What a totally useless thread full of ad hominem attacks. If the OP actually cares anymore I will add that I concur with Mapman. Apart from turntables, tubes, and speakers, for the most part any mechanical vibration isolation is totally unnecessary with most SS electronics. This can be proven quite simply by gently tapping the chassis and noting that no sound comes out the speaker even with the volume turned up fully. (Of course, don’t try this with a tube amp or with a turntable or with a sledgehammer) Ayatollah, the thread still has some inherent value despite its schizophrenic meandering and trash talking (which I find highly amusing...). Folk freak’s most recent post and link allude to the fact that vibration can effect digital processing (and not simply interfere with a mechanical element such as a CD drive or TT). Call it a "piezoelectric effect." That is the central gist of the thread, and it remains a valid question. The sophisticated part revolves around "how" or "what" to measure. Ethan, a room spectral sweep is a reasonable approach, but what sensitivity does that have to unveil more subtle juju like jitter? I concur with Ralph (MN tube hippy that he is) that vinyl (and tape) still sounds better to my ear. Does a room sweep reveal any differences? I assume not so there is obviously something more to it. I was playing digital files the other night. I then switched over to vinyl, and suddenly, both the dog, one of our cats, and both my kids came into the room. I still "believe" intuitively that there is something intrinsically jarring to digital file reconstruction. Another way to address the question of the day is does vibration management improve jitter performance and or musicality? |
LOL, yes agear. I would love to see any actual accomplishments from any of these people arguing with us! At least we know that Ralph is a knowledgeable electronics engineer. But what the heck do the others know? What are their credentials? What musical instruments do they play at a professional level? What music have they composed? What recordings have they made? What circuits have they designed? What technical papers have they had printed in mainstream publications? Why should we listen to their opinion about anything? These are all absolutely serious questions. Geoff, you can go first please. :->)
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agear, if you like the sound of analog tape and vinyl, then you like the sound of distortion. That’s fine! But it’s not high fidelity. Recording and mixing engineers add the amount of distortion they think is "musical" when they make the recordings. Everything doesn’t get distortion added! But some stuff does. If you like the sound of even more distortion, maybe you should take up recording and mixing as a hobby so you can dial in what you want in controlled amounts?
There is nothing jarring about digital audio. In controlled tests people are unable to tell when a 44/16 "bottleneck" is inserted into an analog playback chain. This is well known and well documented. The key is "controlled tests" which apparently many people here are unfamiliar with. :->)
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What’s all this? Someone call a special meeting of the 12 Angry Men Society?
Note to self: it was just a matter of time before Nathan raised the specter of controlled blind testing. I didn’t see that coming. Fasten your seat belts. This could get ugly. 😩
I hate to judge before all the facts are in, but it appears Nathan must certainly be thinking to himself, gee, these guys haven’t banned me yet, whoops! Looks like my troll with these nitwits will be successful. Now it’s time to smack them upside the head with the old controlled blind testing crapola. That's
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ethan_winer1agear, if you like the sound of analog tape and vinyl, then you like the sound of distortion Logical fallacy of the excluded middle, of course. |
cleeds
ethan_winer1agear, if you like the sound of analog tape and vinyl, then you like the sound of distortion
"Logical fallacy of the excluded middle, of course."
this entire thread is a study in logical fallacies. It’s become a tutorial on how NOT to carry on a debate. It’s got it all. Argumentum Ad hominem, strawman arguments, Appeal to Authority, Appeal to Age, Argument from Questioning Motives, Appeal to Science, Appeal to Credentials. And the most common logical fallacy on this thread,
Argument from Ignorance: The fallacy that since we don’t know (or can never know, or cannot prove) whether a claim is true or false, it must be false.
😀
Geoff Kait
machina dynamica
we do artificial atoms right!
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I have 2 patents have a new one under application and review.. and with an associate one being updated.You can reduce the distortion on vinyl with the removal of a polarity of shear..You have to understand how its there in the first place and conceive a method for its reduction and or removal.. Shear is very prevelant in audio and is much of the basis for motion and sound. Some good and some not. Shear can be dispersed but never isolated..keep looking. Tom |
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There is a select group of professional recording engineers now working who are considered the best in the business, responsible for some of the best sounding recordings ever made---lifelike instrumental timbre, high resolution and transparency, who can record on any equipment they choose. They have no allegiance to any system, just to getting the best sound possible. One such engineer is Kavi Alexander of Water Lily Records, located in Santa Barbara California. Kavi not only continues to prefer analog tape to digital (though higher bit rates and sampling frequencies---24/192, are narrowing the gap), but he uses a very customized recorder that employs tubes! He does so NOT because of any "musical distortion" the recorder adds to the direct mic feed, but for the exact opposite reason---it is the most transparent, least distortion-adding method of recording he has found. Kavi’s has produced some of the most astonishingly lifelike recordings ever made, including the Grammy Award-winning "A Meeting By The River", on which master slide guitarist Ry Cooder plays. Ry is VERY serious about the sound of his guitars (both live and recorded), which led him to make the first digitally recorded Pop (non-Classical) album, Bop Til You Drop. He HATED it! When he heard a Water Lily label recording he asked "Why don’t my records sound this good?". He sought out Mr. Alexander, and plans were undertaken to make the AMBTR album. It is World Music, and one of the handful of best recordings I’ve ever heard.. The Water Lily recorder’s tube circuits were designed by Tim Paravicini, who has also done work for the David Gilmore/Pink Floyd Studio in London, considered one of the best in the world. Tim also designs consumer Hi-Fi products for EAR-Yoshino, including tube pre-amps, power amps, and digital products. EAR-Yoshino has one phono pre-amp that is all solid state, which Tim preferred in that application. He, like Kavi, generally prefers tubes to solid state, not for their "musical distortion", but for their sonic superiority. One may disagree with that preference, but one can not truthfully claim that their preference is based on a desire for "musical distortion". |
^^^ I’m sorry but that’s just wrong. The very definition of high fidelity is a flat response and low distortion. Yes, many fabulous recordings have been made on old school analog equipment. But that equipment has lower fidelity than even consumer-grade modern digital converters. So again, the perception that analog recordings are more "lifelike" than digital is a psychoacoustics effect caused by the addition of distortion. Honest, this stuff has been tested repeatedly and known for a very long time! I’m sorry if you’re not aware of the years of research, and the history of this!
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You just don’t get it Ethan. Kavi listens to the direct mic feed, then to his recording of that mic feed. He listens for any difference between the two, for any degradation caused by the recorder. He has concluded that his recorder is the most accurate, lowest-distortion, transparent recorder available at this time (when he finds something more transparent, he will use it.). You claim he’s wrong? Gee, I just don’t know who has more credibility here---a Grammy Award-winning professional recording engineer, or you. Who are you again? |
Well, he’s wrong. And you (and he) are the ones who don’t get it. And Argument From Authority never impresses me. But you don’t have to believe me. Honest, I don’t care who you believe. But if you're serious about understanding audio, you’d do well to cancel your subscription to the audiophile magazines and join the AES instead.
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My two cents as a 40 year technology professional who only dabbles in audio as a hobby these days is that its always all about how noise and distortion is effectively kept to a minimum and more ways than ever to tackle that beast cost effectively these days. No individual or entity has exclusive rights to a secret sauce.
The rest is mostly personal preferences which differs for each but has nothing to do with science and technology solving a problem better for the most part.
Also I will cast some lots in Ethans camp though its a bit narrow-minded and say that room acoustics are perhaps the first and primary thing to consider before during and after buying any home audio solution. If you get the acoustic fit into the room right to meet your needs its pretty clear sailing these days from there.
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ethan_winer... Yes, many fabulous recordings
have been made on old school analog equipment. But that equipment has lower
fidelity than even consumer-grade modern digital converters. So again,
the perception that analog recordings are more "lifelike" than digital
is a psychoacoustics effect caused by the addition of distortion. This is an old, tired and transparently silly argument. It's the logical fallacy of causal reasoning.
If distortion were the key to the preference for analog recording, then obviously more distortion would only improve those recordings. But of course, those who've made the best quality analog recordings typically did so while working to keep those distortions to the lowest possible level. You have simply confused cause and effect.
Honest, I don’t care who you believe.
Oh, you care very, very much ... so much so that you've resorted to profanity-laced ad hominem attacks here that have resulted in multiple deleted posts. |
Man, I’m still surprised by the amount of hubris out there. I’ll never forget the first time I heard a direct-to-disc LP, the second Sheffield. That label’s recording engineer Doug Sax went back in time, resurrecting recording without an electronic recorder at all, cutting a lacquer directly from his mixing console. The transparency, the "aliveness" of that recording, was astounding. It showed how much distortion was being added by the recorder itself. The bypass test, in which the component being tested is inserted into the reproduction chain, the audibility of it’s insertion being listened for, is the ultimate test of a components transparency. That audibility will vary according to who the listener is, it has been established. The "better" the listener, the more audible the component. Perhaps Kavi Alexander has a much lower tolerance for digital and/or solid state distortion artifacts than your average AES member. To claim that his recordings sound "good" because they contain pleasing "musical distortion", when one has not even heard one of his recordings, and further that Mr. Alexander is "wrong" for preferring analog to digital (and tubes to solid state!), is not only ignorant, but arrogant. The lack of humility is a very unflattering trait.
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The very definition of high fidelity is a flat response and low
distortion. Yes, many fabulous recordings have been made on old school
analog equipment. But that equipment has lower fidelity than even consumer-grade modern digital converters. Ethan, when you say that a person 'prefers distortion' I assume that you know that the ear/brain system converts distortion (unless outright, as in clipping) into tonality. This is why a lot of tube equipment sounds 'warm' or 'rich', because of the presence of the 2nd harmonic. But this does not have to be made by tubes in particular, solid state can do that too (the early 70's Sunn solid state instrument amplifiers are good examples, as is the old AR amplifier). Much also depends on topology. For example, you can prevent tubes from having a 2nd harmonic simply by employing fully differential design from input to output (which is how a lot of transistor gear is designed). Regardless, the admonishment I am offering here is to be careful about attempting to place all the 'deplorables' in one basket! The issue is that the human ear/brain system is relatively insensitive to lower ordered harmonics (2nd, 3rd and 4th) while it is **very** sensitive to higher ordered harmonics- so much so that it can detect them when often test equipment cannot. The reason for this has to do with evolution and the fact that our ears use higher ordered harmonics in order to gauge sound pressure (this fact was first documented by General Electric about 1965) and is very easy to prove with very simple test equipment (I have documented how elsewhere on this site). So if the ear is insensitive to a certain distortion, does that mean that if that distortion is present in a given bit of equipment, that it is heavily distorted or not? This refers to a comment I made earlier where I mentioned that the audio industry tends to be about 40 years behind where it should be because for the most part it ignores how our ear/brain systems perceive sound. Certainly our ability to detect sound pressure has to be one of that more important aspects of that perception! So where I'm going with this is that just because analog systems have more distortion to which the ear is relatively insensitive, that is not saying the same as its 'less high fi' when the succeeding art tends to have **more** of the types of distortion to which the ear is far more sensitive! In essence, as far as I can make out, digital fails because generally, while having lower distortion on paper, in practice that distortion is far more audible to the ear (which is converting it to tonality). And since this is all about stuff we hear rather than what we see on a bit of paper, I don't think its correct to say that analog is less 'hifi'. What is more accurate is to say that analog, despite having greater distortion, more closely follows the rules of human hearing than does our current state of digital. BTW this is also true of tubes (and certain transistors) as opposed to transistors in general. I get that it takes a bit to get your head around that 2nd to last paragraph! If you look at how stuff measures on paper, in essence the wrong things are being measured. So as a result, if the paper spec is your guide, you miss something. This is why there is an objectivist/subjectivist debate, a tube/transistor debate and an analog/digital debate. BTW I do not regard myself as a subjectivist- I'm an objectivist (if such a thing is really possible- philosophers will tell you that it is not) that feels that to ignore aspects of our hearing that our testing ignores is not wise. This is why tubes and analog are still around. The market keeps it for a reason, and high end audiophiles are not that reason! They represent a tiny portion of the marketplace that keeps this stuff alive. |
Now THERE is some engineering prowess! Thanks Ralph, just beautiful. |
Yup, some humility is always a good ingredient in any discussion. Its just good business. |
By cleeds' logic, if a little bit of salt improves a hamburger, then an entire shaker full must be better still. I hope you can see who's throwing around the logical fallacies. :->)
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One’s logical fallacy does not preclude those of another. It's a logical fallacy to assume that.
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Ralph, yes, of course I understand that audiophiles use terms like "warm" and "rich" to describe the thickness that distortion adds to music. Unless the distortion is so severe that it’s gross and buzzy sounding, I agree that it mainly changes the timbre. And of course the nature of the distortion and its spectrum matters. But what that argument misses is whenever you have THD you also have IMD. And IMD is "musical" in only a few instances, such as a 1-5 power chord where the sum and difference frequencies align with notes in the musical key. So whether the distortion comes from vinyl or analog tape, or tubes and transformers (not your stuff apparently), it can only make the music less clear. That some people like this coloration is beside the point. I like that sound sometimes too, and use it in my own recordings! But it's an effect, not higher fidelity as some people believe.
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BTW folks (not you Ralph), I totally accept this is all my bad. I'm the atheist who ran into the church yelling, "There is no god!" :->)
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ethan_winerBy cleeds' logic, if a little bit of salt improves a hamburger, then an entire shaker full must be better still. Of course, that's not my logic at all. It's yours. I'm glad you now recognize how silly your argumentation has been here!
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ethan_winer
BTW folks (not you Ralph), I totally accept this is all my bad. I'm the atheist who ran into the church yelling, "There is no god!" :->)
Actually you're more like Chicken Little running around yelling, "The sky is falling, the sky is falling!"
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But what that argument misses is whenever you have THD you also have IMD. This statement is a bit misleading but is not false. The problem here is that there is often an idea that if you have high THD you must also have high IMD and that is the part that is not true. You can have low IMD figures and still have a fair amount of THD. I refer you to the specs of our amps on our website. THD is excellent for a zero feedback amp (0.5% is typical) while IMD is lower by an order of magnitude or more. There are of course cases where IMD is higher, especially in older tube gear, but its important to understand how IMD arises, and IME that has a lot to do with power supplies which are a weakness in older tube gear (an exception being vintage Futterman OTLs which have very respectable distortion figures). Since we felt that loop feedback was a poor option for reducing distortion (results in higher ordered harmonics), we avoided IMD by employing a separate power supply for our driver circuits, so that any perturbations in the output section could not affect the driver. We also reduced it by making sure that the timing constants in our power supplies were in fact lower than those of the amplifier circuit itself. Finally, we made sure that any fixed bias points could not be modulated by the audio signal itself. Vintage tube gear does not do these things (and also tends to have transformers...)! As well any solid state amp that is direct-coupled input to output is also at risk unless its powered by a battery. That is why battery-powered transistor amps tend to sound better (its hard to measure the difference in IMD in those cases, but the ear is well-known to be pretty sensitive to IMD as you know). FWIW, IMD is really well-known to not be pleasant to the ear and is **not** the reason people prefer analog or tubes (which generally **are** pleasant to the human ear)! So right here your argument seems to fall apart, as you seem to be conflating IMD with THD. THD is its own issue, as you know transistor amps are pretty low in THD, but what they have of it happens to be highly audible and objectionable to the human ear. Yet about 95% of all analog recordings are done with solid state, so I’m still having a problem with the way your argument is stated. I think you are missing something. ’Clarity’ as in ’music less clear’ is not a spec on any bit of paper. Its something ***Subjective***. And I do agree that higher IMD impedes clarity as well as altering the tonality towards brightness (because the ear converts IMD to tonality as well). As I have pointed out before, digital systems have a form of IMD known as ’inharmonic distortion’ as it is intermodulations unrelated to fundamental tones. I think you must not believe that it exists; I’m pretty sure that your response to that idea resulted in a post deletion. I could be wrong. But its a thing I’ve experienced myself with a simple sweep generator, so I know its real and I know it exists in modern digital gear too. I don’t really care whether its in playback or record- you can’t playback if you don’t record (that’s an existential thing....). What I think you are missing here is what I have stated before- which is that if the ear is very sensitive to the distortion, that even if on the bench that distortion **seems** low by bench measurement standards such as you are accustomed, its still quite high! The industry still struggles to measure these distortions accurately as they tend to be ’buried in the noise’ which is often a convenient excuse while at the same time not accurate. Our testing needs to be more rigorous. The proof of this is that tubes and vinyl are still very much around and not dependent in any way on the high end audio community. The year of least vinyl production was nearly 25 years ago!! There are now more manufacturers of tube equipment in the US than there was in 1958. Think about that- the market wants it, and its not likely because its distorted. You ask a kid (and I have many times as I play in a band and do local shows) why they prefer vinyl and they’ll tell you because it sounds better. That’s not someone preferring distortion- because the ear isn’t sensitive to the distortion that the bench measures so much as it far more sensitive to the types we struggle to measure! I am repeating myself because I’m trying to put this in several ways so you can understand what I’m trying to say and yet make it understandable for the layman. |
ethan_winer
But if you’re serious about understanding audio, you’d do well to cancel your subscription to the audiophile magazines and join the AES instead.
But isn’t AES actually an anti audiophile organization? For example, how do they stand on audiophile cables? On aftermarket power cords? On aftermarket fuses? On wire directionality? On vibration isolation? On Schumann frequency generators? On the importance of absolute polarity? No need to answer. It’s a rhetorical question.
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But isn’t AES actually an anti audiophile organization? Seems to me Stanley Lipshitz first presented his formulae on creating RIAA EQ curves to the AES. They also have that File 48 (balanced line standard) I like to trot out. Baby and the bathwater... |
Ralph, the only reason my post was deleted was because I told you know who to you know what himself. It had nothing to do with your post.
Digital systems do have aliasing, and that's like IMD except one of the source frequencies is the sample rate. So you can get aliasing with only a single pure tone. I guess you could call is inharmonic distortion but I'd rather call it what it is: aliasing. In all modern (competent) converters, all such distortions are too soft to hear anyway, even when listening carefully. But it can be measured, proving once again that test gear beats ears every time. Not for establishing preference! But for reliably and repeatably assessing fidelity.
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atmasphere
Geoffkait: But isn’t AES actually an anti audiophile organization?
Seems to me Stanley Lipshitz first presented his formulae on creating RIAA EQ curves to the AES. They also have that File 48 (balanced line standard) I like to trot out. Baby and the bathwater...
ah, so it's a mix of science and anti audiophile conservative dogma?
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Digital systems do have aliasing, and that's like IMD except one of the
source frequencies is the sample rate. So you can get aliasing with only
a single pure tone. I guess you could call is inharmonic distortion but
I'd rather call it what it is: aliasing. Thank-you. The problem is if you call it aliasing without acknowledging that its also distortion, it leads to confusion (if there is IMD or THD, they make artifacts not found in the original signal, why should aliasing catch a break?). Distortion is really the more accurate term. And its so audible that in the old days it was criminal. No analog system ever had artifacts like that (unless is was badly malfunctioning)! So I think you can see that I regard calling it 'aliasing' without also speccing it as a distortion is disingenuous. Its simply a way of hiding a rather serious artifact and hoping no-one will notice. But it did get noticed and is why the LP is still very much alive today! So, if you **include** aliasing artifacts in with the THD spec of a typical digital system, what does that number look like? |
ah, so it's a mix of science and anti audiophile conservative dogma? You take the good with the bad. Like any organization that has people in it, its going to have politics and outright flimflam. No-one's perfect. But their goal is good engineering, and often they succeed. But if you deal with them you have to expect to do some wading, just like you do here or anywhere else. |
bpt24: "You just don’t get it Ethan."
End of thread.
Best to you bpt24,
Dave |
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agear OP
What I would really like to see is a video of Mr. Kaits (sic) demonstrating his technology.....
Huh? Spring based isolation devices don't move. They just sit there. There's nothing to see, silly.
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ethan_winer
LOL, yes agear. I would love to see any actual accomplishments from any of these people arguing with us! At least we know that Ralph is a knowledgeable electronics engineer. But what the heck do the others know? What are their credentials? What musical instruments do they play at a professional level? What music have they composed? What recordings have they made? What circuits have they designed? What technical papers have they had printed in mainstream publications? Why should we listen to their opinion about anything? These are all absolutely serious questions. Geoff, you can go first please. :->)
nathan, I don’t like to brag. Besides demands for credentials are stupid and prove nothing. Plus these demands for credentials do actually do reveal some sort of inferiority complex imho. On top of everything the Appeal to Authority is a logical fallacy, remember? Duh?
"These are all absolutely serious questions." You are never absolutely serious, Nathan. You are as disingenuous as they come. Do you think I don’t know who you?
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Ralph, aliasing should be included within a typical "THD plus noise" spec, and I see no reason to call it out separately. Harmonic, inharmonic, IMO it’s okay for all artifacts to be lumped together. If the sum of them all is below 80-90 dB, none of it will ever be heard anyway. With a typical converter the sum of all artifacts is well below 100 or even 110 dB.
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Tom, thanks for emailing me your web site. So your patents are in audio circuit design? Vinyl record technology? Or for cello end pins?
I’d love to hear the audio clips of your end pins versus carbon fiber. Looking at a waveform tells nothing useful. And why did you choose carbon fiber for comparison? My end pin is typical, regular steel, and it works fine with sufficient mass and rigidity. Unfortunately there’s no way to perform a controlled test. Even Yo-yo Ma can’t play the same passage exactly the same twice in a row. But being able to hear what was played, and how it was played, is needed to assess how your end pin is different. For all anyone can tell, those recorded waveforms were from completely different notes.
That said, why are there no prices on your web site? I hate when vendors force you to ask them for prices. When I see that I assume the seller is hoping to rope me in and get me to like him with chit chat, then he’ll hit me with an outrageous price. Or worse, that the seller wants to size me up to determine how much money I have and how much I’d be willing to pay. So when I see sites like that I just leave. I bet many people feel the same way.
Finally, I’m certain there’s a way to properly compare your 70 pound battery on the floor versus hoisted up on a platform. Have you ever done that?
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Ralph, aliasing should be included within a typical "THD plus noise" spec, and I see no reason to call it out separately. Harmonic, inharmonic, IMO it’s okay for all artifacts to be lumped together. If the sum of them all is below 80-90 dB, none of it will ever be heard anyway. With a typical converter the sum of all artifacts is well below 100 or even 110 dB. OK- we’re on the same page, except for one thing. And that is that if the artifacts are at -80 or 90 db, that’s no guarantee that they can’t be heard!! You have to understand that the rules of human hearing have to be the number one thing in audio. But the industry in generally usually finds them a bit inconvenient. This is an example: Even if the artifacts are really down that far (and I question that as aliasing is really best detected with an analog-sourced sweep tone, and further just because a DAC is pretty good at it has nothing to do with how good the ADC was- and without the ADC you’ve got no software....), the human ear uses higher-ordered harmonics to calculate loudness. In addition, the ears are tuned to be most sensitive at bird-song frequencies (and aliasing produces ’birdies’ all the time), meaning that the artifacts can be that low and yet easily detected. Of course we won’t hear the artifacts as they are- the ear converts them to tonality. This is why there is a digital/analog debate!! Many people object to the ’brightness’ or ’hardness’ of digital as opposed to analog, and there is no way that such can’t be interpreted as a **coloration**. There has been an analog/digital debate going back to the early 1980s and you’re looking right at the reason in this post. When you have a coloration like that, there is no way it can be considered neutral and ridding digital of this problem is the cutting edge of where real advancements in the digital art are being made. The thing is, the distortions of analog are less audible to the human ear, and so even if on the bench they **appear** larger, in reality (because our ears are the reality, not the bit of paper) they are in fact **smaller**! If you don’t understand how human hearing perceptual rules work, you will have trouble understanding how this is so. Think of it in a logarithmic fashion, but instead of being related to sound pressure (decibels), its instead related to higher ordered harmonics and intermodulations. This is why I have been harping about the fact that our understanding of how human perceptual rules work is where the big advances in audio are occurring, and why it is that as an industry we fall well short of knowing all that should be known for **real** high fidelity. This is why high end audio exists, to plumb these issues and offer solutions, since mid-fi is only dollar-oriented and has to be pushed pretty hard to change. Of course, some high end audio things don’t work because in a way many of us are stumbling around in the dark due to the industry’s overall lack of interest in human hearing perceptual rules! Because things like equipment stands can reduce tiny amounts of microphonics and other HF artifacts, they have a value; this is due to how our ears work- and I concede that the differences can be hard to measure because our test equipment lacks the required sensitivity that our ears easily have. There are many things where our ears are less sensitive than test gear; higher ordered artifacts just happen to be an exception. |
You may or may not hear very soft artifacts, depending on their makeup and what else is playing at the same time. But you can measure them, and you can ask people to identify them in a blind test. So again, this is not unknowable or even difficult to sort out. Yes, it is just barely possible to hear certain combinations of tones when one is 80 dB below the other, but not at 90 dB as far as I know. So if we measure artifacts (including aliasing), and they’re at least 90 dB down, then nobody will ever hear them. Again, with most digital gear such junk is 110+ dB down. But I said 80-90 dB down because it requires a very special contrived test to hear -80. Heck, even -40 can be difficult in many cases due to masking. Have you ever done tests like this? I have, many times. I wish more people would! Here’s one that plays a very nasty harsh noise under gentle classical music, and then under a synthesizer based pop tune: http://ethanwiner.com/audibility.htmlAll the other stuff you said about why people believe [whatever] about digital audio could be resolved in a single 5-minute blind test. (Likewise for isolation platforms.) These tests have been done. Many times. There is no legitimate dispute. There’s only willful ignorance by the Geoff Kaits and Dave Cockrums of the world. |
There is nothing jarring about digital audio. In controlled tests people are unable to tell when a 44/16 "bottleneck" is inserted into an analog playback chain. This is well known and well documented. The key is "controlled tests" which apparently many people here are unfamiliar with. :->) Hmmm. I would be interested to see that study. I am sure you and others are familiar with this one: http://www.stereophile.com/features/203/#um3KMoxJTFAhwZAf.97 |
agear, I’m not willing to read 11 pages of Stereophile blather. Can you quote the one or two key paragraphs here? Below is one test that proved people are unable to identify a 44/16 "CD quality" bottleneck inserted into a "high resolution" playback chain. They tested 60 people having an interest in audio and music over a period of one year in 554 separate trials. So it was a serious study indeed with little room for error. This is a for-pay article, but the summary tells the story, and I have the article and can answer any questions about it: http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=14195Here’s another, this time with an analog playback chain, from 1984 when even expensive digital convertors weren’t as good as the today’s budget stuff: http://www.bostonaudiosociety.org/bas_speaker/abx_testing2.htm |
Its not a hard read Ethan. Anyway, it was a study conducted by Psychologists in Germany looking at blinded listening preferences (both audiophiles and non) comparing an all tubed system fronted by vinyl and an all SS system fronted by digital. People preferred the tube/vinyl rig to a statistically significant degree. no participant said that the analog system had impaired their sense of well-being, but 16 participants said so of the digital system! This must be one of the most astonishing, and irritating, results of Ackermann's experiment. How can it be that we spend a lot of money on something that makes us feel worse?!
Read more at http://www.stereophile.com/content/god-nuances-page-4#76KVPhAqoldXrRYq.99
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Borrowed from bluewolf on another thread:
"Ethan: Master, I would like you to teach me Zen.
Zen Master: I cannot do that.
Ethan: Why not? I will give you gold.
Zen Master: Tea?
Ethan: Sure.
The Zen Master placed a tea cup in front of the Ethan and began pouring until the cup was full, and continued pouring with the tea pouring onto the table.
Ethan: What are you doing? Stop! Are you mad?
Zen Master: This is why I cannot teach you. Your head is full.
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Have you ever done tests like this? I have, many times. I wish more
people would! Here’s one that plays a very nasty harsh noise under
gentle classical music, and then under a synthesizer based pop tune:
http://ethanwiner.com/audibility.html
I first looked at that link 2-3 years ago. IMO/IME, this is a good example of testing for the wrong thing!! Done as this test is, it does not reveal the problem. I agree (obviously) that you don't hear the artifacts (**as I stated in my post above**); what you **do** hear is that the sound is brighter and harder than the source, because the ear/brain system converts the "inaudible" artifacts into tonality. Because the tonality is caused by the ear's perception and not an actual FR error, it does not show up on the bench. Hence the objectivist/subjectivist debate and the need to understand how the ear works. I'm not sure if you understand this, but its the tonality and the accompanying hardness to which audiophiles object. |
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No Ralph, my test is exactly right on the money. I'm sorry you can't see that. If you were here I'd play the various clips for you blind, and I am absolutely certain you would not be able to identify which clips are "clean" and which have the buried noise. Since you're far away, maybe someone reading this discussion who lives near me is brave enough to visit and let me test them blind. But I doubt that will happen either, because I've been offering such visits for many years. Even when they live only a few towns away they refuse, making up endless BS excuses. So this nonsense that an obvious A/B comparison is somehow invalid continues year after year.
Hey wait, I have an idea! Tell me if you agree before I spend the hour or so this will take: I'll prepare clips of the same two examples in my Audibility article, but they'll be longer and I won't tell you there the nasty noise starts and stops. I'll put them on my site and post the links, then you'll play the clips and tell me where you think the noise is present. Then I'll tell you if you're correct or not. If you fear I'd lie about the locations, I'll be glad to email the answers in advance to a disinterested third party.
Deal?
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Also, Ralph, I’ll be glad to entertain any test you care to describe that will prove you can hear what you claim. Please, let’s do this and settle it for once and for all. You owe it to your fans here to truly prove your case.
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I hate to sound pedantic but there are a great many reasons why stock untreated CDs right out of the box played on stock untreated CD players frequently sound pretty terrible. And it’s not the recording folks. It’s not that it’s an early CD and it’s not because the bit rates aren’t high enough. Allow me to summarize why CDs often sound terrible. You can also visit my web page where I explain all the gory details. Most of these issues are inherent to the design of the CD and the CD player. A few are out of our control. Why Do CDs Sound So Horrible, http://machinadynamica.com/machina35.htm1. CDs not demagnetized 2. CDs static charge not neutralized 3. CD Player not isolated 4. Scattered background laser light getting into the photodetector, both the visible and invisible portions 5. The magnetic fields produced by large transformers are degrading the sound 6. CD not absolutely level whilst spinning 7. CD Resonating 8. Fuse in wrong direction 9. Interconnects in wrong direction 10. Most CDs especially audiophile CDs are in reverse absolute polarity 11. Most CDs in the past 20 years are overly compressed, especially those released recently geoff kait machina dynamica |
BTW Ralph, you don’t have to keep saying stuff like "You don’t seem to understand." I’m certain there’s much here that you don’t understand, but I don’t feel the need to insult you by using such language.
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