Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Not interested in a format that does not "significantly reduce dynamic range."

You're also not interested in intellectual honesty or scientific rigor. So not interested in what you want at all. Sorry.
Oh and now it's suddenly dynamic range that bothers you, while a couple of pages back you argued that it was far from audible even for the "excellent" recordings used in the paper? Oh yeah, that is arguing amirm-style.

No justification has been provided in this thread or anywhere else that some down conversion must be performed before we get the bits.

Again, buy whatever files you want. Nobody cares.
This is about the claim that digital filtering is audible and the evidence to support that claim.

Also, no justification has been provided for small cookies when you could have really big ones.

You are constantly trying to say that we must settle for a photocopy when the original is readily available for us to get.

No, that is just in your head. Give anyone the format of their choice, and let them pay extra and waste as much money as they want. (Although I would say that if you buy a track, you buy the track, not some format. So any format of the track should be downloadable once you paid for a track.)

Really, there is no there there. You guys have no argument whatsoever why we should stay with old standards pulled out of thin air to make a piece of plastic hold X minutes of content. There were no listening tests. No psychoacoustics analysis. Nothing.

Oh amirm, I actually feel pity.
After 25 pages and countless pointers you still are completely lost.

Quote from: xnor on 2014-11-25 01:04:58

You just need to stop laundering the stale SACD/DVD-A arguments when everything about the situation is different now.

What is different regarding the audibility?
You know, armirm, telling yourself something really really often still doesn't make it true. At least not in reality.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #604 – 2014-11-25 01:30:27

As for "old standards pulled out of thin air", 44.1/16:
a) Some people with still good hearing can hear up to about 19, maybe 20 kHz at unrealistic levels, but the vast majority of people have even trouble with >16 kHz.
b) The noise density of 16 bit is -137 dB. High fidelity playback levels shouldn't exceed an average SPL of 85 dB. You can do noise shaping. Rooms are noisy. Recordings have a noise floor.
You can figure out the rest.

amirm, have you ever even heard a 18 kHz tone? A 19 kHz tone? Let me tell you one thing: it's annoying, really really annoying.
Have you ever heard a jet engine with enabled afterburner in close flyby? Why would you even want anything close to such a dynamic range? Are you a masochist?

I've heard both and I'd categorize both as potential torture devices.

edit:
imp_urhp.wav (4 seconds file) is waiting. Tell us what you hear in your system!

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #605 – 2014-11-25 01:33:44

Oh amirm, I actually feel pity.
After 25 pages and countless pointers you still are completely lost.

He's not lost, he's just struggling furiously to control the narrative. He gets away with that elsewhere, but he can't do it here.

High rez cheerleaders need to stop 1) bamboozling the public about the supposedly obvious audible benefits of high rez -- instead, tell them that for analog sources the benefits should be essentially *nil*, and for digital sources, they should be *miniscule at best*, which also means 2) stop lying/fearmongering about 'standard' rez delivery formats (as well as lossy compressed audio).

Tell them where the *real* problems are.

It sure ain't with the digital filters.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #606 – 2014-11-25 02:03:18

It is wrong, wrong, wrong to keep advocating down conversion to CD's 16/44.1.

BS/Meridian:
.[/quote]
Did I say it is a $cam, $cam, $cam? Promoted and peddled by $cammers?

Quote

The difference between
hearing and listening (tell me if you've seen this obfuscation weasel words before)

Discover subtle details and artistic nuances in your favorite
music that you’ve never heard before. Feel the power
and presence of a live performance in your living room.
Or experience what it’s like to sit in on a live studio recording.
It’s all possible with the superior quality of High-Resolution Audio.
With quality greatly surpassing that of MP3 and CD, the difference is clear.

Quote from: xnor on 2014-11-25 00:40:02

You cannot have the interest of audiophiles in mind by taking these positions

Quote

In comparison testing I have done, switching amplifiers using the classic class D configuration always sport incredible low frequency control and power. They beat out linear class AB amplifiers almost regardless of price. What they give up though is high frequency fidelity which I find somewhat harsh. The distortion is highly non-linear and challenging to spot but it is there. The Mark Levinson No 53 is the first switching amplifier I have heard which does not have this compromise. Its bass is amazingly authoritative: tight and powerful. Yet the rest of the response is absolutely neutral and pleasant.

If you have not heard these unique amplifiers, I highly encourage you to come into our showroom for a listen.

Once again, the arguments about the BS paper completely subverted into "what Amir the 'worried' audiophile wants", rather than anything to do with the BS paper/results actually supporting the Hi-Rez $cam.

cheers,

AJ

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #607 – 2014-11-25 02:50:25

Remember that the best condition (#4, no extra bit depth reduction, 48 kHz) failed to achieve the 56.25% "success" rate. So that does hint at some bias in their methodology.

Not at all. The success rate was above threshold of chance for the more critical segments. Per ITU BS1116:

Programme material
Only critical material is to be used in order to reveal differences among systems under test. Critical material is that which
stresses the systems under test.

From Stuart's paper:
When the analysis was restricted to just the high-
yield audio sections, performance was signicantly
better for the 48-kHz filter than for the 44.1-kHz filter.

It is critical that in such tests we only use the data from content that reveals differences and testers who have the right acuity. Hobbyist tests routinely violate these rules and just throw whatever at the test and see what happens. This, from the response to the letters to the Journal of AES when the Meyer and Moran report came out, complaining about its poor statistical analysis:

Quote

Authors’ Reply2
Dr. Dranove has set requirements for our engineering
report that were not part of our plan, and then dismissed it
for failing to meet them. In hindsight it probably would
have been better for us not to cite the total number of trials
as there are issues with their statistical independence, as
well as other problems with the data. We did not set out to
do a rigorous statistical study, nor did we claim to have
done so. Accordingly it may not mean much to do a more
detailed data analysis, though we have done further work
on it that we will discuss later.

[...]

We did not know in advance what source material, what type
of system, or which subjects would be the most likely to
reveal an audible difference.

Didn't know what material, system or subjects likely to reveal an audible difference. In other words, shooting in the dark. Results is that they walked right into Simpson's Paradox. This is what passed for "scientific proof" that high res has no value. Right....

So no, the only bias I see are the vocal few whose audio ideology is now seriously questioned by Stuart's test/paper. And ad-hoc tests we have run. Nothing new there. Folks are being human. Just not objective.

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While this would have been too much for the conference paper I agree that given their methodology, the same success or failure rate could have been achieved without the Meridians. amir has demonstrated undeniably that some $100-200 earphone will result in 100% success rate (slightly less if the dog is barking in the background) vs. really expensive Meridians!!!

I have no issue with this statement. Good ears trump good gear any day of the week and twice on Sunday .

Quote

I'm sorry, that was unnecessarily sarcastic.

No worries. Your posts make for great fodder to demonstrate our substantial bias in how we examine scientific data.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #608 – 2014-11-25 03:30:23

Quote from: xnor on 2014-11-25 01:04:58

You're also not interested in intellectual honesty or scientific rigor. So not interested in what you want at all. Sorry.

Thanks for sharing your sentiments but I didn't write that for you Xnor. Remember, I don't write my posts for the few of you with such extreme prejudice that you would question the Pope on his Christianity should he say something unthwarted about audio.

Quote

This is about the claim that digital filtering is audible and the evidence to support that claim.

That evidence is in Stuart's paper. Other than jumping up and down, you have put forward nothing else to dispute it. Thanks to mzil, I get to remind you that the paper has won an award for best peer-reviewed paper. So you excuse me if I don't take opinion of it from anonymous posters seriously.

Quote

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-25 00:42:15
Really, there is no there there. You guys have no argument whatsoever why we should stay with old standards pulled out of thin air to make a piece of plastic hold X minutes of content. There were no listening tests. No psychoacoustics analysis. Nothing.

Oh amirm, I actually feel pity.
After 25 pages and countless pointers you still are completely lost.

Your lack of emotional maturity is apparent in every post. Instead of being focused on the technical discussion every sentence oozes with anger, emotional outburst, frustration, etc. You have no self-awareness of what these forums do to you. And importantly how you have been recruited as yet another martyr in this war. Folks are sitting back enjoying you spending all of your free time writing this stuff and fighting the good fight. I am happy that you are doing it because you show how unprofessional and unscientific we are about our approach to audio. So don’t stop on my account. But remember, there are folks who are egging you on and you are blindingly do so.

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Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-25 00:42:15
You just need to stop laundering the stale SACD/DVD-A arguments when everything about the situation is different now.

What is different regarding the audibility?

For one thing we can test them a hell of a lot better. We can test the files instead of two real-time audio streams that make it extremely difficult to focus on the critical segments. For another, it is very easy to perform mechanical analysis as everyone seems to be doing these days. The truth may have always been there. But we now have better tools to get it out.

Difficulty of running such tests with real-time sources resulted in sharply raised probability of negative outcome in double blind tests.

This is why you are seeing a new chapter in this book. Don’t dwell on the first as if that is the entire book.

Quote

You know, armirm, telling yourself something really really often still doesn't make it true. At least not in reality.

I worked in this field professionally. We are discussing a paper whose core author I know personally. I have cited critical reference from JJ who used to work for me and is a friend. You can declare what I say however you want but can’t change the facts I have stipulated:

1.High resolution master will completely, completely eliminate the risk of downgrading to 16/44.1 being audible. The entire argument becomes moot. Mess with the bits and you buy yourself a world of grief trying to prove transparency.

2.High resolution masters are become available in volume and no one is waiting for Mr. Xnor or any other forum to give them the OK to do so.

3.High resolution masters can and do come with better mastering than their counterpart CDs. Their business rules are sharply different where the content owner and distributor know that the customer is audio conscious as opposed to mass market. You can spit in the wind but the mass market products will not optimize for fidelity at the expense of other goals.

4.CDs will be on their way out. If not a couple of years, five or six years from now. On that day, we could face the highest fidelity being MP3/AAC or better than the CD in the form of high resolution stereo masters. Anyone who argues now, is by design in favor of the former and earns zero respect from me. Let me know when you become an audiophile and we can talk.

5.We hear differently. Some of us are able to be critical listeners and outperform others in detecting small differences. This is supported by considerable amount of research beyond personal data I have shared.

These are the facts and you can take them to the bank. Everything else is forum bickering substituting for the same.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #609 – 2014-11-25 03:54:25

Quote from: krabapple on 2014-11-25 01:33:44

Quote from: xnor on 2014-11-25 01:04:58
Oh amirm, I actually feel pity.
After 25 pages and countless pointers you still are completely lost.

He's not lost, he's just struggling furiously to control the narrative.

That narrative has sunk your boat Steven. We are discussing peer reviewed, award winning paper/listening test that has disputed literally thousands of posts by you all to the contrary. You said this would never happen. You milked lack of data as data. Now it is time of reckoning. You are hoisted with your own petard. You demanded personal ABX DBT test. You have it. You demanded published report. You have it. You didn't ask for it but said report is written by an AES Fellow, not a hobby group.

These are the facts and are undisputable. They really are.

Quote

He gets away with that elsewhere, but he can't do it here.

It is not me that has brought your world to the end Steven: it is the sheer weight of evidence that you said would never exist. But exist it has. We are at the tail end of this process where folks are resorting to emotional comments, fallacious summaries like yours, etc. It is that against published AES report.

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High rez cheerleaders need to stop 1) bamboozling the public about the supposedly obvious audible benefits of high rez

Nothing supposed about it. Using the freedom to use alternative masters, there are obvious audible benefits putting aside its better technical capabilities.

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-- instead, tell them that for analog sources the benefits should be essentially *nil*

"Essentially?" You don't seem sure. Come back when you are and can bring some data with you.

Quote

, and for digital sources, they should be *miniscule at best*,

Not yours to declare their subjective value.

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which also means 2) stop lying/fearmongering about 'standard' rez delivery formats (as well as lossy compressed audio).

There is the emotional outburst. If you have won, there is no need to talk like this.

Quote

Tell them where the *real* problems are.

It is you all who portray a mean, stubborn, biased image of objectivity. This is the problem. No problem otherwise. Folks are buying high res files and couldn't care less what you think.

Quote

It sure ain't with the digital filters.

Now you are sure? Above you weren't? Can't stay consistent even in the same post.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #610 – 2014-11-25 03:56:52

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-25 03:30:23

1.High resolution master will completely, completely eliminate the risk of downgrading to 16/44.1 being audible.

Your own authority Jim Johnson in a document you cited says that this risk does not exist in usual circumstances.

Quote

2.High resolution masters are become available in volume and no one is waiting for Mr. Xnor or any other forum to give them the OK to do so.

The actual original master tape is the original tracks that were mixed to produce the artistic work. This is never distributed and in general the high resolution descendants of it are not bit-perfect copies of it.

Quote

3.High resolution masters can and do come with better mastering than their counterpart CDs.

That is often a false claim because the CD versions often embody the same mastering as the high resolution versions.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #611 – 2014-11-25 04:10:47

I hesitate to post any further, as this thread is already very long, and has perhaps achieved as much as it's likely to achieve [unless perhaps revelations were to come to light of deficiencies in the BS paper experimental setup].

I am responding to a comment directed at me.

Quote from: xnor on 2014-11-24 21:17:41

...
Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-23 23:43:31
So I think it is good that we discovered how professional resamplers are not the animals we think they are. There is no visibility into their design as I have mentioned. I imagine hardly any music is produced using Sox resampler. Engineers use the professional tools. And if those tools produce non-transparent results, then we should get the masters and not be subject to this.

These are 100% logical and defensible conclusions we can draw. Anyone who doesn't want to go there has fingers in the ears and in denial.

Oh man, the pain! So you didn't test the format but actually some resampler implementation and draw the conclusion that the format is the problem? 100% logical conclusions, from the master of logic (see 0 credibility)? I somehow doubt it...

@MLXXX: The moral of the story is that if you provide a negative log then amirm will insult that you are either deaf (but his hearing extends to a whopping ~12 kHz) or that you are an unskilled buffoon. So he thinks he wins his war.
Or you provide a positive log, which he will accept blindly and to him is enough proof. So he thinks he wins his war.
Do you see the problem?

Amirm makes the point that in practice professional sample rate conversions can introduce changes because of vagaries of the software. (Some people doing such conversions might be incapable of hearing such vagaries; or might not even try to hear them in a careful A B comparison, relying on a [misplaced?] faith in the software.)

In relation to the recent test files over at AVS Forum being distinguishable after being "professionally" converted from 24/96 to 16/44, and then back to 24/96, I think two of the vagaries were irrelevant to sound quality (my points 1 and 2 below):

In the first batch of test files, there was a very slight reduction in level attributable to a feature to prevent clipping for certain source files mastered right up to the maximum sample level of 0dB in the high resolution format. This slight level reduction would go undetected if listening to the converted files alone rather than doing a painstaking A B comparison. Importantly, this effect wouldn't of itself diminish the sound quality.
In the second [level matched] batch of test files, a timing delay of around 10mS existed (for at least two of the converted files). This would go undetected if not doing a precision A B comparison. Again, of itself, this effect wouldn't diminish the sound quality of the converted files. Recording company conversions are not normally done for the purpose of creating comparison files for ABX testing!
There was for my ears still some very subtle change in the tone with the batch 2 version of On The Street Where You Live. And I was able to ABX it. One of the members of AVS Forum thought the conversion was more euphonious (though he lacked the hardware setup to corroborate his [and his nephew's] ability to distinguish the second batch of AVS/AIX files. To my mind it is only this slight difference that was significant about the professional conversion. And it was still a very minor difference detectable by a certain percentage of people in an A B comparison, but without an A B comparison being available quite difficult to detect, I would think.

In relation to my own initial conversion for AVS Forum (resulting in comparison files X and Y for On The Street Where You Live) being 'noisy' as regards the dither, I think amirm may have made a lot out of the slightly elevated noise. It wasn't something noticeable to me at a moderate playback level. I see that, over at AVS Forum, Kees has asked amirm for more detail about his listening setup, at post #650 of the "take 2" thread.

In relation to my SoX conversion for AVS Forum (resulting in comparison files X2 and Y2 for On The Street Where You Live), amirm acknowledged that the differences were difficult to hear for the purposes of a formal ABX test, though informally he had obtained some correct answers when preparing to do a formal ABX test.

So, yes, the particular conversion software used in a professional conversion could introduce a slight effect noticeable under conditions of careful scrutiny in an A B comparison. [Actually I myself didn't have any preconceived notion that professional conversions would all necessarily be completely transparent, if A B compared under clinical conditions. I had not interpreted the Meyer and Moran study to suggest that. That study in my recollection was about listening broadly and not being told when a change was made to bottleneck the sound. That loose type of setting is less likely to reveal a hair-splitting difference that might be just detectable with clinical repetition of two short sections of a recording that have been subject to different processing.]

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #612 – 2014-11-25 04:43:28

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-25 03:30:23

...1.High resolution master will completely, completely eliminate the risk of downgrading to 16/44.1 being audible...

...2.High resolution masters are become available in volume and no one is waiting...

People are entitled to buy whatever audio file format they wish. However sellers should be obligated to display a disclaimer in their download sites. Similar to what is done in cigarrete packages. Something like this:

"WARNING! If you think you can hear the difference between the hi rez file you are downloading and 16bit/44.1kHz CD standard you are seriously delusional. You should look for professional help immediately."

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-25 03:30:23

...4.CDs will be on their way out...

...These are the facts...

Why do you say that?! Just wait until the people that are now "rediscovering" LPs start to "rediscover" the CD. They will be amazed with the great sound improvement!

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #613 – 2014-11-25 05:44:51

Quote from: Light-Fire on 2014-11-25 04:43:28

Quote from: amirm on 2014-11-25 03:30:23
...1.High resolution master will completely, completely eliminate the risk of downgrading to 16/44.1 being audible...

...2.High resolution masters are become available in volume and no one is waiting...

People are entitled to buy whatever audio file format they wish. However sellers should be obligated to display a disclaimer in their download sites. Similar to what is done in cigarrete packages. Something like this:

"WARNING! If you think you can hear the difference between the hi rez file you are downloading and 16bit/44.1kHz CD standard you are seriously delusional. You should look for professional help immediately."

From Meyer and Moran once more:

Though our tests failed to substantiate the claimed advantages of high-resolution encoding for two-channel audio, one trend became obvious very quickly and held up throughout our testing: virtually all of the SACD and DVD-A recordings sounded better than most CDs—sometimes much better. Had we not “degraded” the sound to CD quality and blind-tested for audible differences, we would have been tempted to ascribe this sonic superiority to the recording processes used to make them.

Plausible reasons for the remarkable sound quality of these recordings emerged in discussions with some of the engineers currently working on such projects. This portion of the business is a niche market in which the end users are preselected, both for their aural acuity and for their willingness to buy expensive equipment, set it up correctly, and listen carefully in a low-noise environment.

Partly because these recordings have not captured a large portion of the consumer market for music, engineers and producers are being given the freedom to produce recordings that sound as good as they can make them, without having to compress or equalize the signal to suit lesser systems and casual listening conditions. These recordings seem to have been made with great care and manifest affection, by engineers trying to please themselves and their peers. They sound like it, label after label. High-resolution audio discs do not have the overwhelming majority of the program material crammed into the top 20 (or even 10) dB of the available dynamic range, as so many CDs today do."

You think Meyer and Moran were delusional of the differences they observe there?

Where do you guys get such a myopic view of this topic? Get out in the real world. It is not the distorted picture you see on forums like this.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #614 – 2014-11-25 06:03:46

Quote from: Light-Fire on 2014-11-25 04:43:28

Why do you say that?! Just wait until the people that are now "rediscovering" LPs start to "rediscover" the CD. They will be amazed with the great sound improvement!

The fact is that the market for 'hi rez' in and of itself -- as for all 'audiophile' niches -- is tiny relative to all audio content sales. And sales arent always about the 'resolution'. I've bought quite a few 'high rez' releases myself in the past few years....because they included 5.1 mixes and bonus tracks and 'flat transfers' of original masters, which are what I *actually* cared about and *obviously* make a difference. I had to buy the 'high rez' edition to get them.

Even so, if that changes -- if hi rez becomes the norm, if the industry somehow decides to replace all the most popular forms of profitable audio delivery content (currently CD and lossy compressed downloads and streaming) with 'hi rez' as the default (and that's the only way it will ever become even as popular as, say, LP is now).... I say *so what?*, from an audibility perspective. Unless they commit at the same time to 'old school' mastering, it won't matter to those who actually understand the differences. The average consumer might 'believe' they got 'better sound' that 'even your wife could hear', but sonic difference, where it exists, will overwhelmingly come from different mastering (as Meyer and Moran correctly deduced). So why will Joe Listener believe it's due to the 'high rez' sauce? Because the assurances will flow like honey, the truth will be downplayed, and the noisy tap-dancing will be fast and furious and constant, as we've seen here performed by the industry's avatar from Madrona.

IOW *nothing will substantially change* unless *mastering practices* change. And if they do, high rez still *won't be the reason for better sound* and won't be *necessary* to deliver that sound at home. Hi rez delivery format is at best an *appendage* , a *marketing tool*, a *comfort to the paranoid* ; and at worst a *diversion* of technical and educational resources better directed elsewhere.

Tap dancing CD Fearmongers need to STOP saying we need hi rez to get good sound. That's a lie. We don't. We need good recording and mastering, and good listening setups

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #615 – 2014-11-25 07:12:17

From Meyer and Moran once more:...

In the most characteristic "subjective audiophile" fashion I am having a strong audio gut feeling that you purpously misquoted Meyer and Moran. They mean exactly the oposite of what you are saying since 2007.

...of the SACD and DVD-A recordings sounded better than most CDs...

That is a very illogical affirmation. It should have said it sounded diferent (not better). it s that from a scientific paper??!!

...High-resolution audio discs do not have the overwhelming majority of the program material crammed into the top 20 (or even 10) dB of the available dynamic range, as so many CDs today do.

Dynamic range compression does not depend on audio format. It is a choice made by the recording technician. Didn't Meyer and Moran know that?! I don't think they said that. I don't think you can be trusted as a source of information. Can you show some evidence?

Where do you guys get such a myopic view of this topic?

The only myopic views are coming from your posts. If a difference can't be heard in a properly set double blind test (to get rid of bias) than that difference is irrelevant. I think you know that but you choose to believe otherwise.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #616 – 2014-11-25 07:25:04

Quote from: Kohlrabi on 2014-11-25 07:25:04

You think Meyer and Moran were delusional of the differences they observe there?

There is no technical reason not to put a noise-shaped dithered and resampled "hi-res" master on a CD, and no test has shown that such a recording will be perceptually audibly different from the "hi-res" master. Any "better sounding" DVD/SACD recordings are due to engineers intentionally or ignorantly putting a worse master on CD.

My assertion is as follows:
The sound quality deficiencies of contemporary CD recordings are due to human error (intention or ignorance) and have nothing to do with the technological means available. Any perceived improvement in "hi-res" audio formats are due to different mastering decisions and practices. Therefore, the null hypothesis is that if properly downconverted to redbook audio standard, there will be no perceivable differences of "hi-res" and redbook recordings.

This null-hypothesis can be (in theory easily) be rejected by down converting a "hi-res" release to redbook 16bit/44.1kHz using proper dither and resampling, converting it back up to the "hi-res" specs, and then succeeding in an double-blind ABX test against the original "hi-res" master. The burden of proof is on the proponents of "hi-res" delivery formats to show there is an actual difference. Any other convoluted schemes or red-herrings do nothing towards to satisfactorily or scientifically show advantages of "hi-res" delivery formats. On the contrary, anyone engaging in convoluted nonsense and sleight-of-hands tricks to push his "hi-res" agenda disqualifies himself from this discussion.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #617 – 2014-11-25 07:35:18

Any "better sounding" DVD/SACD recordings are due to engineers intentionally or ignorantly putting a worse master on CD.

If you read M&M yourself directly, instead of sections taken out of context, you'll see that's EXACTLY their point:
"Our test results indicate that all of these [SACD/DVD-A] recordings could be released on conventional CDs with no audible

difference."

http://www.drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #618 – 2014-11-25 07:45:36

Quote from: mzil on 2014-11-25 07:35:18

Quote from: Kohlrabi on 2014-11-25 07:25:04
Any "better sounding" DVD/SACD recordings are due to engineers intentionally or ignorantly putting a worse master on CD.
If you read M&M directly, instead of sections taken out of context, including parts which they attribute to STUART*, you'll see that's EXACTLY their point.

After re-reading my post I changed the wording. I must admit that I only read these few lines and not the full paper. Just shows you how ill-intended amir is going into this discussion.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #619 – 2014-11-25 10:12:17

I think you've got to be careful. A lot of excellent hi-res recordings sound equally gorgeous on CD. The CD releases aren't crippled. It's more that the kind of recording engineers and labels who can be bothered with hi-res (especially early on) are the ones more likely to make great sounding recordings. Hence the average sound quality of all hi-res releases in the world is probably higher than the average sound quality of all CD release in the world - because a lot of rubbish has never been released in hi-res.

I think there was a point in time when you could say the same about CD. I think there is a time when you can say this about almost any new format. There's a point in the uptake when only the people who really give a damn are doing anything; before the mass market has jumped in and churned out rubbish in the new format, just like it did in the previous one

You will know that there is some mass market content released as hi-res, and some of it isn't very good at all. The best CDs sound better than the worst hi-res releases - and I predict the more hi-res releases there are, the more overlap there will be as more mediocre recordings are released in hi-res.

Cheers,
David.
P.S. forgive the gross generalisations. I know there are exceptions to all of this.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #620 – 2014-11-25 10:19:54

Quote from: mzil on 2014-11-25 07:35:18

You think Meyer and Moran were delusional of the differences they observe there?

There are right (IOW Scientific) ways to do preference tests, and neither of the methodologies that M&M appear to have used to reach this conclusion being ABX1982 and Sighted Evaluation are among them.

Quote

Where do you guys get such a myopic view of this topic? Get out in the real world. It is not the distorted picture you see on forums like this.

My real world has a fairly important place in it for Science. Some people don't. They sell Truth and Science down the river when ever their ego gets hurt. They misquote their own sources and make their science up as they go along. In history some of these people were Stalin and Hitler. Not my favorite role models... ;-)

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #621 – 2014-11-25 10:23:27

Wow, I don't think I've been in a Godwin'd thread before.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #622 – 2014-11-25 10:24:58

Quote from: Kohlrabi on 2014-11-25 07:25:04
Any "better sounding" DVD/SACD recordings are due to engineers intentionally or ignorantly putting a worse master on CD.
If you read M&M yourself directly, instead of sections taken out of context, you'll see that's EXACTLY their point:
"Our test results indicate that all of these [SACD/DVD-A] recordings could be released on conventional CDs with no audible

difference."

http://www.drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

I have a number of Enhanced SACDs with both PCM and DSD versions of identically mastered recordings on different layers of the same disc. Both sound great. So M&M's assertion here has real world meaning to me. From this you may discern that I have a SACD player. I also have a DVD-A player. They sound great, but I attribute that to the source recordings and production.

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #623 – 2014-11-25 10:27:52

Quote from: 2Bdecided on 2014-11-25 10:23:27

Wow, I don't think I've been in a Godwin'd thread before.

My bad. Mentioning Stalin is in the same category but I feel the need to give credit where credit is due.

Well, it has already been Amired down. ;-)

Stick a fork in it...

Audibility of "typical" Digital Filters in a Hi-Fi Playback

Reply #624 – 2014-11-25 10:45:35

Not at all.

I shouldn't have written "failed to", but "was barely different" from achieving a better than 56.25% success rate - all of which sounds like guesswork to me. Well, maybe with some extra bias in their methodology.

The success rate was above threshold of chance for the more critical segments. Per ITU BS1116:

Programme material
Only critical material is to be used in order to reveal differences among systems under test. Critical material is that which
stresses the systems under test.

From Stuart's paper:
When the analysis was restricted to just the high-
yield audio sections, performance was significantly
better for the 48-kHz filter than for the 44.1-kHz filter.

Yes, and if they had set their bar to 55% guessing instead of 56% guessing it would not be significantly different. And the paper in other words: "when we cherry-pick the data, we can show significant differences."

That is easily within the margin of error of their experiment itself, because condition 6 (48 kHz, RPDF) had better detection rate than the worst condition. Not only in mean, but ~2% better in terms of lower standard error as well.
Those 2% would make every other condition statistically insignificant or condition 4 statistically significant. Of course then they'd have had to move the bar..

This, from the response to the letters to the Journal of AES when the Meyer and Moran report came out, complaining about its poor statistical analysis:

Oh, so you're doing that again. Evading. Mudslinging. (see 0 credibility)
I don't care about M&M and certainly not about your quote mining techniques.

This is what passed for "scientific proof" that high res has no value. Right....

Honestly, what you keep doing amirm is starting to disgust me and very likely other readers as well.

So no, the only bias I see are the vocal few whose audio ideology is now seriously questioned by Stuart's test/paper.

Biased to reality, as opposed to some fantasy world where logic is an alien concept, fallacies are welcome and intellectual honesty is frowned upon (see 0 credibility).

I have no issue with this statement. Good ears trump good gear any day of the week and twice on Sunday .

Wow. Directly contradicting your authority Stuart on that. I guess that makes their whole paper invalid according to you? (Not that anyone would care.)

You are spending hours crafting up these replies that are just noise, but cannot tell us what you hear in a 4 second file?
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