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Topic: The "staircase" returns, brought to you by Quackcomm (Read 1280 times) previous topic - next topic
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The "staircase" returns, brought to you by Quackcomm

Here is how Qualcomm is peddling their lossless-over-Bluetooth protocol. Ironically, "User can select between CD lossless audio 44.1kHz and 24-bit 96kHz lossy" without anything about whether the lossiness is simple decimation to CDDA or something else.



Not surprising, as anyone who followed the old analog vs digital discussion should know that the flawed picture surely had its marketing value.

<rant>Both arguments should have been the other way around: the vinylophile going "I want my staircase that your digital audio will smoothen out!" (because the ADC/DAC chain will select the sine wave even if the original is ragged above Nyquist), and the refutation being the ... unfortunately not so obvious.</rant>

Re: The "staircase" returns, brought to you by Quackcomm

Reply #1
Years ago I posted the "staircase" on Wikipedia as an example of FUD, but my edits were reverted. I didn't have the patience to fight over it.

 

Re: The "staircase" returns, brought to you by Quackcomm

Reply #2
I once got into an argument with an audio engineer and producer that the horizontal lines aren't really what they appear to be, and it's only visual aliasing of displaying individual samples in time. I decided to simply not pursue this further and learned my lesson.
It was just a waste of time and energy on my part, I could've explained the Nyquist-Shannon theorem to a common garden snail - it would've been a much better use of my time.
Having said that, I also accept that I'm just very bad at explaining things like this, perhaps. So it's either me not being a good explainer, them not being a good listener, or a combination of both.