold too:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.audio.h...mp;dmode=source (http://groups.google.com/group/rec.audio.high-end/msg/55710ddf568a1574?hl=en&dmode=source)
Perhaps it's synchronicity, but a few threads have popped up related to this topic on other
forums lately , independent of this one
Here's one on Hydrogenaudio about a device that basically purports to re-create vinyl euphonic
distortion. Despite the initial negative reaction, the author of the site in question
(Richard Brice) doesn't seem to be the flooby type -- he's got a technical background, has
written a respectable book on music engineering, and responds intelligently on that thread ,
to critiques and questions.
He does seem to have done measurements , too, to confirm something about LP playback that can
make certain kinds of recording (e.g., from cardioids) 'sound better' in terms of imaging, to
him, than even the master tapes, due to addition of what he calls 'beneficial distortion', a
synonym for 'euphonic distortion'.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6644 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6644)
and here's his current site
http://classicproaudio.com/franci.htm (http://classicproaudio.com/franci.htm)
Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:
(p. 313):
"Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion."
Oh boy, you got me talking about stuff no one here wants said....
Yeah, the fact that it's called EUPHONIC distortion shows just how very taboo the idea is.
And as for your self-satisfied belief that you're opening 'some of us' here up to something new -- here's what I wrote in 2008 on a RAHE thread called "Best way/quality to record vinyl".
Note especially the reference BACK TO HA...and the part in bold too:
http://groups.google.com/group/rec.audio.h...mp;dmode=source (http://groups.google.com/group/rec.audio.high-end/msg/55710ddf568a1574?hl=en&dmode=source)
Perhaps it's synchronicity, but a few threads have popped up related to this topic on other
forums lately , independent of this one
Here's one on Hydrogenaudio about a device that basically purports to re-create vinyl euphonic
distortion. Despite the initial negative reaction, the author of the site in question
(Richard Brice) doesn't seem to be the flooby type -- he's got a technical background, has
written a respectable book on music engineering, and responds intelligently on that thread ,
to critiques and questions.
He does seem to have done measurements , too, to confirm something about LP playback that can
make certain kinds of recording (e.g., from cardioids) 'sound better' in terms of imaging, to
him, than even the master tapes, due to addition of what he calls 'beneficial distortion', a
synonym for 'euphonic distortion'.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6644 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6644)
and here's his current site
http://classicproaudio.com/franci.htm (http://classicproaudio.com/franci.htm)
Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:
(p. 313):
"Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion."
Great stuff Steve! Really. Thanks for reminding me. Hope you don't mind if I use this info to respond to another post.
Ultimately every playback system is colored. Ultimately every recording is colored as well. And (this is a big point to me) the very system of recording and playback in stereo or even multichannel is inherently colored or flawed.
So far so good.
The question is are there euphonic colorations that are universally preferable/compensatory when in play with a wide range of recordings.
The answer to that question is pretty much no. You look at the marketplace and you find that the overwhelming proportion of equipment was designed, despite their flaws, to be as uncolored as possible. Vritually every piece of mainstream electornics is designed to be flat within a fraction of a dB over the audible range. Speakers are a little weird because of their interaction with the rooms that they are used in, but even so the notions of flat smooth response show up all over the place. The reason for this has already been given - flat response is always the same thing while euphonic colorations are personal and/or specific to a miniscule fraction of all listening environments.
It is pretty hard to answer that question definitively. There are many variables involved. I have to go with my experience.
Scott, you're on a fool's mission because you think that there possibly can be "euphonic colorations that are universally preferable/compensatory when in play with a wide range of recordings" in this day and age. In the days of vinyl, I think that there might have been some possibility of that because of the rather gross limitations of that medium. Today, no. You'd have to invent a universe where all there was is vinyl, for your basic ideology to have a chance of being relevant.
I just don't see any sense to comitting to redesigning the universe to protect some odd ideology that I picked up some where.
Maybe you might want to look into this from Steve Sullivan
"Perhaps it's synchronicity, but a few threads have popped up related to this topic on other
forums lately , independent of this one
Here's one on Hydrogenaudio about a device that basically purports to re-create vinyl euphonic
distortion. Despite the initial negative reaction, the author of the site in question
(Richard Brice) doesn't seem to be the flooby type -- he's got a technical background, has
written a respectable book on music engineering, and responds intelligently on that thread ,
to critiques and questions.
He does seem to have done measurements , too, to confirm something about LP playback that can
make certain kinds of recording (e.g., from cardioids) 'sound better' in terms of imaging, to
him, than even the master tapes, due to addition of what he calls 'beneficial distortion', a
synonym for 'euphonic distortion'.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6644 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6644)
and here's his current site
http://classicproaudio.com/franci.htm (http://classicproaudio.com/franci.htm)
Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:
(p. 313):
'Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion.'"
Here is a link from the original youtube link that shows the worlds most expensive turntable rigs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfIUh0S7yTQ...re=more_related (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SfIUh0S7yTQ&feature=more_related)
I love the use of weasel words (which I have put in bold):
He does seem to have done measurements , too, to confirm something about LP playback that can
make certain kinds of recording (e.g., from cardioids) 'sound better' in terms of imaging, to
him, than even the master tapes, due to addition of what he calls 'beneficial distortion', a
synonym for 'euphonic distortion'.
[...]
Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:
(p. 313):
'Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion.'"
A far more reasonable explanation is that these people are predisposed to the distortions that are borne out of the use of vinyl.
I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime.
There will always be Luddites grasping at the hope (however faint) that they are justified in their beliefs.
I love the use of weasel words (which I have put in bold):
He does seem to have done measurements , too, to confirm something about LP playback that can
make certain kinds of recording (e.g., from cardioids) 'sound better' in terms of imaging, to
him, than even the master tapes, due to addition of what he calls 'beneficial distortion', a
synonym for 'euphonic distortion'.
[...]
Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:
(p. 313):
'Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion.'"
A far more reasonable explanation is that these people are predisposed to the distortions that are borne out of the use of vinyl.
What makes it "far more reasonable?' And how does such reason supercede actual research done by folks such as JJ?
I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime.
Indeed such fools buy into things like dither
As if dither is even remotely close to this magical inverse anti-reality transform that vinyl recording and playback are being almost-but-not-quite credited as providing.
As if dither is even remotely close to this magical inverse anti-reality transform that vinyl recording and playback are being almost-but-not-quite credited as providing.
Dither is added noise.
"I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime."
Dither does exactly what you find odd that people "want to believe."
Apparently you find it odd that JJ "wants to believe"...."distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative"
But why does JJ "want to believe" this? Oh yeah, "investigations reveal" it.
That JJ, what a ludite
Dither adds noise at the least significant bit.
Are you suggesting that this mystical vinyl transform that supposedly restores reality to recorded music only operates at the threshold of silence? Any and all accounts I've read about the coloration caused from vinyl works a levels far higher than that. Perhaps dither at the 13th or 14th bit might have energy that approaches the surface noise of vinyl, but surface noise is just *one* aspect of reproduction of vinyl that introduces degradation.
Concerning what investigations reveal, you make it sound black and white. Nothing that you've quoted or alluded contains any of the definitive language that you've just purported.
I'll gladly hear what JJ has to say about it himself. I certainly don't trust what you have to say about it in his stead.
We can sit here and may and might and possibly and seems as if all night long but at the end of it all no one can sit back and assure me that they have evidence that can rule out the conditioning resulting from having listened to vinyl for years if not decades prior to the digital age. This is pretty much characteristic of just about every post by you related to this topic has only served to reinforce my point: these tepid conclusions are fraught with expectation bias. It should not come as a surprise to anyone here that you would hold it up as your latest champion for subjectivity!
Guys, there's no point arguing about this - a hypothesis has been advanced - the HA way is to provide audio samples for verification.
The YouTube samples are far too low quality (and call me cynical, but I believe the one I linked to may be fake).
We need something properly captured from vinyl and CD to compare.
FWIW we've been through this before, and some examples have the vinyl mastered so obviously differently from the CD that it tells you nothing about the vinyl format. Even where the differences are subtle, the CD version can usually be tweaked to sound like the vinyl.
Even so, I'd be amazed if somewhere in scott's record collection there isn't some disc which sounds nicer on vinyl than CD (in his opinion) and I think it would be helpful to hear it so we can check (a) whether other people can hear a difference at all, and (b) what other people prefer.
Cheers,
David.
I love the use of weasel words (which I have put in bold):
BTW, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:
(p. 313):
'Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that there may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion.'"
A far more reasonable explanation is that these people are predisposed to the distortions that are borne out of the use of vinyl.
What makes it "far more reasonable?' And how does such reason supersede actual research done by folks such as JJ?
My Scott, how quickly you blow an offhand comment by JJ about something he says that "may be", into "actual research".
Do you know what JJ meant by "may be", Scott? While I don't know for sure, I have read enough research papers by JJ that he doesn't use "may be" to describe his evaluation of the main thesis of his work. "may be" for sure means far less than a 50% chance. It could describe a 0.001% chance.
Also remember Scott that I've known JJ personally for over a decade. I've been out to dinner with him twice in the past 6-8 months. I have a pretty fair idea whet he means by "may be" and trust me, it can easily mean something very speculative.
In this context, I would interpret his "may be" as "perhaps your shouldn't totally dismiss".
What I come up with, based on decades of experience trying to do such things, is that the odds of random influences actually compensating for some nonlienar distortion are pretty much slim and none. and mostly none Even when you know what you are doring and you are desperately trying, compensating for distortion by adding other distortion is a tricky business. This is particularly true for nonlinear distortion because nonlinear distortion has so many parameters that you have to hit square on.
I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime.
Indeed such fools buy into things like dither
The last comment about dither Scott shows just about anybody who really understands the role of dither in digital audio that sometimes you just piece words together for effect - you don't really know what you are saying much of the time. Combine that with your inflation of an offhand "may be" into "research, and we've got a clear image of someone clutching at straws.
What I come up with, based on decades of experience trying to do such things, is that the odds of random influences actually compensating for some nonlienar distortion are pretty much slim and none. and mostly none Even when you know what you are doring and you are desperately trying, compensating for distortion by adding other distortion is a tricky business. This is particularly true for nonlinear distortion because nonlinear distortion has so many parameters that you have to hit square on.
It's not so random though, is it?
I mean, a recording is generally cleaner (in a lot of ways!) than a live event. Vinyl is generally less clean than a CD.
Anyway, to make it better in a subjective sense, you don't have to reverse the mathematical effect of the change - you only have to make another change that brings the emotional response of the listener closer to what it would have been, and (for the practical purposes of listening to music), you've got closer to the original experience, even if in pure signal processing terms you could be even further off.
Think of the tricks film makers use to create emotion in cinema - which make the (until recently) 2D 24fps presentation even more distorted from reality, but in a way that certain feelings and expressions are conveyed
better through the limited medium available.
I'm sure sound can and is manipulated in the same way.
The only disagreement is probably that most of us think that manipulation should stop when it leaves the studio, while others are happy to let their playback equipment manipulate it a bit more!
I have to be bluntly honest here and say that I have several thousands recordings on various formats, and I can't think of one where the audible or barely audible distortions of vinyl conclusively improve it without also degrading it in some way - the only positive examples I have are of recordings where the CD master is clearly inferior to the vinyl master for some reason which has nothing to do with format.
But I do have plenty of recordings which I can intentionally change myself to sound better
to me - and in some of those cases, I think the changes would generally be appreciated as an improvement by most listeners. So I don't agree with the general implied rule that a recording mustn't change after it leaves the studio.
So I don't think it's beyond the realm of possibility that very subtle vinyl characteristics can improve some recordings - which is why I'd love to hear some examples.
Cheers,
David.
I made a wave of high frequency (a sine of 10 khz and one of 15 khz) and mixed them in a 192 khz file, then downsampled to 44.1 and then back up to 192. It did not look the same as the original. That's just my own observations. A simple single sine wave will be unharmed in the process, though.
If you mix 10 and 15 khz sine waves, one of the products is 25 khz. That won't survive your resampling 20 44.1 and back, so no surprise that the end result looks different. Unless you can hear 25 khz though, it shouldn't sound different.
Generally when people put out scenarios to "prove" that 44.1 kHz sampling can't fully represent 20 kHz they are either pointing at some artifact >20 khz, or they don't understand that the very few points per cycle at frequencies near the limit get turned back to smooth waves with the low pass filtering.
If you mix 10 and 15 khz sine waves, one of the products is 25 khz.
Only if you multiply them. Not if you simply add them.
Cheers,
David.
Dieses Video enthält Content von UMG. Es ist in deinem Land nicht verfügbar.
Dieses Video enthält Content von UMG. Es ist in deinem Land nicht verfügbar.
"This video contains content from UMG. It is not available in your country"?
Yes, YouTube is quite good at spotting copyrighted music in videos. What they're licensed to play varies from country to country.
It's identified on the UK version too, but it plays OK - with a "buy at iTunes" link at the bottom.
Cheers,
David.
I made a wave of high frequency (a sine of 10 khz and one of 15 khz) and mixed them in a 192 khz file, then downsampled to 44.1 and then back up to 192. It did not look the same as the original. That's just my own observations. A simple single sine wave will be unharmed in the process, though.
If you mix 10 and 15 khz sine waves, one of the products is 25 khz.
As David points out, no!
If the mixing is linear which is the usual case, then there are simply no products at all.
If resampling from 192 to 44.1 changes a file with just 10 and 15 KHz tones in it in any way, even the slightest amount, then something is very wrong.
I've done this sort of thing many times over the years because I favor 2-tone testing. 10 and 15 KHz is one test I've done fairly often, but I favor 19 and 20 KHz.
If listening is involved I like 16 and 20 KHz, which if intermodulated will produce a tone at 4 KHz where the ear is most sensitive. 19 and 20 KHz is also good for listening tests for intermodulation, because if reproduced clearnly, there is very little that is audible. If there is the slightest intermodulation, then it is pretty obvioius. Music lhigh pass filtered at 10 KHz is an excellent test for clipping.
Anyway, to make it better in a subjective sense, you don't have to reverse the mathematical effect of the change - you only have to make another change that brings the emotional response of the listener closer to what it would have been, and (for the practical purposes of listening to music), you've got closer to the original experience, even if in pure signal processing terms you could be even further off.
We're talking about two different things. I'm talking about an actual technical improvement, and you seem to be talking about putting in some even greater flaw.
For example i've heard some people speculate that second order nonlinear distortion in a LP would actually compensate for a similar distortin due to the passage of music through the air. So again my question is "what are the odds that a LP would happen to have only second order nonlinear distoriton and have it in the narrow band of amounts that would actually audibly improve sound quality." The obvious answer is that you'd have to be very lucky for that to happen. So much so that if you actually were that lucky some day you should probably stop listening to your stereo and run right out and spend all or your your paycheck and your savings on lottery tickets! ;-)
Well, I'm about to go home sick, but I should say the following:
LP's have different distortion mechanisms for M and S, as well as different frequency responses, generally, for M and S (rather than L and R).
Some of the distortion mechanisms, applied in small amounts, can create a sensation of more "space", "width" and such. If you like this, you like it. So be it.
Also, the rising distortion with level in an LP does, and pretty clearly, create a sense of an increased dynamic range in LOUDNESS (i.e. sensation level) with less increase in INTENSITY. This can be seen from first principles. Again, a small or moderate amount can seem "better" to some folks.
What's amusing is that you can do all of these distortions digitally by being smart, and make your CD sound like the amount of euphony you want from your LP. The problem is that then the result is (gasp!) DIGITAL, and the LP dudes for the most part want nothing to do with it. There is also the problem that many of the "purists" (those are scare quotes indeed) rail at the idea of DISTORTION, GASP CHOKE WHINE, rather than admit they like it. Finally, there are some folks on the "skeptical" side who are unwilling to accept that folks may prefer something that is less accurate.
But none of the preferences are ubiquitous, even though the "loudness enhancement" seems to be close.
Ok, going back to sleep now.
LP's have different distortion mechanisms for M and S, as well as different frequency responses, generally, for M and S (rather than L and R).
Wouldn't it be amusing if the same people who refuse to use joint stereo were also big fans of vinyl?
Also, the rising distortion with level in an LP does, and pretty clearly, create a sense of an increased dynamic range in LOUDNESS (i.e. sensation level) with less increase in INTENSITY. This can be seen from first principles. Again, a small or moderate amount can seem "better" to some folks.
<snip>
But none of the preferences are ubiquitous, even though the "loudness enhancement" seems to be close.
This is also one of the key components of the "tube sound" in tube amps, whether from actual tube overdrive or from transformer saturation (load-dependent frequency response variations due to high output impedance is another), and in particular the "flea-power" single-ended triode amps that are so fashionable these days.
I love the use of weasel words (which I have put in bold):
I love that you think that I was *weaseling* about anything, when I was actually trying be *careful*.
Let me spell it out for you. Steve Sullivan is me. Krabapple = Steven Sullivan. IOW *I* made that Usenet post,as I said already. I dug up and copied it here to show smug old Scott that the idea of 'euphonic' distortions being, you know, EUPHONIC... to SOME listeners ...as not new to HA.
For some reason you chose to respond to Scott's trollish *re-posting*, which was meant obviously and only to get a rise out of Arny..
So, read it again with a different *predisposition*, please.
He does seem to have done measurements , too, to confirm something about LP playback that can
make certain kinds of recording (e.g., from cardioids) 'sound better' in terms of imaging, to
him, than even the master tapes, due to addition of what he calls 'beneficial distortion', a
synonym for 'euphonic distortion'.
Yes, 'seems', because if you read Brice's report, he writes about them. They weren't published formally though, AFAIR. I was also careful to note that the records sounded better TO HIM, than the master tapes.
Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
I suppose I could track down those posts, or I could just ask JJ to comment here. Which would you prefer?
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:
Yes 'might'. The alternatives are 'never' and 'always' . Both of those strike me as TOS violations, at the very least.
Btw, you missed two other 'somes' in that thought, that I put there for a reason.
(p. 313):
'Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion.'"
A far more reasonable explanation is that these people are predisposed to the distortions that are borne out of the use of vinyl.
Why is that 'far more reasonable' than the idea that
some listeners experience what are widely called EUPHONIC distortions as 'compensatory'?
I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime.
There will always be Luddites grasping at the hope (however faint) that they are justified in their beliefs.
Look, this concept is not bizarre. I like to play all 2-channel material through DPL II. That's 'coloration' -- 'dirt and grime' to you, I guess' -- up the wazoo, and I find it 'euphonic' and that it typically 'compensates for deficiencies' (namely, the lack of ambience/envelopment) in many recordings. It's totally subjective. You're saying this CANNOT be the case for LPs, that preference *must* be due to prejudice?
(Btw, synthetic ambience 'enhancement' is one of the predicted effects of the vinyl beast's crosstalk characteristics...personally I prefer Dolby's more well-thought-out implementation.)
I love that you think that I was *weaseling* about anything, when I was actually trying be *careful*. Steve Sullivan is me. Now read it again.
Great, thanks. Seems analog scott still can't figure out how to craft a proper reply, but has instead chosen to go the lazy route and still managed to botch it, or he tried to be careful but couldn't get it right and then couldn't be arsed to fix it, IDK. Either way not much has changed from my point of view.
I could just ask JJ to comment here.
Already done. Launching a reply before reading the rest of the thread, perhaps? If so then I guess we made the same mistake.
Why is that 'far more reasonable' than the idea that some listeners experience what are widely called EUPHONIC distortions as 'compensatory'?
I don't care if you like the way they sound. Suggesting that they get you closer to reality would be claim sorely lacking in evidence. While you may not hold this opinion, it is my belief that the person I addressed in my reply does.
'compensates for deficiencies' (namely, the lack of ambience/envelopment) in many recordings. It's totally subjective. You're saying this CANNOT be the case for LPs, that preference *must* be due to prejudice?
I'm saying that your conditioned preferences from experience with a certain sound are more reasonable than the format magically fixing something.
JJ didn't write anything in that quote.
That quote is me, writing on RAHE, referring RAHE readers back to HA, where there was a thread about Mr. Brice's ideas and product (he also contributed to the HA thread).
(The HA thread link to I gave RAHE , btw, appears to be wrong. The right one is
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....howtopic=66445) (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=66445))
I mentioned JJ in passing because JJ has, indeed, in the past written about euphonic distortions of LP being , you know, EUPHONIC to *some* listeners,
and discussed reasons why, on various forums.
I love the use of weasel words (which I have put in bold):
BTW, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:
(p. 313):
'Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that there may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion.'"
A far more reasonable explanation is that these people are predisposed to the distortions that are borne out of the use of vinyl.
What makes it "far more reasonable?' And how does such reason supersede actual research done by folks such as JJ?
My Scott, how quickly you blow an offhand comment by JJ about something he says that "may be", into "actual research".
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....st&p=726941 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=84208&view=findpost&p=726941)
*sigh*
Great, thanks. Seems analog scott still can't figure out how to craft a proper reply, but has instead chosen to go the lazy route and still managed to botch it, or he tried to be careful but couldn't get it right and then couldn't be arsed to fix it, IDK. Either way not much has changed from my point of view.
.
.
.
Already done. Launching a reply before reading the rest of the thread, perhaps? If so then I guess we made the same mistake.
I didn't read the rest of the thread. But you apparently didn't read the post *I* made *before* Scott's, which would have informed you that *I* wrote what was quoted, and why it was posted here, nor do you seem to have actually read the quote itself in anything but a prejudicial manner from a stance of TEH VINYLZ IS RONG.
Quite different mistakes. And funnily enough , now that JJ has here reiterated here the 'hints' I referred to in '08, in as un-weaselly a fashion as one could hope, expessing the same idea that euphonic distortion can indeed be euphonic to some listeners, as I have, I don't see you getting up in his grille.
You also didn't read the HA thread I pointed to in the quote, where the issue of 'beneficial' distortion is discussed by HA folk, but that one's on me, because the link I gave RAHE really was RONG. The right one is:
Francinstien audio proccessing, is this acoustically valid?, Examination of the Francinstien process claim.
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=66445 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=66445)
I don't care if you like the way they sound. Suggesting that they get you closer to reality would be claim sorely lacking in evidence.
That's indeed a different claim. I said NOTHING about 'accuracy'. But it also gets into the question of 'what reality are you referring to'? The sound of the music as played in the original space and time, heard from some specified seat? The sound the mastering engineer heard at the console when he was done? Some preconceived idea of what 'real' music 'should' sound like?
I'm saying that your conditioned preferences from experience with a certain sound are more reasonable than the format magically fixing something.
'magically fixing something'? Nice straw man you've built there.
Quite different mistakes.
Nonsense. You didn't see JJ's reply before going nonlinear on me just as I didn't see that you wrote what analog scott failed to properly quote. So I didn't check the links, BFD. Even if I had I probably wouldn't have noticed scott's mistake, still.
But it also gets into the question of 'what reality are you referring to'? The sound of the music as played in the original space and time, heard from some specified seat? The sound the mastering engineer heard at the console when he was done? Some preconceived idea of what 'real' music 'should' sound like?
Good, I'm glad you see the point.
'magically fixing something'? Nice straw man you've built there.
So you're now telling me that no one in this thread is suggesting that the distortions resulting out of vinyl aren't getting us closer to reality? Seems you should read analog scott's replies again. No, there is no straw man.
I owned up to my misquote already. You can simmer down at any time now.
Quite different mistakes.
Nonsense. You didn't see JJ's reply before going nonlinear on me.
LOL. So, if I had read JJ's post, which *vindicated* me, I'd have been *less* scornful of your reflex reaction to my RAHE post? Interesting hypothesis. In the meantime, while you were writing this, I was revising what you were replying to, on that very point.
But it also gets into the question of 'what reality are you referring to'? The sound of the music as played in the original space and time, heard from some specified seat? The sound the mastering engineer heard at the console when he was done? Some preconceived idea of what 'real' music 'should' sound like?
Good, I'm glad you see the point.
The point was to show that HA and 'some people here' have grappled with issues and ideas Scott claims are 'taboo' here, before. That's all.
So you're now telling me that no one in this thread is suggesting that the distortions resulting out of vinyl aren't getting us closer to reality? Seems you should read analog scott's replies again. No, there is no straw man.
I owned up to my misquote already. You can simmer down at any time now.
No one is positing a 'magical' process, nor is it at all clear that you and Scott mean the same thing by 'closer to reality'. Feel free to hash that out with him, if you enjoy playing a tedious game he's played many times already.
LOL. So, if I had read JJ's post, which *vindicated* me, I'd have been *less* scornful of your reflex reaction to my RAHE post? Interesting hypothesis. In the meantime, while you were writing this, I was revising what you were replying to, on that very point.
We each missed something that was posted by someone else. Is there some reason why you wish to make it into something more than it is?
I don't care if you like the way they sound. Suggesting that they get you closer to reality would be claim sorely lacking in evidence.
That's indeed a different claim. I said NOTHING about 'accuracy'. But it also gets into the question of 'what reality are you referring to'? The sound of the music as played in the original space and time, heard from some specified seat? The sound the mastering engineer heard at the console when he was done? Some preconceived idea of what 'real' music 'should' sound like?
Perhaps you have said nothing about accuracy, though the quote you pulled from Brice smells of it, to me at least.
Let's have another look at the quote...
Btw, there's a quote on that HA thread from Brice's book that mirrors a hypothesis I have put
forward before -- and one that JJ has also hinted at on some posts on other forums --
to explain the 'vinyl sound's' fanbase, namely, that some kinds of distortion might happen to
compensate for deficiencies of some recording:
(p. 313):
"Interestingly investigations reveal that distortion mechanisms in reproduction form vinyl and
other analogue media may indeed be just those required to bring about an improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image. This suggests that ther may be something in the hi-fi
cognoscenti's preference for vinyl over CD and for many recording musicians' preference for
analogue over the, apparently better, digital alternative -- though not, as they invariably
suppose, due to digital mysteriously taking something away but due to the analogue equipment
adding beneficial distortion."
Are you or are you not equating "compensate for deficiencies" to "improvement in the
realism of the reproduced stereo image"
If so, then I call bullshit.
If you're talking about a subjective position then please explain how this can't be described by a preconditioned response and/or expectation bias based on being accustomed to listening to things on vinyl.
Regarding the term "compensate for deficiencies" I'm still looking for where JJ has "vindicated" your choice in words. Oh, yes, he only "hinted" based on what appears to be your subjective point of view.
Perhaps I'm simply hung up on the use of the word realism, just as many of us were recently hung up on the word truth being used in a subjective way in a different thread.
create a sense of an increased dynamic range in LOUDNESS (i.e. sensation level) with less increase in INTENSITY.
I'm hoping you can explain what you mean by an increased dynamic range in loudness. It sounds to me like you're describing something that would decrease dynamic range.
create a sense of an increased dynamic range in LOUDNESS (i.e. sensation level) with less increase in INTENSITY.
I'm hoping you can explain what you mean by an increased dynamic range in loudness. It sounds to me like you're describing something that would decrease dynamic range.
Look at www.aes.org/sections/pnw/ppt.htm Look at the difference between loudness (sensoria) and intensity (measured power).
changing the bandwidth of a signal changes the relationship of loudness to intensity. A lot, sometimes.
create a sense of an increased dynamic range in LOUDNESS (i.e. sensation level) with less increase in INTENSITY.
I'm hoping you can explain what you mean by an increased dynamic range in loudness. It sounds to me like you're describing something that would decrease dynamic range.
It's pretty well known among experienced production people that the same music at the same actual SPL will often sound "louder" when certain kinds of linear and nonlinear distortion are added.
For example, mild clipping can make the high end sound zippier and louder. Some people tend to unconsciously equate more irritating with the sound appearing to be louder. So, throw in some nonlinear distortion. You can be subtle about it and add the distortion with nonlinear function generators programmed to apply polynomials, or you can be less subtle and just clip the !@#!! out of it.
Linear distortion in the spectral domain applied in such a way as to shift the energy into the octaves where the ear is more sensitive works very well.
Linear distortion in the amplitude domain in the form of compression can increase the apparent loudness of music with the same peak levels.
Here's a practical example of how spectral processing applied for other reasons can have this outcome. We all know that the LP format has pretty severe dynamic range issues at the extremes of the audible spectrum, especially with suboptimal playback equipment. So for decades mastering engineers have summarily reduced the response of LPs in the deep bass and extreme highs. Once you do that, the peak level of the music has probably decreased a lot, so you can just turn up the gain. You end up with music with the same peak levels (and that's what shows up on Vu meters) but is subjectively louder. Eventually people came up with specialized processors that did this sort of thing dynamically and auto-magically. See studio and broadcasting products of the day by Orban and CBS labs, for example.
I personally know the senior tech staff who worked at Motown in their best days in Detroit. Motown's console's channel strips, per top management command, had hard wired high pass filters with steep slopes, corner frequency about 85 Hz. One reason why this was done was because they all knew what their target audience's playback equipment was probably like. Their record players were very often $19.95 2-tube, crystal cartridge mono record players with a cheap-cheap 4" speaker in a paperboard box covered with cheap-cheap simulated leather. No sense putting deep bass on LPs that are going to be played that way. It just makes the playback equipment unhappy and contributes zero to listener enjoyment. So, the Motown records of that era were quite intentionally monitored, mixed, and mastered all the way through the production process with *all* deep and medium bass gone. This helped ensure that they played louder both on the radio and at home.
Perhaps I'm simply hung up on the use of the word realism, just as many of us were recently hung up on the word truth being used in a subjective way in a different thread.
In a typical report, including Mr. Brice's, where the recorded audio is not being directly compared to the actual originating performance in real space, what the subject calls 'realism' is nothing more or less than the subject's notion of what 'real' *should* sound like. The notion is (presumably) derived from general experience of sounds in real space -- a sense memory -- but that doesn't make the notion an accurate guide to what the particular performance *really* sounded like. Whether a subject's notion of 'realism' is accurate is a matter for testing. And this is all leaving aside the fact that recordings typically fall far short of being ABLE to accurately capture all facets of sound in real space. And leaving aside what it means to 'realism', that a recording can be made to sound 'better' than the original reality (e.g, distracting noise edited out).
To suggest that vinylphiles' notion of realism is more likely to come from vinyl sound itself, begs the question of what vinlyphiles mean when they report that one recording on LP sounds 'more realistic' than another.
In any case I *don't* believe that vinylphiles' notion of 'realism' is
necessarily accurate, any more than a digiphiles' is. But we all get to like what we like.
Dither adds noise at the least significant bit.
Your assertion was "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime." Dither *is* noise. It is "dirt and grime" it does improve resolution which is "more pure and clean" in effect.
Are you suggesting that this mystical vinyl transform that supposedly restores reality to recorded music only operates at the threshold of silence?
I was suggesting that your implied assertion that things can't "be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime." was quite ironic and eroneous in light of the fact that dither does just that.
Any and all accounts I've read about the coloration caused from vinyl works a levels far higher than that.
It would seem that prior to this thread you have not read JJ's accounts.
Perhaps dither at the 13th or 14th bit might have energy that approaches the surface noise of vinyl, but surface noise is just *one* aspect of reproduction of vinyl that introduces degradation.
"degredation" is subjective when we are talking about perceptions in audio. And we *are* talking about perceptions here.
Concerning what investigations reveal, you make it sound black and white.
I do? Lets check to see what I actually worte on the subject in this thread as it relates to being "black and white."
From post #6
"I believe JJ has done some research on ::gasp:: "euphonic colorations" from vinyl and tubed electronics and has even come up with a digital simulation for tube euphonic colorations."
From post#18
"The question is are there euphonic colorations that are universally preferable/compensatory when in play with a wide range of recordings. It is pretty hard to answer that question definitively. There are many variables involved."
Does that really sound "black and white" to you?
Nothing that you've quoted or alluded contains any of the definitive language that you've just purported.
Just what "definitive language" have I purported?
I'll gladly hear what JJ has to say about it himself. I certainly don't trust what you have to say about it in his stead.
What I have said was a quote from JJ provided by Steve Sullivan. So you have already heard what he had to say about it and you found it unreasonable. I will leave that to you and JJ.
We can sit here and may and might and possibly and seems as if all night long but at the end of it all no one can sit back and assure me that they have evidence that can rule out the conditioning resulting from having listened to vinyl for years if not decades prior to the digital age.
I have confidence that JJ's research on the subject actually does rule that out. As does the research of Richard Brice. If you have any reason to believe otherwise then please make the argument.
This is pretty much characteristic of just about every post by you related to this topic has only served to reinforce my point: these tepid conclusions are fraught with expectation bias. It should not come as a surprise to anyone here that you would hold it up as your latest champion for subjectivity!
I'm not sure what you have been reading but it does not appear to be what I am actually writing. It looks to me that you have drawn your conclusions about me regardless of the content of my posts. Now if you have any research that you have been sitting on suggesting euphonic colorations are all a bunch of bullshit then maybe you should consider the possibility that your position on the subject is based on your biases.
Dither adds noise at the least significant bit.
Your assertion was "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime." Dither *is* noise. It is "dirt and grime" it does improve resolution which is "more pure and clean" in effect.
This is just another audiophile urban myth. Not that dither isn't noise, becauase it is. But, in the context Scott is confusing analog noise that is typically 66 dB down with digital noise that is typically more like 96 dB down. 30 dB is a *huge* difference. It's the difference between a 1 watt amplifier and a 1,000 watt amplifier. Apparently, Scott doesn't think that the difference between 1 watt and 1,000 watts can make a difference.
Furthermore, the shape of the spectrum of the noise floor of a LP is dictated by the mechanics of the medium and therefore cast in concrete, The noise floor due to dither can be shaped in accordance with our preferences. The benefits of this ability to shape the spectrum of the noise floor of digital formats bears real fruit in terms of reducing its subjective impact even further.
So, don't buy Scott's anti-digital propaganda. I'm prett\y sure that he's been corrected about this very point in the past, but he likes to attract unfavorable atttention to himself by repeating his misapprehensions about digital again and again.
BTW, the same kind of difference relates to nonlinear distortion as well, only the difference is far greater than it is for dither noise. For openers, there is no inherent nonlinear distortion in the digital domain. None at all.
Dither adds noise at the least significant bit.
Your assertion was "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime." Dither *is* noise. It is "dirt and grime" it does improve resolution which is "more pure and clean" in effect.
This is just another audiophile urban myth. Not that dither isn't noise, becauase it is. But, in the context Scott is confusing analog noise that is typically 66 dB down with digital noise that is typically more like 96 dB down. 30 dB is a *huge* difference.
How am I confusing dither with any other sort of noise when I make no mention of any other sort of noise? I am only talking about dither here. Nothing more nothing less. I think I made that very clear. No confusion on *my* end of it.
So, don't buy Scott's anti-digital propaganda.
asserting that dither is added noise/added distortion but actually improves resolution is anti-digital propaganda? Really?
I'm prett\y sure that he's been corrected about this very point in the past, but he likes to attract unfavorable atttention to himself by repeating his misapprehensions about digital again and again.
I doubt that I have been "corrected" on this point since it is a fact that dither is added noise that does improve resolution. If you have evidence to the contrary please present it.
Dither adds noise at the least significant bit.
Your assertion was "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime." Dither *is* noise. It is "dirt and grime" it does improve resolution which is "more pure and clean" in effect.
This is just another audiophile urban myth. Not that dither isn't noise, becauase it is. But, in the context Scott is confusing analog noise that is typically 66 dB down with digital noise that is typically more like 96 dB down. 30 dB is a *huge* difference.
How am I confusing dither with any other sort of noise when I make no mention of any other sort of noise?
Scott if you want to tell us you don't know what this thread's name is, I wish you all the luck in the world with your already burdensome credibility problem.
Dither adds noise at the least significant bit.
Your assertion was "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime." Dither *is* noise. It is "dirt and grime" it does improve resolution which is "more pure and clean" in effect.
This is just another audiophile urban myth. Not that dither isn't noise, becauase it is. But, in the context Scott is confusing analog noise that is typically 66 dB down with digital noise that is typically more like 96 dB down. 30 dB is a *huge* difference.
How am I confusing dither with any other sort of noise when I make no mention of any other sort of noise?
Scott if you want to tell us you don't know what this thread's name is, I wish you all the luck in the world with your already burdensome credibility problem.
My comment was a direct response to the specific comment "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime." That is all. The thread title does not affect that. "People showing how great their turntables sound, ...on YouTube!" ?????
We can sit here and may and might and possibly and seems as if all night long but at the end of it all no one can sit back and assure me that they have evidence that can rule out the conditioning resulting from having listened to vinyl for years if not decades prior to the digital age.
I have confidence that JJ's research on the subject actually does rule that out. As does the research of Richard Brice. If you have any reason to believe otherwise then please make the argument.
It's not 'ruled out'. Nor is it unreasonable to posit that veteran vinylphiles' quality assessment of 'realism' is at least *influenced* by their emotional investment in the technology. A 'phantom switch' test could be telling. For example, if I were to present the same audio to vinylphiles twice, but tell them that one presentation is the vinyl, the other is CD, and ask them which sound more 'realistic', do you seriously think that every one of them would 1) recognize the ruse or 2) tend to find the 'CD' more realistic?
(FWIW, the same applies to 'digiphiles'..it's expectation bias and not one of us is immune. And this, again, is why blinding is so important...and informative.)
We can sit here and may and might and possibly and seems as if all night long but at the end of it all no one can sit back and assure me that they have evidence that can rule out the conditioning resulting from having listened to vinyl for years if not decades prior to the digital age.
I have confidence that JJ's research on the subject actually does rule that out. As does the research of Richard Brice. If you have any reason to believe otherwise then please make the argument.
It's not 'ruled out'. Nor is it unreasonable to posit that veteran vinylphiles' quality assessment of 'realism' is at least *influenced* by their emotional investment in the technology. A 'phantom switch' test could be telling. For example, if I were to present the same audio to vinylphiles twice, but tell them that one presentation is the vinyl, the other is CD, and ask them which sound more 'realistic', do you seriously think they'd 1) unfailingly recognize the ruse or 2) tend to find the 'CD' more realistic?
(FWIW, the same applies to 'digiphiles'..it's expectation bias and none of us are immune. And this, again, is why blinding is so important...and informative.)
It looks like I was not clear. Allow me to clarify. I have confidence that we can rule out bias effects affecting *the research that JJ has done on the subject.* In rereading my post I can see how it could look like I was saying JJ's research has ruled out bias effects among audiophiles when it comes to euphonic colorations. That was not what I was trying to say. Sorry about my lack of clarity there.
Your assertion was "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime." Dither *is* noise. It is "dirt and grime" it does improve resolution which is "more pure and clean" in effect.
I think you have this backards. Dither is applied when you reduce the bitdepth of the digitized signal. Reducing the bitdepth introduces quantization "noise". You add in dither in the process of reducing the bitdepth in order to make the added noise less audible.
i.e. adding dither makes the resultant audio sound closer to the original, but with or without dither what you have is less "pure and clean" than the original.
Your assertion was "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime." Dither *is* noise. It is "dirt and grime" it does improve resolution which is "more pure and clean" in effect.
I think you have this backards. Dither is applied when you reduce the bitdepth of the digitized signal. Reducing the bitdepth introduces quantization "noise". You add in dither in the process of reducing the bitdepth in order to make the added noise less audible.
Quantizanation noise is present in any real world A/D conversion. One does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there. Reduction in bit depth just makes it worse.
My comment was a direct response to the specific comment "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime."
Scott, are you trying to convince us that the comment about adding "dirt and grime" had *nothing at all* to do with what LP's do to music?
If that was so, then it was complely off-topic and you should have dismissed it on the grounds of irrlevance.
Since you tried to reply to the comment. you obviously thought it was relevant. Since you obviously thought it was relevant, you're admitting that it was related to the LP format. That birngs us back to where you were pretending that a 30 dB differente means nothing.
Executive summary Scott, you are guilty as charged.
Next!
My comment was a direct response to the specific comment "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime."
Scott, are you trying to convince us that the comment about adding "dirt and grime" had *nothing at all* to do with what LP's do to music?
I took the comment for what it literally meant as it was written. I do not pretend to know what Greynol was *thinking.* I'll leave that to you. If he meant something different than what he actually wrote he is free to correct it.
Since you tried to reply to the comment. you obviously thought it was relevant.
Oh, so you know what I was thinking despite my actual explinations as to what I was thinking.
Since you obviously thought it was relevant, you're admitting that it was related to the LP format.
OK let me be really really really clear here. It was a response to that one assertion and only that one assertion and I did not try to connect it to vinyl or youtube. Is that clear enough?
Your assertion was "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime." Dither *is* noise. It is "dirt and grime" it does improve resolution which is "more pure and clean" in effect.
I think you have this backards. Dither is applied when you reduce the bitdepth of the digitized signal. Reducing the bitdepth introduces quantization "noise". You add in dither in the process of reducing the bitdepth in order to make the added noise less audible.
Quantizanation noise is present in any real world A/D conversion. One does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there. Reduction in bit depth just makes it worse.
Your non-answer tells me that you don't want to address the point that I was trying to make.
Quantizanation noise is present in any real world A/D conversion. One does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there. Reduction in bit depth just makes it worse.
When you add more bits, the quantization noise drops accordingly.
Ergo, at 24 bits, you can render signals from the noise level of the atmosphere at your ear drum to 150dB SPL.
AT 32 bits, you'll need military equipment marked with yellow danger signs in order to render the highest levels.
With 16 bits, you can only get to 102dB SPL, give or take, starting at the noise level of the atmosphere.
If we start at the noise level of an ITU spec room, then you get to 111dB SPL with 16 bits.
What's your point?
One does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there.
Oh, I do it all the time. I love quantization noise, have converted my whole library to 8 bit, undithered of course. I love the dirt & grime it adds to the music
Your assertion was "I find it odd that people so desperately want to believe that things can be made more pure and clean by introducing dirt and grime." Dither *is* noise. It is "dirt and grime" it does improve resolution which is "more pure and clean" in effect.
I think you have this backards. Dither is applied when you reduce the bitdepth of the digitized signal. Reducing the bitdepth introduces quantization "noise". You add in dither in the process of reducing the bitdepth in order to make the added noise less audible.
Quantizanation noise is present in any real world A/D conversion. One does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there. Reduction in bit depth just makes it worse.
Your non-answer tells me that you don't want to address the point that I was trying to make.
My "non naswer?" I'm sorry was there a question that I missed?
Quantizanation noise is present in any real world A/D conversion. One does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there. Reduction in bit depth just makes it worse.
When you add more bits, the quantization noise drops accordingly.
Ergo, at 24 bits, you can render signals from the noise level of the atmosphere at your ear drum to 150dB SPL.
AT 32 bits, you'll need military equipment marked with yellow danger signs in order to render the highest levels.
With 16 bits, you can only get to 102dB SPL, give or take, starting at the noise level of the atmosphere.
If we start at the noise level of an ITU spec room, then you get to 111dB SPL with 16 bits.
What's your point?
My point is one does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there. Reduction in bit depth just makes it worse. That was my point. Am I in error in that assertion? pdq said "Reducing the bitdepth introduces quantization 'noise'. " I am saying it does not "intruduce" it because it is already there but that it simply makes it worse.
@analog_scott: Nitpicking is ok, as long as you indicate clearly what you are nitpicking. In this case, it seems it is the meaning of introducing.
A DAC does not introduce quantization distortion, since it decodes a digital signal at its specific bit depth. If any, there is thermal noise which we all know it's a different topic.
An ADC may, or may not introduce quantization distortion, depending on the implementation. Of course, the same logic about reducing bit depth in digital signals apply to reducing the "bit depth" of an analog signal. Just like there should be a lowpass filter previous to the ADC, there's the need to apply some type of dithering when converting to a specific amount of bits.*
I guess that's just another reason why we are ok to use higher sampling rates/bit depths for digitizing/post-processing signals, while we are not so open to accept blindly that it is needed for playback.
* What has been said in other posts is that, in the majority of situations, the SNR of the signal being recorded is smaller than what the digital signal can record, and by definition, the noise floor of the analog signal being "noisier" than that of the digital signal, effectively hiding any noise below. (Readings about self-dithering signals could apply here).
[Edit: changed quantization noise by quantization distortion, since it's the preferred name]
My point is one does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there.
Scott, if by that you mean that whenever you quantize something, there is error and we commonly (and somewhat misleadingly) often call that error *quantization noise*, then I must agree.
Anything that is quantized is quantized in an imperfect way. We have this interesting convention of calling those imperfections "quantization noise". In fact these particular imperfections are not strictly speaking *noise* since just about everything else we call noise is random, and this particular kind imperfection is completely deterministic.
IOW, *quantization noise* should be called quantization distortion. Some authorities do exactly that.
My point is one does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there.
Scott, if by that you mean that whenever you quantize something, there is error and we commonly (and somewhat misleadingly) often call that error *quantization noise*, then I must agree.
Anything that is quantized is quantized in an imperfect way. We have this interesting convention of calling those imperfections "quantization noise". In fact these particular imperfections are not strictly speaking *noise* since just about everything else we call noise is random, and this particular kind imperfection is completely deterministic.
IOW, *quantization noise* should be called quantization distortion. Some authorities do exactly that.
That is what I meant and thank you for the clarification on the terminology.
All apologies again to Steve Sullivan for my shameless attack on Arny in this post
A DAC does not introduce quantization distortion, since it decodes a digital signal at its specific bit depth. If any, there is thermal noise which we all know it's a different topic.
If we add what you mention later on about the SNR of the signal being far worse (10 dB or more worse) than that of the DAC, and do the math, the noise that is added by the DAC is on the order of 0.4 dB or less. IOW, it is practically meaningless.
An ADC may, or may not introduce quantization distortion, depending on the implementation.
I don't know how to quantize a signal wihout introducing at least microscopic amounts of quantization error.
Of course, the same logic about reducing bit depth in digital signals apply to reducing the "bit depth" of an analog signal.
To be pedantic, there is no way to reduce the bit depth of an analog signal, since it doesn't have any bits to start with! ;-)
Just like there should be a lowpass filter previous to the ADC, there's the need to apply some type of dithering when converting to a specific amount of bits.*
The purpose of dithering is to randomize the quantication error. As I said in another recent post, quantization error is completely predictable. It correlates with both the input signal and the clock. In practice this opens the door for some ugly sounds that the ear is more likely to detect because they are cohenrent. By randomizing the quantixation error, we change it into broadband noise which is much more likely to escape audiblity. Or if audible (e.g. an 8 bit system) randomizing the quantization error makes it less irritating. We can also spectrally shape the quantization error signal to some degree, and put most of its energy where the ear iis far less sensitive.
I guess that's just another reason why we are ok to use higher sampling rates/bit depths for digitizing/post-processing signals, while we are not so open to accept blindly that it is needed for playback.
Higher than what? Sample rates above 32 KHz and word lengths above 12-13 bits can provide bandwidth limits and noise floors that are far from obvioius.
@Arnold: Come on! Can we stop nitpicking?
It is not the same quantization error than quantization distortion:
Quantization error is the deviation from the expected value to the value that gets stored.
Quantization distortion is when the quantization error is exactly the one obtained by truncating the value, causing a correlated error, which, as you say, the ear is more likely to detect because they are cohenrent.
I said that quantization distortion is not necessarily happening on ADCs. Quantization error is unavoidable, as you wrote.
About the last quote, I believe I was clear: We (at Hydrogenaudio) have not found a clear evidence that higher-than-CD-Quality signals are required for playback.
But for recording and post-processing a signal previous to create the finished piece, a higher sampling rate and bitdepth is helpful to hide the errors further away from our listening abilities.
Translation: Using an ADC at 24bits should allow us to completely forget about any quantization distortion caused by sampling a signal with it.
Do we agree, at last?
Edit: btw... the bigger quotes enclosing "bit depth" when talking about analog signals really meant that it was not to be taken literally. It may not have a bit depth, but definitely it has a resolution, and digitizing it reduces that resolution to discrete values.
Quantizanation noise is present in any real world A/D conversion. One does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there. Reduction in bit depth just makes it worse.
When you add more bits, the quantization noise drops accordingly.
Ergo, at 24 bits, you can render signals from the noise level of the atmosphere at your ear drum to 150dB SPL.
AT 32 bits, you'll need military equipment marked with yellow danger signs in order to render the highest levels.
With 16 bits, you can only get to 102dB SPL, give or take, starting at the noise level of the atmosphere.
If we start at the noise level of an ITU spec room, then you get to 111dB SPL with 16 bits.
What's your point?
My point is one does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there. Reduction in bit depth just makes it worse. That was my point. Am I in error in that assertion? pdq said "Reducing the bitdepth introduces quantization 'noise'. " I am saying it does not "intruduce" it because it is already there but that it simply makes it worse.
Noise is already there in analog, too, and in recording media, more of it. So what's your point?
[Edit: changed quantization noise by quantization distortion, since it's the preferred name]
I'm sorry, but unless you're not dithering, in which case you are not sampling properly, the term is correctly termed "quantization noise". Only if you do it WRONG do you get distortion rather than independent noise. Just go back to the original work on dithering, either in the AES or in the SP IEEE society, and find out, please. I'm at home and I don't have cites handy, but this is old news. "Distortion" is not a proper term for properly quantized signals, audio or otherwise.
It's this kind of "preferred name" that is utterly wrong that keeps myth going.
Please do not repeat this myth.
IOW, *quantization noise* should be called quantization distortion. Some authorities do exactly that.
No, Arnold, it should not be called "distortion" unless it's been done improperly. Calling quantization noise "distortion" (meaning there's no dithering) is kind of like running a magtape with no bias and calling the result "signal".
Dithering is a mathematically and physically essential part of the process of quantization. When a signal is dithered, the added changes to the signal are in fact pure noise. It can be shaped noise in some cases, but it's noise, not distortion.
IOW, *quantization noise* should be called quantization distortion. Some authorities do exactly that.
No, Arnold, it should not be called "distortion" unless it's been done improperly.
Your agurment would be then seem to be that properly done quanitzation always produces a signal that is random, and therefore its noise.
Hard to argue with. However, in this case its out of context, The context of what I said was in the context of a system with no randomization of the quanitization error. I said that the quantization error was deterministic, didn't I?.
Dithering is a mathematically and physically essential part of the process of quantization. When a signal is dithered, the added changes to the signal are in fact pure noise. It can be shaped noise in some cases, but it's noise, not distortion.
No argument there - its motherhead and apple pie.
Quantizanation noise is present in any real world A/D conversion. One does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there. Reduction in bit depth just makes it worse.
When you add more bits, the quantization noise drops accordingly.
Ergo, at 24 bits, you can render signals from the noise level of the atmosphere at your ear drum to 150dB SPL.
AT 32 bits, you'll need military equipment marked with yellow danger signs in order to render the highest levels.
With 16 bits, you can only get to 102dB SPL, give or take, starting at the noise level of the atmosphere.
If we start at the noise level of an ITU spec room, then you get to 111dB SPL with 16 bits.
What's your point?
My point is one does not need reduce bit depth to "introduce" quantization noise. It's already there. Reduction in bit depth just makes it worse. That was my point. Am I in error in that assertion? pdq said "Reducing the bitdepth introduces quantization 'noise'. " I am saying it does not "intruduce" it because it is already there but that it simply makes it worse.
Noise is already there in analog, too, and in recording media, more of it. So what's your point?
My point is what I said nothing more nothing less. I made no mention of analog so what is your point?
IOW, *quantization noise* should be called quantization distortion. Some authorities do exactly that.
No, Arnold, it should not be called "distortion" unless it's been done improperly.
Your agurment would be then seem to be that properly done quanitzation always produces a signal that is random, and therefore its noise.
Hard to argue with.
No it's not. Lipshitz and vanderkooy already showed that the error isn't really random or really uncorrelated, even with what most people (including them) would call "correct" dither. I think it's the second moment of the error signal that is still correlated with the original signal. They're really clear about this in their 1984 paper, but I don't have it in front of me either!
But this is nit picking. "Correct" dither is fine. The number of bits we have available is fine. Digital audio can be fine.
As for "quantization noise" vs "quantization distortion" - if you want a term that works with
and without dither, how about "quantisation error"?
Anyway, I go away for three days, and you're still arguing about pointless things? No samples of tracks which have been improved by euphonic and/or vinyl "distortion"?
Quite predictably, I liked post 58 (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?s=&showtopic=84208&view=findpost&p=726941).
Cheers,
David.
IOW, *quantization noise* should be called quantization distortion. Some authorities do exactly that.
No, Arnold, it should not be called "distortion" unless it's been done improperly.
Your agurment would be then seem to be that properly done quanitzation always produces a signal that is random, and therefore its noise.
Hard to argue with.
No it's not. Lipshitz and vanderkooy already showed that the error isn't really random or really uncorrelated, even with what most people (including them) would call "correct" dither.
If the quantization isn't really random and uncorrelated, then the dithering isn't breally eing done properly. That's a truism.
I think it's the second moment of the error signal that is still correlated with the original signal. They're really clear about this in their 1984 paper, but I don't have it in front of me either!
TPDF dither when applied with sufficient ampltude is supposted to decorrelate the second moment.
The wikipedia article on dither has some interesting historical comments. Dither was apparently first applied to analog systems that had a lot of stiction and/or backlash.
TPDF dither when applied with sufficient ampltude is supposted to decorrelate the second moment.
Speaking from ignorance and still without the paper in front of me, I would venture to guess that in this case it's the third and higher moments which are not decorrelated by correct TPDF dither.
Ah, this probably helps if you have a spare month to follow it all...
http://audiolab.uwaterloo.ca/~rob/abstracts/ieee.pdf (http://audiolab.uwaterloo.ca/~rob/abstracts/ieee.pdf)
It is shown that by the use of dither having a suitably-chosen probability density function, moments of the total error can be made independent of the system input signal, but that statistical independence of the error and the input signals is not achievable.
For many applications, controlling relevant error moments is just as good as having full statistical independence of the input and error processes.
I've never seen any evidence that this is audible. It just means that dither makes things audibly fine, but not statistically perfect.
Of course there's plenty of evidence that the noise/distortion/error of various analogue sources is highly dependent on the input signal - often in an audible way.
Cheers,
David.
Of course there's plenty of evidence that the noise/distortion/error of various analogue sources is highly dependent on the input signal - often in an audible way.
Relevant example: modulation noise in magnetic tape. BTW, one can use a very high frequency tone as if it was dither to vastly reduce the audibility of quantizaiton distortion. Magnetic tape was arguably the first use of quantization as part of audio recording...
TPDF dither when applied with sufficient ampltude is supposted to decorrelate the second moment.
Speaking from ignorance and still without the paper in front of me, I would venture to guess that in this case it's the third and higher moments which are not decorrelated by correct TPDF dither.
Ah, this probably helps if you have a spare month to follow it all...
http://audiolab.uwaterloo.ca/~rob/abstracts/ieee.pdf (http://audiolab.uwaterloo.ca/~rob/abstracts/ieee.pdf)
It is shown that by the use of dither having a suitably-chosen probability density function, moments of the total error can be made independent of the system input signal, but that statistical independence of the error and the input signals is not achievable.
For many applications, controlling relevant error moments is just as good as having full statistical independence of the input and error processes.
I've never seen any evidence that this is audible. It just means that dither makes things audibly fine, but not statistically perfect.
Of course there's plenty of evidence that the noise/distortion/error of various analogue sources is highly dependent on the input signal - often in an audible way.
Cheers,
David.
To this point, consider what the ear can detect, which is a frequency analysis of sorts of the noise (and signal, of course).
When you have a white spectrum for the noise, you've accomplished what you needed to do. It is, of course, possible to use a gaussian dither, as well. But how far down the central limit theorem do we need to travel?
To this point, consider what the ear can detect, which is a frequency analysis of sorts of the noise (and signal, of course).
When you have a white spectrum for the noise, you've accomplished what you needed to do. It is, of course, possible to use a gaussian dither, as well. But how far down the central limit theorem do we need to travel?
That's not a rhetorical question, right?
I mean... the ear is at a very fundamental level sensitive to signal energy, which is intrinsically linked to the second moment. If any higher moments were to be audibly significant in and of themselves, that would suggest to me that phase distortion would be orders of magnitude more audible than it is observed to be.
QED?
That's not a rhetorical question, right?
I was hoping it was!
What we're talking about is subjective - we know there's a difference, the question is whether humans can hear it.
Imagine trying to design a test to see if there is an audible difference between having a correlated vs decorrelated third moment of the error. It's "easy" because you can use 8-bits, and simply add yet another RECT PDF noise source to the dither. Problem is, you know people can hear
that - it's more noisy - so ABX will be positive, but prove nothing about what you want to know!
You could flip to and from a higher bitdepth and do some gain twiddling there to match dither noise power between the two cases. That way, I think it would be possible to make a "fair" experiment, but people might argue that whatever method you used to match dither noise power (e.g. RMS level) wasn't quite justified, or may be problematic enough to give a false positive. If you're trying to ABX something which is generally believed to be inaudible, you'd better make damn sure the levels are matched - and in this case, it could be hard to say (hand on heart) that they were. Different PDFs. What is a "match". etc.
Even if the level matching seems justified, and there was a weak preference for adding 3 RECT PDF noise sources rather than 2, in the real world you don't get the luxury of level matching and the 3 noise source dither is louder, which is objectionable in itself. So overall it might be a bit pointless.
I know we could use Gaussian, but when people say that, they usually mean using it at a level far lower than I think is "correct" - i.e. a level at which it seems to work OK most of the time, but without the mathematical guarantee that it's even decorrelating the first and second moments of the error properly. If we move from RECT to TRI (2 * RECT) etc etc and keep adding RECT noise sources, we get a
lot more noise by the time it's something like Gaussian.
(I'm not trying to speak with a position of authority here - I'm hoping other people here can help think this through and point out any misconceptions I might have)
Cheers,
David.
It is funny how a friend of mine recorded a Vinyl record and made a CD of it. He could not get over how is sounded like the Vinyl he loved, with all its added distortion and noise.
Paul
It is funny how a friend of mine recorded a Vinyl record and made a CD of it. He could not get over how is sounded like the Vinyl he loved, with all its added distortion and noise.
Paul
Almost like you can capture all that analog distortion on CD. Imagine.