How Science Got Sound Wrong

He did, apparently, have fondness for Lowther based speakers....so maybe not.

So if that is indeed the situation would seem that the technology that would provide the solution would have to take "Le Gros Guy" into account.....read it would need an algorithm to adequately describe God ?

Wow that sounds complicated...which explains why we definitely need a real scientist or two, and some real science to solve that one....like real solid irreducible objective stuff and not that airy fairy subjective stuff that screams metaphysics and only relies on individual in situ observation ( cause we all know how unreliable that is...not at all like the sacred science which is perfectly objective and infinitely correct....well there was that unfortunately "Perfect Sound Forever" incident but that was just a, uhhh, errr, a small whoopsie....I mean the math was perfect and everything....)

Actually there is a problem for many people....for them digital does not sound as good as analog, and highly compressed is even worse. And the author was taking a shot at explaining that. And who knows he may not have explained himself adequately but that doesn’t mean that problem does not exist.

Kinda curious.... what exactly is the most applicable technology hear, errr, here ?

Keeping in mind technology in the simplest form can be defined as....

the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes, especially in industry."advances in computer technology"

• machinery and equipment developed from the application of scientific knowledge.
• the branch of knowledge dealing with engineering or applied sciences.

Using resources to solve a problem (such as knowledge, skills, processes, techniques, tools and raw materials).

So what exactly is the problem that this technology is being applied to?

Many people prefer vinyl (even though much of the time the source material was digital). Many people prefer all digital chains. It is a good thought exercise to try to determine if anything is wrong with digital, if you stick to things that are factual. It is an equally good thought exercise to determine what is "wrong" with vinyl and what makes that sound attractive to many.

In point of fact I didn’t say vinyl ( which admittedly has issues ) I specifically said analog and thru several decades of work experience have heard analog recordings of events and their digital equivalent. And frankly those digital equivalents while awfully good ( and getting better over time ) were/are still not up to the level of high level analog.

And absolutely yes I would love to understand why that is the situation. I mean digital has incredible potential, it is convenient, easy to manipulate and store, can be played back in very small portable formats, but on the big score, music playback, not so much.

And I think don’t throwing more math at it will solve the problem because the problem is tied up in a mechanism, the human, that is at best understood by weak grid science ( science mostly defined by sufficient conditions and not the necessary ones that strong grid science usually operates in ) In such a situation the factual bits are fuzzy but it may be a good idea to maybe look at that end of things to get a better idea of how to optimize the digital math. Cause if the author is even slightly right it seems the situation right now is akin to a digital square peg being hammered over and over again into a sinusoidal hole. And yeah the math may be perfect but remember the map is not the territory.

And yes the article is far from perfect but does at the very least throw the analog vs digital debate into a new light. I read it and see a possible avenue for further exploration. It does not, in my most unbelievably humble opinion, deserve the whole-sale dismissal you have painted it with.

but the science of what happens w.r.t. the storage and reconstruction of information, namely what is captured by that microphone and played back through the electronics, up to the speaker, that science is exceptionally strong, bounded by very robust science and math.

As the Brits would say, brilliant, just brilliant, its absolute comedy gold....in fact that has to be one of the funniest things I have read in quite a while. I can only thank the powers that be I wasn’t drinking coffee at the time because I surely would have lost a laptop....or I didn’t faint and fall and crack my skull ’cause I was laughing so hard I got very very light headed.

And delivered with such certitude / straight face delivery...to paraphrase the great and grand Zaphod, brilliantly brilliant.

You post excerpts, not links to articles, why is that? The parts you link to show a lack of understanding and the same flawed thought process as
the author.

If you had actually taken the time to read what I had said you would know I was referring to articles you had posted earlier and that supported the contention made in the opening quote.

@ atdavid

So when I finally had some time ( it’s been a very busy week ) went off and did some sleuthing and reading. Anyways, to cut to the chase....found the following.....

It proves you can infer some time details beyond the sample rate, but this is practicaly a kind of limited exception to the rule implied by the sampling rate -not an escape from accuracy limitations.

It was shown that the phase of a sinusoidal pattern which is assumed as perfect and constant can be resolved to a fraction of the sampling interval.

This subsample accuracy was possible because the pattern recorded is not a discrete event, it’s impression is recorded throughout many consecutive samples and its exact formation is inferable (idealy).

For all discrete or unassumable events, PCM records can only specify time of occurence to within a whole length of the sampling interval. Time resolution can only be improved when a known pattern can be observed throughout multiple samples -which is the case for computing the phase of synthetic frequency components, but not at all when trying to refine the temporal location of unassumed events.

This seems to say that timing beyond the sampling rate is a rather special case that works in situations that have a long term term steady state input, and doesn’t apply to " discrete or unassumable "events. And correct me if I’m wrong but music is most likely something very akin to a discrete or unassumable events, eh.

That proved kinda interesting and sorta relevant so I decided to look at the articles you posted to back-fill your position, and not just go, ooooh, that right there is real honest sound and robust science, and just run away cause people like us are afraid of the dark and real science.

So looked thru those articles and sure enough timing beyond the sample rate is indeed possible.....in gas pipelines, which I assume are fairly steady state noise sources.....and not as one articles clearly states....

Notuseful for real-time applications. The whole signal needs to be known in advance.

Where the real-time applications kinda sorta sounds an awful lot like music....and the whole signal implies long term steady state.

So colour me confused....but it seems the articles you posted may be sound and robust science but the bottom line they don’t really support your contentions....if fact in one case quite the opposite and in the other case concerned with something not at all like music and from a strictly sound and robust science perceptive has very limited relevance .

That being said would be happy to learn more about this so please post other references, though if I were you I may want to actually read the article before posting, you know, just to make sure it says what you hope it does. 

Methinks either you are not seeing things clearly because some of that egg on your face got into your eyes.

Or you are like the lawyer reduced to pounding the table because his first two more defensible options have gone poof.

So here is what people in the sound and robust sciences do when confronted with a difference of opinion....they find articles that specifically support their contentions. You mentioned there were thousands of them so it should be quite easy to find several that would conclusively prove your case .

And we will have a win/win conclusion to this...I will have learned something valuable and your position will be validated.

will instantly pick out the flaw in the premise

Really hate to break it to you but that is how sound and science moves forward.

There are two possible outcomes: If the result confirms the hypothesis, then you’ve made a measurement. If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you’ve made a discovery. -Enrico Fermi, physicist and Nobel laureate (29 Sep 1901-1954)

That being said that attitude generally applies to people in the sciences whereas those working the trenches of applied science generally shy away from that and operate in the lumped parameter model. Where if science is considered the best map to navigate reality the lumped parameter model is a scribble on a serviette that is there only to get the job done.

Read, if you are calling on science as a backstop show us some articles that prove your point as a scientist would....and not stuff about rice prices in China....or those with obvious flaws in the premise.

You're still pounding the table....provide some articles.

Your Fermi quote is a red herring. When Fermi says contrary to hypothesis, he means he reran it 100 times, reviewed all his equipment, talked to trusted colleagues, and then published a paper fully detailed so others could replicate the experiment. He did not mean a pop science paper by someone who does not understand the science.

For you its a red herring for me its a great big huge tuna ’cause I love tuna salad sandwiches just like I like that quote served up without some face saving projections..

And you can channel dead people, gosh you are amazing. Btw can you support your contention Fermi re-ran it 100 times with some real evidence ...’cause I read Fermi always stopped at 97 ( he apparently was superstitious or something ).

Look, just go find some good articles to prove your point and we’ll be done with this and then we can argue about something else.

You quoted a post on a forum

Don’t mean to point out the obvious but for all intents and purposes you are just a series of posts on a forum.Though he has the advantage of saying things supported by the articles you posted.

Truth be known we once sold a noise canceling system for all manner of piping systems. The math and science behind it was amazing and screamed all knowing and complete, The problem was the digital controller which was supposed to do what you claim digital audio can do, would , when confronted with high frequency anomalies ( you know where the timing thingee plays ) lose the plot and create horrific noise. Later versions worked but they concentrated on just the low frequencies ( not where the timing thingee is ) which are more regular and easy to map. Broadband attenuation is still pretty difficult.

You are being incredibly disingenuous....or you didn't actually read what I wrote.

It was never offered as proof it was offered as something...

That proved kinda interesting and sorta relevant

Now if you can read that as me offering proof....well that is entirely your problem....maybe bone up on reading comprehension....and maybe stop using a quasi-strawman based response.

All I'm asking is for you to provide some reasonably cogent articles about we have been discussing and in a setting that directly applies to music...not pipelines...not testing amplifiers...but music. I mean you have indicated there are thousands of them...so it shouldn't be difficult to find maybe a couple that will prove your point.

Apparently there are people in this world who find CDs completely objectionable, you know, what with the thinness, shrillness, two dimensionality, and missing information.

Its people like that wot cause social unrest. Everybody knows it was, and while the buffalo roam, perfect as it was conceived and will remain so until the end of time. And there are absolutely irreducible math thingees and literally billions and billions of articles to prove that beyond any shadow of a doubt. To think otherwise is just plain luddite quackery. I mean who are you going to believe, the hard theoretic evidence or your lying ears.

And some people think The Flintstones is a documentary.

No doubt about it. Billions and billions and billions, in fact

I dunno that’s what I heard ...?....

And btw for those keeping score....the quote was...

literally billions and billions

Like what happened to literally, and where did the extra billions come from, its the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth eh. ....no cheap cherry picking or misquoting please, think of the children for heaven’s sake.

And for the love of gawd have you not heard of artistic licence, I mean what’s a poet to do without artistic licence.

You are literally dead nuts on about literally, can't believe I missed that little detail....

Wow.....billions and billions and billions ....that is really really big....truth be known when I first heard about those billions and billions, I thought come on get out of town, but the dude looked smart so I took him at his word.

But now you tell me its even more billions...that dude obviously didn’t know what he was talking about. Thanks for getting that truth out there.

Nice catch...

“Facts are like cows. If you look them in the face long enough, they generally run away.”

Hmmm....facts which are tied to the great wide world outside ( which last I checked we know precious little about )....or theories which at the very least have to be internally coherent, read refer to themselves....hence the latter is kinda sorta more , uhhh, real....

Tough call eh.....like its not what we know ( or think we know ) but how we know it ( and exactly how deep that knowing is )....that ontology epistemology thingee...

And no, most definitely not an English major....

Yeah me history, that thing that Foucault somewhere in The Order of Things called the mother of science...it also could have been referred to as the queen mother of science....but its been a while.

That being said he was an outlier....though his ideas are pretty good at dealing with cultural history, which is kinda complisticated, on several levels.

In the field of philosophy this is not so, despite philosophy being the primary discipline in which he was educated, and with which he ultimately identified. This relative neglect is because Foucault’s conception of philosophy, in which the study of truth is inseparable from the study of history, is thoroughly at odds with the prevailing conception of what philosophy is.

And....

Science is concerned with superficial visibles, not looking for anything deeper

.
The above from        https://www.iep.utm.edu/foucault/

 I though "science" was a done deal, but this thread shows otherwise. Now I have to think twice before drinking water because apparently science could be wrong and I have to think if water is good for my health

Even though you thought otherwise, science has never been a done deal...in fact as a collective endeavor one of its strengths has always been an insatiable curiosity that forces it to move forward and morph into different forms...it is not as most people think a quasi-religion that has a credo chiseled into stone and absolutely inviolable. The who, the what, and the why always changes.

And by the way drinking water, even the most pure water, has its problems...

 

However, drinking too much water can also be dangerous. Overhydration can lead to water intoxication. This occurs when the amount of salt and other electrolytes in your body become too diluted. Hyponatremia is a condition in which sodium (salt) levels become dangerously low

.

Which btw has become a problem among endurance athletes ( there is even a TED talk dedicated to this problem )....who thought, like you, drinking water is , uhhh, just drinking water.

Is there an echo in here?

Could just be bad acoustics. Gee, wonder if there is anyone in the house who feels he has some small measure of expertise in the field and could proffer a solution to fix said problem ?