Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback
Reply #105 – 2014-11-14 16:05:39
The "problem" with this scientific justification is "the elephant in the room" (from another thread): the people claiming audible superiority aren't claiming to hear it only on exceptional material recorded and reproduced in exceptional rooms. They're claiming it sounds better, always. Whereas the ABX results back up the very limited and specific scientific justification. I think you continue to think I am a different person than I am. I was instructed to not tell you my background so we are stuck with you putting me in a different bucket than I am in. I am not here to advocate any other person's point of view. I have not taken the above position. So writing that to me and asking me to respond to it is not logical. My position which I keep repeating completely bypasses all of these arguments and your position above. It says let's get the original bits. We can do that now as we are not bound by the CD format. We can download them. I downloaded your 24/96 Khz samples with ease. What is wrong with downloading my next album that way? And let's remember that I can download high resolution content on demand but can't do that with CDs. AVS members who are here know this to be my position. But they are still up in arms. They are ready to hang themselves in their bedroom with this latest set of outcomes from my testing and Stuart's AES paper. Why? Because the real elephant in the room. That is, if you concede my position, you may inadvertently hand over a point to the other side. And we can't have that. Because who knows what they are going to do next if it is proven that we were wrong. That there can never be a double blind test that shows a difference between high resolution audio and reduced version to 16/44.1. I have been saying for years that such a possibility exists. But folks didn't want to hear it. So we have the mess on our hands where we said one thing, and the very standard of proof we require, proved it otherwise. That is the real elephant in the room. And no one explains it better than a strong fellow objectivist on AVS and WBF Forums in the very first discussion thread I had with Arny:well, in that case let me thank you [Amir] for your contributions. I KNOW I could not have kept my patience as you have, let alone maintained a sense of humour! It's funny how hard *we* can go to maintain our rightness, and how quickly that line is crossed where we no longer wish to learn (despite our objections to the contrary) where we fight tooth and nail...usually because we know our position is so tenuous that the slightest 'loss' means the whole game is over. FFS, Amir has sat here page after page and SHOWN how, and under what possible conditions jitter may be audible. Hey, if it were a cable debate, and we showed with maths and sims that there could not possibly be a difference, well that would have proved it no? So why the **** in an 'argument' where the shoe is on the other foot does it suddenly become irrelevant what the science says?? My take on what the fear might be is the worry of what might happen if we concede a point of argument. The 'other side' will drive a frickin lorry thru the door if we do. I mean, there only has to be ONE person who hears a power cord (for sake of illustration) in what seems to be a proper test and the whole frickin lot of the rest of them will claim it as proof that they too can hear it. No they can't, 'one in a million' means just that. But we KNOW every single one of them thinks they can hear it, using that person as proof, and even less urge to test the truth properly. After all it has been shown. So, we had better clamp down HARD on the one ever coming out, if only to keep the lid on the rest. So, move on to something far less controversial than PCs, but as long as it falls into audiofool territory we had better clamp down on that too. It is just safer that way, keep each and every genie in the bottle. So the need to put amir in his place, and keep the lid hammered on tight. Because the ramifications of this little argument go waaaay past it's tiny borders. ""Oh, but amir has not given any evidence of audibilty"" (apart from the science you mean? The science that would be perfectly acceptable in a different argument, that the one we are talking about???). Be totally honest here. If he told you that he had found, to his satisfaction, that turning the front panel on and off on his thingamabob had an audible difference, would you accept that? What then his findings of jitter? We know you would not accept his results, the genie is too terrifying to contemplate. So don't come back at me with 'amir has yet to show audibility' ok? It is a definitional thing you know. Some things, by definition, are inaudible. Bit like cancer, it cannot be cured hence any cure of cancer is untrue (why we are always then exhorted to donate to cancer research is beyond me). All of you could be right, it may be completely inaudible. But you sure as hell have not shown it by your arguments. Unless 'nanah nanah nah' counts as an argument. Give it to an Aussies to say it so directly .I'm sure you realise the problem here: people take an article like yours and ABX results like Bob Stuart's, and say "here is scientific and double-blind proof that the fantastic audible improvement I hear all the time with hi-res is real and scientifically proven." I'm fairly sure you understand the resentment here on HA: I think most people here believe that this delusion is exactly what such "science" is intended to perpetuate, hence it's not science: it's marketing, treading the line of implying something that's not true without actually saying it. Ah, you did get there . Yes, I understand the reaction. But I could not care less. I am an objectivists. That calls for fairness. It calls for being unbiased at all times. If there are problems with what we, our camp does, I volunteer it. I don't let it come out from another channel and make us look like crooks that were hiding it. If the people here have a position of hanging together instead of hanging with science and objective view of audio, then you are right. I won't get along with them. My hope though is that there are many who are not that way. Who like to see transparency. After all, we enjoy that in real life. Here is a quick story I have told on AVS (you will learn that I often tell such stories ). I was on a jury pool for a criminal case. I get invited to come and sit in the jury box while they were deciding which one of us to keep. I expected the defendant to be in his sunday clothes, looking like anyone but a criminal. But no. This guy was sitting there and if you took a picture of him, you would swear he is guilty and there would be no need for the trial. I look at the judge and attorneys but they absolutely do not reflect any of this bias. I mean the guy was slouching in his chair full of contempt for the court and the judge. Yet the judge was referring to him as he would to the most upstanding citizen. I am sure deep down he has seen so many cases as to know the guilt or innocence of the guy. But he knew he had to be fair. And put aside all bias. It gave me a lot of comfort that heaven forbid, if I am mistakenly accused and sitting in that chair, I would have a shot at a fair trial no matter how the circumstances looked. That is me in a nutshell in these topics. I don't like it when I ask Arny to show us any documented double blind tests and he says the only one is from 30 years ago and I have to go and buy the magazine. And I buy it and see that it is an amplifier test where positive outcome was achieved. Isn't that embarrassing? Is this the way we want to appear in front of general public? And let's remember that this forum is indexed by Google and open to all to read, not just forum members. So no, please don't ask me to worry about the clicks among forum members here or elsewhere. Folks want good side of me? They need to stick to science rather than to some camp whose goal is to ridicule our fellow audiophiles. I am interested in all of this, and I do retain an open mind. However, I think taking some imagined or real-but-tiny improvement, and selling it as the next big thing, will be bad for the audio industry. Remember last time? "SACD+DVD-A fought a war, and the iPod won." I already addressed this David. There is no repeat of SACD+DVD-A. There is no format war. There is no new physical format. Labels are offering high resolution stereo masters and people are buying them. Folks here can cry all they want, talk about "train wrecks" and such and it won't matter. Yes, the difference may be small or nonexistent. Your view that this data does not come out is incorrect. With advent of free Audacity, every kid is performing spectrum analysis and posting results. And on forums like WBF, people are frank and quick to slam HD downloads that don't sound better. P.S. Gosh. This forum software gives you no chance to fix spelling errors before declaring that you have edited your post! But that is all I did .