Teo, You knowledge of modern engineering especially research w.r.t engineering is rather "limited". Using Queen’s as an example of the rest of the world is rather "limited". Many universities specifically have Engineering Physics disciplines in fact (my undergrad). Research at the bleeding edge of things w.r.t. engineering disciplines, whether semiconductors, AI and information theory, even materials, etc. are not anything like basic mechanical engineering, civil engineering, and even electrical engineering, and your attempts to paint all engineering as such only shows lack of experience on your part. There is a big difference between day to day implementation engineering, engineering R&D, and pure research in engineering fields. I actually talk to professors at universities fairly often. I also talk to engineering professors often. It not rare at all for cross-disciplinary research either as the lines between the two disciplines often blur except when you get into theoretical physics, which very few, even at the university level are involved in (most experimental physics is very engineering like by the way). And no, they would not take exception with "how" you say it, they just would not agree. You are conflating all engineering with simple implementation engineering which is absolutely not true, and you are conflating all physics (and science) as one of pure theoretical research, which again is very much not true. Go to any university and ask any professor of physics if they think what I say is true or not. They may take exception with how I’m presenting it or wording it, but..conceptually, re the idea of reality itself...they will agree.
But the full nature of the loadine as seen by science, is one of all theory, as.... with no anchor point, it can’t be anything else. The science and physics....recognizes and attempts to deal with the box and the turtle, or tries to deal with the misty obscured ends of the loadline.
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There is not "evidence" that: - Digital is "missing" information w.r.t. analog/vinyl at least information that can in any way be detected or influence our listening - It is actually a very small group of people who claim "digital sounds horrible". Many musicians say that digital is truer to reality, whether you like it or not. - Digital "tonality" is essentially perfect (unlike vinyl), and dynamic range of 24/96 is enormous compared to any analog format - Magnetic tape has issues with noise, wow/flutter, induced signal issues from non linear movement over the heads, etc. To vinyl add more noise, poor channel to channel isolation, and inaccuracies with RIAA equalization / de-equalization and even less "information" in or close to the audio band None of which means we should prefer CD, we tend to like over saturated colors, many like too much bass, etc. Like and accurate are not the same thing. Unsupportable conjectures do nothing to advanced discussions. geoffkait18,646 posts12-01-2019 12:06pmThere
are several topics under discussion. One is why digital sounds so
horrible. Especially why digital generally can’t match the tonality or
dynamic range of vinyl. Also, why digital playback seems to be missing a
considerable amount of information. Agree? Disagree? Talk amongst
yourselves. |
Where those powers of cognition vary between individuals, to the tune of 300,000:1 in cognition speed, when we go from 100 to 200 IQ. Where.. what it takes a person with 100IQ a year to cognate, a person with 200 IQ can cognate in 3 minutes. This is a theoretical calculation put forth from a member of the Prometheus society, which requires an IQ of 169 at a minimum, to become a member. There is much to show that this is hewing close to the reality, otherwise the member would not have put forth the musing.
Actually there is almost 0 evidence to support this. To support this would require actual experiments with the same problem given to people of diverse IQs and the time of "cognition" to be evaluated. Because of the diverse IQs, that would require a test of exceedingly long completion time for those at the bottom. Not to mention, this is not how "IQ" even works. It is a scale of what percentage of people can achieve a score on a theoretical test, then belled with a standard deviation of 15, such that an IQ of 200 is 6.67 standard deviations above 100. While there is proof that people with high IQs neurons fire faster, and proof of higher connection density, hence passing more detailed information, the numbers above (300,000:1) are just fantasy. There have been some rough looks at speed of learning over the years, that show improvements of 10-30% per standard deviation. As well, it is supportable through evidence that a person with an IQ of 170 may solve a problem that a person with an IQ of 100 never will as they don’t have the ability to process the complexity, but that is much different from a measure of "time to understand". p.s. I would not use a word like "cognate" unless you know what it means. According to the calculation itself, others may take quite some time to catch up to the obviousness of the proposal of this thread... being tied up in, well, emotional reflection of internal issues when presented with the proffered data point. And here perhaps we agree, because there appears to be an attempt, based on a lack of understanding of the basic precepts of sampled data systems, to make claims that are factually not supportable. Hence some, like the author, make claims that they feel are obvious, while others, who have an understanding of the underlying science, know, instantly, that those claims are wrong. This has little to do with high IQ though. It is mainly about experience and knowledge. Higher IQ would better allow mapping of knowledge from one area onto another area. i.e. someone with high IQ that understands sampling theory, would understand that examples specific to music would not be required to illustrate timing accuracy of sample systems used for music. Next comes the idea of hearing, and rumination via hearing.
the idea that It follows the same path in individuals as does basic intelligence. That the variations in hearing capacities (as a complex system) may also follow this range of at least 300,000:1 in fine resolution of brainpower tied to sensitivities. As discussed above, there is 0 evidence of a 300,000:1 range for cognition speed. Similarly, there is little evidence for any wide range of auditory capability. There is little/no evidence of anyone hearing past 20KHz. In tests of detection of time of arrival discrimination, there was no large difference between subjects, and the largest difference was related frequency range of hearing. One would expect some difference in processing complexity, just like intelligence, but that does not magically change fundamental limits such as range of frequencies heard and/or dynamic range, and it appears time of arrival discrimination. Most likely would be the ability to interpret more complexity, but not fundamentals. Smart people may be able to find something in an image faster, but they do not see the image in fundamentally more detail digital audio has the whole answer and problem set put on --completely backward, or in a way that has nothing to do with how the ear works. Or, in total contrary aspect to how the ear works.
Digital audio makes terrific engineering and mathematical sense, but very poor sense, with regard to how the ear works. This has been covered multiple times in this thread. This goes back to the point about "obviousness". There is no evidence of people with fundamentally superhuman hearing capability whether in dynamic range, time of arrival processing or frequency range. While they may be able to extract more information out of audio, that does not change how much information was there in the first place, which these statements are attempting to imply without providing any evidence that is the case. A better fundamental knowledge of sampled data systems would probably prevent making these inaccurate conclusions. |
the human hearing system was designed, from the ground up, over millennia, in the realm of natural selection, to hear through and past noise and wow & flutter. It was designed to do these complex things via it’s temporally sensitive and aligned comb filter ’multi thousand point’ amplitude triggered system. All tied to the most complex and potent bit of computing power known to exist ---the human mind.
And yes noise can impact our hearing perception both negative and positive. There is more than just simple amplitude triggering predator/prey hearing. Communication and language processing has resulted in significant processing capabilities w.r.t. tone and pace where "wow and flutter" can have meaning, hence we detect this unnatural artifact. Hence my nicely rude line about how people wear their consciousness. (where I do not exempt myself, and.. as this post comes into focus for the reader...it is seen as frighteningly close to the truth) Rude? perhaps. A straw-man and call to authority more obviously. It seems most definite that did nothing to move the argument forward. Something about time, and cognition, If I recall correctly.... No, something about trying to take the complex interpretation of sound that occurs in humans and equate that, without evidence, to a level of "information lost" in an electrical signal, to make a claim about digital systems (or even electrical signals), that cannot be supported by any accepted methods of measurement. |
Contrary to uninformed belief, dynamic compression started before CDs. CDs simply provided a vehicle, because of their lack of restrictions on whole album dynamic range, to make it even louder. Apparently there are people in this world who find vinyls lack of dynamic range, destruction of channel separation, equalization/de-equalization oddities, low SNR, and a host of other artifacts enjoyable. >>>>Sadly Neil Young was onto the whole CD scam before
dynamic range compression set in. But that probably didn’t help.
Apparently there are people in this world who find CDs completely
objectionable, you know, what with the thinness, shrillness, two
dimensionality, and missing information. |
You are referring to something that some people actual like ... whether we do or not. geoffkait18,710 posts12-05-2019 10:11amatdavid,
You appear to be blissfully ignorant of the Loudness Wars. But that’s
OK, it’s a common newbie mistake. What I’m referring to isn’t simply
dynamic range compression which a great many recordings have always
exhibited to some degree. It’s aggressive dynamic range compression I’m referring to. You know, the suffocation of the music. 🥵 |
You can spend all the money and the world and ... the channel separation will still suck as it is inherent in the implementation, you will never have de-equalization perfect since you don't know the exact equalization curve, you can't fix wow/flutter that occurred at cutting, and your dynamic range and signal to noise will still be comparatively low ....You can paint a pig all you want, but it is still a pig.
cleeds2,608 posts12-05-2019 2:44pm
That
may be true, but it would apply to only a tiny minority. Audiophiles
who play LPs work hard and often spend considerable money to avoid these
"host of artifacts" that you reference. The notion that those qualities
are what attract people to LP is silly. |
Unless the compression takes into account equal loudness contours to target a more idealized playback at typical volume levels. The dynamic range database does not consider spectrum. geoffkait18,721 posts12-05-2019 5:00pmThere is no advantage to overly compressing dynamic range
during remastering other than being able to increase level on the CD.
Lack of dynamic range automatically
makes the music $hitty. The good gnus 🐃 🐃 🐃 is most systems don’t
have an excess of dynamic range anyway. |
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For you, two bits! I thought it was pretty self explanatory though. >>>>>>Is there any compensation for translating that paragraph? |
Sticks and stones may break my bones, but calling names just shows your bias (and is a bit childish). I have heard great turntables. I have heard great turntables sound great. I have heard great turntables "stumble" ... or maybe it was the pressing? I have heard them "color" the sound. That is completely okay. Some people's favourite color is blue. Some people's favourite color is red. No matter how much anyone screams, blue light will be shorter wavelength that red. I never made an anti-LP argument, I just pointed out the many ways that LPs are not and cannot be accurate. I do that when someone claims technical superiority of vinyl. If you want to say it sounds better to you, I have no issues with that. There is a cross-section of the population that prefer the sound. If you want to claim it has technical merits it does not possess, then I am going to call that out. That is not being biased, that is being honest. I listen to a lot of live music, both amplified and not. I like live music, warts and all. I like music recorded in a studio too, which is most. I don't find vinyl brings me any closer to some "live" nirvana. I am not oblivious to vinyl mixes often being better, but I don't say that is because of "vinyl", it is because of mixing. cleeds2,610 posts12-06-2019 9:18amIt’s
clear where you’re coming from - you’re a measurmentalist. You are so
absorbed and infatuated with numbers and graphs that should you listen
to even an extraordinarily outstanding turntable system, your profound
confirmation bias would prevent you from enjoying the sound. For you, LP
will always be a pig.
That’s a fine preference to have, by the
way, and you have a lot of good company! But I’m glad that I can enjoy
music from a variety of sources.
Your anti-LP argument is filled
with illogic, btw, but no matter. A preference is just that - it doesn’t
require any elaborate explanation to justify it. |
And I shall hereby dub you "DetachmentFromRealityist". If you want to use childish names, lets go all in. This notion that we cannot measure electrical signals with enough detail to match human human is false. It is not a supportable position. To that end, if you like the way that a turntable and the whole vinyl process modifies what started as an electrical signal in a measurable way, there is nothing wrong with that. Just don't call it accurate, as it is not. cleeds2,611 posts12-06-2019 5:18pmI
understand that you really believe that. It’s your measurementalist
bias on display to the extent that even when it’s explained to you, you
can’t see it. That’s ok; that’s how profound bias sometimes works. No
one should interpret it as offensive.
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So basically Cleeds you have no point at all? Thank you for clarifying that. |
Oh Cleeds you totally crack me up. You 100% believe that every specification w.r.t. turntables and vinyl 100% correlates to our understanding of human hearing but you will jump through logical hoops and distort math, physics and reality in an attempt to claim digital cannot achieve the level of detail or accuracy of vinyl sort of like how this article does.
You want to pick and choose the experiments and scientific knowledge w.r.t. human hearing and signals that suit your desired outcome and ignore the ones that don't. That is charming but disingenuous.
You pretty much admitted you have no valid technical reason to prefer vinyl over digital. Thank You |
I proved the article wrong in my first few posts. The article is based on a gross technical inaccuracy. |
We can’t see 324 megapixels ... Not even close. We can see about 7 megapixels at most at a single time in our foveal vision. That 324 is an erroneous interpretation of if we scanned our eyes over a field of view but out brains do not really work that way. We have 120 million rods but they are bundled so the resolution is not great and they easily saturate. We have approx 7 million cones which is where our high res viewing comes from. |
No Mahgister you are trying to see things in this article that frankly are not there. I cannot support that point of view.
The whole basis of the claim of the article is a misrepresentation of the timing aspects of digital audio. This is caused by the author not understanding digitized systems.
Don't try to read more into this article than there is. There are many complexities of sound interpretation but those are a factor of the sounds that reach the ear and the complexities of speakers and room environments, not the electrical signal. |
Mahgister,
I think I get where you are coming from, but the author of the article was attacking digital audio at the signal level, not at the "sound getting to the ear" level. Sound is complex. Recorded signals ... not so much.
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Can't agree with you Mahgister. Whole premise of the article was that digitized systems only have timing accuracy to a sampling rate level and hence miss micro-timing. That is a 100% false premise. Digitized systems with high SNR have very high timing resolution as long as the system is bandwidth limited which digital audio is ... And so is our auditory system. As was pointed out above, neurons don't simply fire on/off either. |
But mahgister, he does very clearly attack digital, and does it in a very specific way. He claims that the limitation on timing of a digitized system is limited to 1/(sample rate) which for 44.1KHz is about 23 microseconds.
His expertise does not extend to signal processing or even specific aspects of the auditory system.
There is no evidence at this point that human hearing is anything but a bandwidth limited system, that limit around 20KHz. He makes claims about fast neuron firing and implies that means there is higher bandwidth, but that is a false equivalence. A higher amplitude 20Khz signal reaches a neuron triggering level faster than a low amplitude 20Khz signal, but that does not mean the bandwidth is anything but 20Khz.
His statement that timing in a digitized system is limited to 1/(sample rate) is simply wrong. Not a little bit wrong but very very wrong. He bases his whole article precept on a digitized system not being able to support microtiming, all based on his incorrect notion that a digitized system is limited to timing resolution of 1/(sample rate). He fails to recognize the bandwidth limitations of our auditory system and that a bandwidth limited digitized system has very high timing resolution (and accuracy). I believe his two errors are not realizing that a low frequency signal can trigger a comparator (neuron) much faster that 1/frequency as it is simply an amplitude comparator, and because of that, not recognizing that a digitized system that is bandwidth limited has high temporal precision.
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mahgister,
The timing resolution, within the bandwidth limited system, is orders of magnitude better than the sampling rate at even fairly low SNR. Within a bandwidth limited system, which the "mechanical" auditory system starts as, continuous time can be represented, effectively perfect, by sampled data points. It really is the same under those limits of bandwidth and there is absolutely nothing to indicate our acoustic perception is not bandwidth limited.
There have been experiments done on temporal resolution w.r.t. bandwidth of the signal. At some point, increasing bandwidth stops increasing temporal resolution, and that stop point is within the limits of the audio bandwidth as commonly discussed.
Unfortunately, the author seemed to be writing from a position of "feelings" as opposed to well researched science. There is research, math, even well accepted scientific knowledge that directly refutes his position.
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mahgister, I think you are trying to attach far too much complexity to this topic that is not a factor of the article. It does not matter if there is 1, 2, or 1000 sensors, there is still just 2 signals, right and left, or perhaps more in a surround system. We only need to get those 2 signals right, no matter how many sensors there are. A digitized and reconstructed analog signal with a given bandwidth, is no more compressed and decompressed than an analog signal that is stored and played back through a system of limited bandwidth. Arguable, modern digital systems "compress" far less, where "compress" is meant to mean throwing away data. Yes, it really is as simple (or not so simple) as Shannon-Nyquist. Shannon-Nyquist even predicts that you can hear tones/signals that are lower in amplitude than the signal to noise ratio, both for analog and digital. For all the talk about micro-timing, etc., there is no evidence that our auditory systems is anything but bandwidth limited. In fact, the experiments clearly show that these "micro-timing" "events", i.e. detecting time of arrival within <5 microseconds, is not improved by increased audio bandwidth. This statement below by Sofky is just lazy gobblygook. Digital "variability" is neither lower nor higher, but digital implementations are lower in noise typically. If you don't like that, then simply add some noise back at playback. A reconstructed digital signal in the analog domain is absolutely as continuous as any other bandwidth limited signal. "Continuous natural laws"? ... huh? There is nothing "unnatural" about the structure of digital "variability". That is well, a really weird statement, that I can only see someone who has a distorted understanding of bandwidth limited systems making. Hyperdimensional ... that is some hyperbole on his part. No, same dimension as the "real" world, just storing it in a different and more accurate fashion. But variability in the digital world has a very different structure from
the “noise” known to science. In one sense, digital variability is
lower,having been specifically enriched to appear to our sensory systems
as coherent 3D images or sounds rather than as random snow or hiss. In
that sense, moment-to-moment digital inputs are designed to seem low
noise and clean. But digital sources are hyperdimensional patterns,
which (unlike real things) can change discontinuously, thereby violating
the continuous natural laws a nervous system expects. The unnatural
structure of digital variability can make it appear far more trustworthy
and predictable than it actually is. (Sofky) |
You are always polite Mahgister, so I would never think to be anything but in return :-) I don't want to leave you with the impression I don't think that complex things happen in our brain/bodies we don't fully understand yet, and that is why I will never discount preferences, i.e. like a preference for vinyl because of the unique "presentation" of vinyl, and that could be things we think of as artifacts like higher noise, lower channel separation, even effects of equalization/de-equalization (which is real compression), etc. Even today when most vinyl is cut from digital masters, many still prefer vinyl. That could just be the mastering, but if there is more to it, it would be good to understand what that is, so that we could simulate it for those that prefer it. When vinyl is cut from a digital master, any argument for technical superiority of vinyl disappears. There are of course some who claim that you must have a full analog process for best sound, but even analog master tapes have their limitations, and perhaps it is those limitations we like. These arguments get so consumed in what is "technically" better, that it is almost impossible to have a discussion about what is preferable.
Shannon-Nyquist explain all that need to be explained in the neurology
of the brain-body maps and mappings like in audio technology the rest is
superfluous words of this Softky... After you had for sure reduce
anything that had to be reduced to this only possibility by restricting
the general problem that the thesis of Softky raises and declaring him
ignorant, or at least in total error about a point in audio...
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