Am I the only person who has noticed that not one of the nay-sayers has presented a single audio example to prove their point? All they do is try to tear down all of the examples in my video, and call me wrong, but never once have they shown their own example and said what's right.

Dwoz, please post some audio files showing that dither is audible on pop music recorded at sensible levels. Please post an example showing when jitter is audible. Please show us that phase shift can be heard. Please prove with an audio file that stacking is not a myth. And so forth.

I can construct a set of files that demonstrate a stacking effect that cannot be removed via an inverse function on the sum

• How can you be sure what that specific snare's waveform should look like?
• If you are sure, how do you know that your mic, its placement and the room's characteristics, is delivering what you expect, but the ADC's "analog front end stage" isn't?
• Regarding high frequencies. ABX the >20 kHz record against version processed with a high quality low-pass. You would be the first to be able to tell a difference. Don't get anyone wrong, I don't know anybody here, who would promote mixing at 44.1 kHz. As you say, high resolutions eases filtering constraints, and producing at nothing higher than the delivery format is not worth the hassle.

I know that capturing extreme transients with inherently band passed systems can be tricky without experience. But a sensibly chosen input gain combined with a half-way decent dynamic range in your ADC is usually all that's needed. But that's nothing specific to digital audio.

Last week I wrote:

Quote from: Ethan Winer on 2010-03-20 17:29:17

Am I the only person who has noticed that not one of the nay-sayers has presented a single audio example to prove their point? All they do is try to tear down all of the examples in my video, and call me wrong, but never once have they shown their own example and said what's right.

Dwoz, please post some audio files showing that dither is audible on pop music recorded at sensible levels. Please post an example showing when jitter is audible. Please show us that phase shift can be heard. Please prove with an audio file that stacking is not a myth. And so forth.

Now dwoz writes:

Quote from: dwoz on 2010-03-21 02:50:09

I can construct a set of files that demonstrate a stacking effect that cannot be removed via an inverse function on the sum

Coulda woulda shoulda. But never did. This is a big problem with you. It's called "All talk and no action."

Look, whoever you are, I spent half a year preparing for that workshop. I created numerous graphs and drawings and audio examples to prove my points. Then I made a detailed video with all of those examples and highly detailed explanations. So far all I see from you is "You're wrong" with nothing to back it up. Again I ask, where are your examples proving that jitter, dither, usual amounts of phase shift, and stacking etc are an audible problem? Where is your hard proof that more than four parameters are needed to define fidelity? You've wasted hundreds of hundreds of posts around various forums trying to make your points, yet you have not once succeeded. Does that not tell you anything?

--Ethan

Quote from: dwoz on 2010-03-22 18:50:58

D) pretty much all modern equipment has published specs that are testably well-below audibility for distortion, euphonic or otherwise;

This is the falsest part of your logic.

2. Specified performance is often far better than the minimum required to be effective.
3. Much equipment performs far better than specified, in many ways.
4. The performance of much digital equipment is unbelievbly consistent. For example, noise floors are often created by digital means and are therefore identical for every piece of equipment that works at all.

THEREFORE:

In assembling and setting up a music production system, the notion of "choice" and "preference" are essentially irrelevant, sonically speaking, so basically ANY SYSTEM that I can assemble out of ANY current-vintage gear, that isn't demonstrably broken, will be higher fidelity than I will ever need, or in fact, ever perceive?

first...how can I tell what the snare "should" look like?  Because I can monitor the snare both out in the room, and through console monitoring before it hits the converters.  I can evaluate whether what came from the mic is usable and desirable, and gauge it's general fidelity and/or acceptability (two different things!).

Quote from: dwoz on 2010-03-22 18:50:58

THEREFORE:

In assembling and setting up a music production system, the notion of "choice" and "preference" are essentially irrelevant, sonically speaking, so basically ANY SYSTEM that I can assemble out of ANY current-vintage gear, that isn't demonstrably broken, will be higher fidelity than I will ever need, or in fact, ever perceive?

For the most part, high fidelity is currently pretty much all about rooms and tranducers. For recording the tranducers are of course microphones, and for playback the transducers are loudspeakers, headphones, and earphones with the latter of course obviating concerns about rooms.

No lack of challenges in any of those areas!

Quote from: dwoz on 2010-03-22 19:12:32

first...how can I tell what the snare "should" look like?  Because I can monitor the snare both out in the room, and through console monitoring before it hits the converters.  I can evaluate whether what came from the mic is usable and desirable, and gauge it's general fidelity and/or acceptability (two different things!).

You did not answer how you know what the waveform should look like but with what you have heard. You have either overdriven your ADC then or you are one of a kind. Level matched, double blind comparisons of halfway decent ADC/DAC combos vs. straight wires usually know only one result: inability to differentiate.

We are both just two random, anonymous guys on the internet. If I would know you in person I would challenge you for $1000 bucks that you're not one of a kind.

You tried to do something very good and commendable.  I applaud that.  But when you open the door of the steel rebar shark cage and go swimming with the big fishes, you have to make sure your kit is in order.

My only concern, is that in 5 years this stuff starts coming back and turning into "settled fact", when in reality it is not quite settled.

Your video has lots of GREAT stuff in it, and yet just enough stuff that's problematic, to cause a "fail".

Here's what I suggest:  Consider this whole process to be a form of peer review.  Socratic method, all that kind of jazz.  Take this challenge, and apply it to what you've done in that video, and come back with something that leaves me with no other option but to shut up and say "yup."

By the way...I didn't say that different dithers were audible.  What I said was that different dithers are chosen based on the downstream processing that will occur.  Some kinds of dither are "fragile" with subsequent processing.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on 2010-03-22 19:59:35

Quote from: dwoz on 2010-03-22 18:50:58

THEREFORE:

In assembling and setting up a music production system, the notion of "choice" and "preference" are essentially irrelevant, sonically speaking, so basically ANY SYSTEM that I can assemble out of ANY current-vintage gear, that isn't demonstrably broken, will be higher fidelity than I will ever need, or in fact, ever perceive?

For the most part, high fidelity is currently pretty much all about rooms and tranducers. For recording the tranducers are of course microphones, and for playback the transducers are loudspeakers, headphones, and earphones with the latter of course obviating concerns about rooms.

No lack of challenges in any of those areas!

Can I take this then as "yes"?

So...in an ABX, I should be unable to tell the difference between a soundblaster and a bare wire...right?  If I'm actually human, that is...

So...in an ABX, I should be unable to tell the difference between a soundblaster and a bare wire...right?  If I'm actually human, that is...

dwoz, you seem very eager to take generalizations we are making and try turn them into absolutes. Of course there's crappy hardware you can find where noise floors are going to be audible, or THD is audible, or has fault X. The big problem is that a lot of the alleged differences between hardware evaporates when people actually test it. Furthermore, just because a difference is inaudible doesn't mean it's not measurably different either.

For the most part, high fidelity is currently pretty much all about rooms and tranducers. For recording the tranducers are of course microphones, and for playback the transducers are loudspeakers, headphones, and earphones with the latter of course obviating concerns about rooms.

Your video has lots of GREAT stuff in it, and yet just enough stuff that's problematic, to cause a "fail".

Consider this whole process to be a form of peer review.

Some kinds of dither are "fragile" with subsequent processing.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on 2010-03-22 19:59:35

For the most part, high fidelity is currently pretty much all about rooms and tranducers. For recording the tranducers are of course microphones, and for playback the transducers are loudspeakers, headphones, and earphones with the latter of course obviating concerns about rooms.

Through measurement, you do find that the majority of the infidelity is where you say, in traducers and acoustics.

To say that problems in the electronics are insignificant in comparison is like saying a 3 kHz tone is insignificant in comparison to higher level background noise.

We are are very good at hearing past acoustics

and through transducer imperfections.

In many cases these effects/imperfections are euphonic.

It is not insane for recording engineers and audio enthusiasts to pay attention to details several orders of magnitude below what you would consider to be the primary imperfections.

One man's imperfection is another man's character.

Remember that there's art and science in what we do. Those who have an appreciation of both are going to be the most successful.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on 2010-03-22 16:29:26

Quote

Second you're assuming that all production examples of a specific part will always adhere strictly to their published spec.

Not really.

1. Many important properties of much are gear are simply not fully specified.
2. Specified performance is often far better than the minimum required to be effective.
3. Much equipment performs far better than specified, in many ways.
4. The performance of much digital equipment is unbelievbly consistent. For example, noise floors are often created by digital means and are therefore identical for every piece of equipment that works at all.

That's a pretty bold statement, pardner!

If I was to post this, you would jump on me and ride me like a circus pony, for offering a bunch of unsubstantiated conjecture.

Would you like to offer a bit of supporting documentation or evidence for this rather bold assertion?

I will offer a bit of my own, to start the ball rolling:  The Creative Labs soundblaster card has recently-published specs that state that the card's A/D and D/A produce THD + IMD + Noise of 0.002%.  By anyone's standards, that's pretty spankin' good!  TWO THOUSANDTHS of ONE PERCENT. 

Wow.

HOWEVER....you get down into the "mice type" at the bottom of the spec sheet, buried in the legal stuff and sales contact information, is a little "qualifier":  the "reference signal" for the specification, is a 1kHz sine wave at full input range level.

In other words, if you want to reproduce 1kHz sines, then BUY THIS CARD.  It will excel.  But if you attempt to put anything remotely resembling a music program through it, well, it's caveat emptor.

Your thoughts?  I'd like to see your examples too!

I guess the answer is that I "look" with my ears.  If I am standing in the room with the instrument, and hear that...and move to the control room, and audition the mic on the monitors, and I hear "that"

....and then I audition the return from the converter and it's "that"...then we're good, right?  If there's a difference anywhere, I have to ponder why, and figure out how to fix it.

Quote from: dwoz on 2010-03-22 20:06:23

I guess the answer is that I "look" with my ears.  If I am standing in the room with the instrument, and hear that...and move to the control room, and audition the mic on the monitors, and I hear "that"

Now I know for sure that you are not an experienced recordist at all.

As more and more audio gear gets digial inputs and outputs, we just keep more and more of the processing solidly in the digital domain where there is inherently zero added distortion and zero added noise, unless adding them is exactly what we want to do.

Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on 2010-03-22 17:51:05

As more and more audio gear gets digital inputs and outputs, we just keep more and more of the processing solidly in the digital domain where there is inherently zero added distortion and zero added noise, unless adding them is exactly what we want to do.

You're never going to get away with saying that (since any digital processing inherently adds noise - albeit below the original noise floor, given enough bits).

It is possible, perhaps, is it not, to have a good idea what a mic will do if you have a lot of experience, yes?

The first problem here is that the baseline for evaluating digital processing is not zero noise.