How Science Got Sound Wrong


I don't believe I've posted this before or if it has been posted before but I found it quite interesting despite its technical aspect. I didn't post this for a digital vs analog discussion. We've beat that horse to death several times. I play 90% vinyl. But I still can enjoy my CD's.  

https://www.fairobserver.com/more/science/neil-young-vinyl-lp-records-digital-audio-science-news-wil...
128x128artemus_5
You cannot say Neil Young doesn’t have a way with words.

“When you hear real music, you get lost in it, he added, “because it sounds like God. Spotify doesn’t sound like God. No one thinks that. It sounds like a rotating electric fan that someone bought at a hardware store.””

”Low-quality streaming is hurting our songs and our brains.”

“I’m only one person standing there going, ‘Hey, this is [expletive] up.”

“The compressed, hollow sound of free streaming music was a big step down from the CD. “Huge step down from vinyl,””
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....)
The author makes a claim w.r.t. timing of digitized signals, i.e. the timing limitation is the sampling rate, that is not at all accurate for a bandwidth limited signal.


The author creates a problem that literally does not exist .... there is no problem.


taras22300 posts11-21-2019 7:30amSo what exactly is the problem that this technology is being applied to?

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.
Timing resolution of digitized bandwidth limited signals.
Of course, timing resolution and bandwidth limiting not being the same thing at all, except in some given limited mathematical applications.
Teo,

You are displaying the same technical ignorance as the author of the article. Just "stating" something without understanding the underlying mathematics does not make your statement true, not even remotely, all it says is you do not understand the underlying concepts.

Bandwidth, signal to noise, and jitter absolutely are the functions that define relative timing resolution in a digitized system and high quality audio is not some magic bullet that magically changes how math works. Even in high end audio, 1+1 = 2.



teo_audio1,245 posts11-21-2019 8:20am
Timing resolution of digitized bandwidth limited signals.
Of course, timing resolution and bandwidth limiting not being the same thing at all, except in some given limited mathematical applications.

High quality Audio ---not being one of them.

The author came up with an explanation that was wrong by trying to assert expertise in an area he does not have. In many ways that is worse than creating no explanation at all, because it deflects from understanding possible real reasons ... just look at this thread, and all the people trying to grasp onto an explanation that is simply wrong. What value is there in that ???


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.


taras22301 posts11-21-2019 8:12amActually 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.

As for expertise, you’ll have to provide your own proof of that, with a name and a background on yourself.
 
We can and do have similar discussion over at DIYAudio, and the participants hang their shingle right on the posts they commit to. Scott Wurcer, Demian Martin, Nelson Pass, John Curl, and many more. No one there snipes from a hidden position.
I am sensing a Strawman argument there. I can assert that there's a humongous black hole in the center of our galaxy without having credentials in that area. you do NOT have to have credentials in some specific field to assert claims, or claims that are true. That would be silly since experts in a specialized field don't agree with each anyway.
Cool, I also participate on DIYAudio and AudioScience, and you know what, there are many many people on both those forums who would never make the mistakes that the author of this article and you have made.

I provided several links in this forum that prove what I am saying is true. I could provide many many more. Your name and background shows you clearly unqualified to comment on this topic, so just what are you trying to suggest? Are you a published researcher on digitized systems? Nelson Pass, John Curl, Demian Mark are not published researchers in digitized systems, so why even bring them up (Scott, if it is the Scott I am thinking of may have). Are you suggesting you are in the same class as them?

I just fell back in that black hole and got reassurance it was recently certified as an "Expert Black Hole’. Certificate expires on December 31, 3623.


It expurged me straight into audiogon forum.

The laws of statistics and probability dictate that even a monkey sitting down at a typewriter, assuming you could make them sit for that period of time, will eventually type something that’s true. But what, dear readers, does it really mean to make a true statement? People on both sides of any issue, especially digital vs analog, are quite capable of making true statements and often do. The issue is not (rpt not) black and white. 🦓

Note: even an expert in a specialized area cannot claim victory in an argument automatically simply by referencing his credentials. That is a, you know, Appeal to Authority.
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.
And I could bring forth many musicians who would tell you that digital recordings are more truthful to the sounds they are creating, even though "analog", with its limitations may have lovely euphonics. Who is right, them or you?

I could also bring forth many audiophiles who also prefer digital to analog, whether vinyl or tape or otherwise. Are you more right than they are?

And yes, throwing math is appropriate. Humans perceive sound, they don’t perceive electrical signals in a wire, or bits on a disk. You can call the science of human perception weak, 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 per your statement below, models change .... math does not. The math behind sampling, reconstruction, does not change because you add a human observer to the equation.  Intentional alterations of a signal may change to suit preferences, but the math does not change.

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.


The article throws no new light on the argument at all. We have known for some time that we can detect time of arrival differences in the ears to the microsecond level, and that neuron fire rates are fast. Literally no one is questioning. The whole premise of the article is that "timing" is limited to the sample rate of a digitized system .... a premise 100% false within the confines of a bandwidth limited system and no one has ever shown that our ears/auditory system is anything but a bandwidth limited system, and this article did absolutely nothing to disprove that it is not bandwidth limited.
a premise 100% false within the confines of a bandwidth limited system and no one has ever shown that our ears/auditory system is anything but a bandwidth limited system, and this article did absolutely nothing to disprove that it is not bandwidth limited.
Say what?

Your reading comprehension is way way off....which indicates a multitude of other ......
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.
It is fine to say that I am wrong, it is another to prove that I am, or even show some logic to justify that I am.


The initial aspects of the auditory system is a mechanical system. Heck, the transfer of sound is a mechanical system. But even if not, all systems are bandwidth limited at some point, it is just that mechanical systems are often bandwidth limited at lower frequencies.


Neurons firing in a microsecond does absolutely nothing to prove that the bandwidth limit of the auditory system is not 10's of KHz. Similarly, being able to time arrival based on phase difference between two points (our ears) in space to microsecond timing does nothing to prove that the bandwidth limit of the auditory system is not 10's of KHz.


teo_audio1,247 posts11-22-2019 11:02am
a premise 100% false within the confines of a bandwidth limited system and no one has ever shown that our ears/auditory system is anything but a bandwidth limited system, and this article did absolutely nothing to disprove that it is not bandwidth limited.
Say what?

Your reading comprehension is way way off....which indicates a multitude of other ......

careful with those double standards... and your penchant for putting words in others mouths that they have not said.... and then using those false premise to attack their view or position.
Are you seriously suggesting that we cannot measure electrical signals, to very high bandwidths, and with exceptional resolution?  That is definitely what you appear to be saying?  Is that what you are saying?

I really don't need to say much more than that. You can call my statement ridiculous, but you just claimed that our ability to measure electrical signals, to very high bandwidths and with high resolution does not exist. How I am supposed to take that seriously.  I guess all those amazing scientific instruments we have really don't work at all?

Maybe you were just so quick to call me wrong that you misinterpreted what I said?   I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt.



taras22303 posts11-22-2019 11:30am
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.

Feel free to show me how I misinterpreted what you wrote:


teo_audio1,249 posts11-22-2019 11:02am
a premise 100% false within the confines of a bandwidth limited system and no one has ever shown that our ears/auditory system is anything but a bandwidth limited system, and this article did absolutely nothing to disprove that it is not bandwidth limited.
Say what?

Your reading comprehension is way way off....which indicates a multitude of other ......

I feel you are not being honest with me or yourself by accusing me of a double standard. I have done nothing but address the actual technical content of the original article, and the posts made against what I said, that as opposed to actually addressing what I wrote, essentially only attack me.

As opposed to attacking me, perhaps you could address what I have actually wrote and show me and everyone else how I am clearly wrong. I  have posted data simulations and links to several papers (written by people that understand the topic) that clearly show that a digitized system can carry within it relative timing information that is well beyond the sample rate. The whole premise of the article is that the timing is limited to the sample rate. That is false. That makes the whole premise of the article also false.


teo_audio1,249 posts11-22-2019 11:55amcareful with those double standards... and your penchant for putting words in others mouths that they have not said.... and then using those false premise to attack their view or position.
that clearly show that a digitized system can carry within it relative timing information that is well beyond the sample rate. The whole premise of the article is that the timing is limited to the sample rate. That is false. That makes the whole premise of the article also false.


not so fast.
the limit, mathematically... is ..fairly high

The real world of jitter, quantization noise, dither, etc, decreases that quite drastically. The idea of micro temporal differentiation across channels hits the intrinsic limits of the real world 16/44 rather quickly.

As one tries to ’draw’ or ’write’ that micro differential that is above 1/ 22,000 of a second..., it’s capacity to express itself brickwalls on the capacity of the system to micro-resolve signal.

One might say that the noise floor and distortion limits of not just one but both channels together (in excess of 2x distortion, ie, two channels in action, together) begin to be expressed as inter channel timing limits...

So it is nowhere close to being as the mathematics make it out to be.

We also know that noise floor... it wanders all over the place, is signal dependent, and each channel is different. So yeah, well over 2x distortion in the inter channel temporal domain. And a few other problems, not really all that well addressed in the real world.

We hear it in the given dac as indistinct and hazy imaging spread/smear. Especially under complex loading. Not so much a problem with simpler signals. When the song gets busy the worst of the given dacs --get hazy, bright, congested, etc..

The math says nice things. The real world says it is dog poo.

the article tells you why this is all so important. Eg, the MSB range of fine limits means the micro expression amplitude perfection which the ear is built on and out of...is not possible in a peak situation of micro timing differential in an actual 16/44 dac.

Yet, it is by the peaks that we recognize these differences and this is the part where the dac falls down. So, not just the noise floor limits for the body of the signal (complex mid to high level harmonics) but the inability of the MSB area of dac signal expression to subdivide fine enough.

One might even say that delta-sigma was an attempt to fix this problem but was executed so poorly that it sounded worse than R2R.
The math says nice things. The real world says it is dog poo.


Yup. Exactamundo mister audio. First digital was "perfect sound forever" then digital had "lossless codecs" then "oversampling" then "Direct Digital Streaming" or whatever the dopey jargon the roobs would lap up. Not being anywhere near so gullible any more and having quit paying attention somewhere around the fourth or fifth utterly disproven cycle of hopium high followed by crushing reality, don’t even hold me to getting the BS even in the right order. Pretty sure it began with "perfect sound forever" but who knows, maybe the pabulum for the mentally and aurally infirm goes back even further.

Can we get a "whatever"?

There was a guy at work absolutely convinced I was clinically insane, first of all for daring to even consider that records might not sound just awful, but even worse uttered the heresy that all digital was not perfect. Until one day the guy actually heard some of the supposedly lossless MP3. And then let me play him some records.

The people pushing the digital measurements BS have one fundamental problem they never will be able to acknowledge, let alone face up to. And that is that we measure to quantify and expand on our human perception and not to substitute for it.

If it sounds better the onus is on the measurers to figure out how to more accurately measure.

Pretty simple stuff yet beyond their grasp.

Oh well. As penance ye shall spend the rest of your life listening to digital. And not even knowing its a fate worse than death. If that ain’t punishment I don’t know what is.
What are all those numbers in cartridge specifications? Do they have anything to do with measurments and math?
It is rather cute Teo and Miller how you two bloviate with flowery language that would make it look like you know what you are talking about but to someone who actually understands this stuff you just sound ... Funny. Yes funny.


Teo. Jitter on recording is in the 10’s to 100’s of picoseconds. Ditto on playback. Easily modelled as phase errors or distortion. Distortion 100+ db even on real music signals. I know you don’t want to believe it but audio is easy. We do 100+db on complex signals day in day out in comms.


Not my first rodeo and I know the usual arguments that is why many many posts ago I posted a paper (that included actual experiments) that showed timing accuracy as a fraction of bits with very low signal.to noise ratios, ie like 30db, and the resolution is several orders of magnitude finer than the sampling rate.


Believe vinyl/current analog is superior ... No issues. But don’t hang your hat on something you are going to fail miserably on. I can post many experiments that clearly show high subsample timing accuracy in low SNR environments of which digital audio is not one.


All two channel does is increase the relative jitter mapped as higher effective SNR but since it is already very low the timing resolution is very high. Feel free to argue points you don’t have the background to argue, but at least back that up with some solid work by real experts to support what you are saying. Otherwise it is just hand waving.
I’ll take some of this action. The problem is not on the CD. The standard CD contains data with extremely high sound quality. You just can’t HEAR the sound quality, that’s all. The problem is the playback machine. There are a number of inherent problems with CD playback. Three problems that spring immediately to mind are (1) scattered background laser light, (2) seismic vibration and other mechanical vibration including the CD transport noise and acoustic vibration, and the vibration and flutter of the CD itself while spinning. The same high technology that created the Compact Disc also created the problems - nanotechnology and quantum mechanics.

Yes, I realize atdavid is going to try to tell me streaming solves all the problems with CDs. Sadly, streaming sucks. But it IS convenient, I’ll grant you that.

“You can be a knower or a blover.” - audiophile axiom

- your friend and audio insider,

geoff kait
machina dynamica
advanced audio conceits
So are we hearing distortions in the electronics? Digital filters not removing all distortions and disrupting electronics downstream. There is something going on that people hear. 
@ 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. 


You are confused because you do not understand the science, hence you put it down.

One of the papers Again clearly show orders of magnitude subsample timing at 30db SNR. Never will a digital audio system ever get anywhere near having as little as 30 db SNR, and if you say when the signal level is low, well then in your analog system it is all noise at this point. That paper looks at low SNR situations because the noise can be really bad, Unlike audio! Absolutely nothing I posted says the opposite of what I said and that you would state that suggests you really didn’t try to understand them. One only discusses difficulty in the presence of noise and other sources .... With examples where the SNR is 10dbs of db, not 90+, and they did not bandwidth limit the signal.

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. Audio Is Not a Real Time System. It is a recorded and played back system. There is 0 concept of real time in Audio. There is 0 concept of absolute time. Everything is audio as we are discussing is relative. That is why I clearly and distinctly use the term relative timing in most of my posts. That is the difference between actually understanding a topic and cutting and pasting things that match your world view.

Stop clutching at straws to attempt to justify a point of view that is wrong. I read the article. I understand it. That is why I know it is flawed. You want it to be true, but wanting something true and it being true are not the same.

Everyone who understands signal processing and digitized systems will instantly pick out the flaw in the premise of the article which is exactly what others online have done wrt this article, to the point of contacting editors because it is such a gross misrepresentation of reality.


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.
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.
That was dishonest of you posting those excerpts without a link to where they come from. Turns out, at least one of those excerpts was nothing more than a post from someone on an audio forum. Not an expert. Not a paper. Just someone with an opinion just like you.  He was quickly shot down in flames ... As others pointed out he did not understand bandwidth limited systems.  It is clear from his continued writing he does not understand the math (nor science). His assertion is continually proved wrong. Here is where you got that quoted text from:


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=http://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threa...


Here is another thread where people who understand the subject have a discussion about how the person you linked had no clue what he was talking about:


https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/to...
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.
I think we're surfing on religion here!  At the end, the listener can prefer possibly a more distorted version of the original sound coming out of the instruments played by the musicians!  A more "colorful" sound liked by this user, which for another may be completely different.

I'm an electrical engineer with 27 years of experience... and i'm an audiophile too.  I've seen the arrival of digital sound.  The first CD Player i listened to sounded awful, thanks to brickwall analog filters that destroyed the sound.  Then technology refined and then came oversampling + noise shaping en refinement in electronic.  It took time to get DACs that could do the job properly.  It reminds me the first big Wadia DAC.
As we speak, now the electronic in audio is something we master much better and it translates into high quality for decent price.  Engineering is like that: You can do many things but at the end, you're selling a product for profit.  You have many constraints: Price, Technology, Production, Quality, Components Tolerance, etc.  And you target an audience, a customer.  There is of course competition: How to sell your product?  What can you offer that will translate into sale?

Over all those years, i listened to many many very high end audio kits assembled for shows, in listening rooms, etc.  The system you like might not be the most expensive.  And my friend, which is an audiophile too, doesn't necessarily like the same system.  In our case though, it's clear that we can't go back to vinyl for many reason.  We liked back then the great Linn-Sondek LP12 playing through Mark-Levinson (No 23.5 + No 26) electronic and the Kef R107 speakers.  But what we have now, because of convenience and excellent audio without surface noise / clicks, superior separation and dynamics, is very pleasing to listen (for us!):  Ayre QB9, Krell (KSA-100s + KRC) + Dynaudio Confidence 20.  We just use a little Atom Mini-ITX system running Debian + MPD + front end, hooked to a file server containing FLAC file, for us it is the perfect system.  Other may like to handling / playing vinyls over the great looking and sounding turntables (VPI HR-X, wow) !!

Last year, when we went to our nearby HiFi shop, we listened to an expensive system (150K $ +) that featured the big Mac amplifiers / preamp and i don't remember the rest: Didn't like it that much... But it may surely please someone else!  And you have the "placebo" effect too: Your brain will "contribute" to confirm what you believe!  That's really not a problem:  Listen to music and have fun (which is the ultimate goal) !

So if you consider sound coming from instruments and finally reaching your ears, you have a "transmission line" that modify the sound as it travels: Microphones, ADCs, mixing, transfer to medium, playback by your record player, preamp ( DAC / RIAA ) , amp, wires, speaker, listening room and finally your ears / brain / taste!!!  So here we are with this topic.

You know what, it doesn't bother me at all the someone prefers vinyl!  I prefer digital but i agree that listening low quality streaming music played back with a mediocre sound system sounds awful!  I could say the same with low quality vinyls, badly recorded played back on a bad system!
Saying that science failed with music is just a bit exaggerated...  Saying that engineers "don't get it" is a bit of a lack of respect IMHO...  Sure, bad engineering exists...as bad musician and "believers" listeners...  But as an engineer, your job is to design things with constraints and come up with a solution: Sometimes the best solution is the one that translate into more profit, best looking, most convenient, most portable, etc.
Not only did I take the time to read what you wrote, I researched your uncited quotes to find they were just musings on a forum by someone with fundamental holes in their knowledge, not an actual expert, and not remotely reviewed piece of work. The papers I posted do not all support that forum posters hypothesis or yours.


Shannon Nyquist theorem is highly understood and not doubted. The links I posted are highly relevant. I specifically picked a paper with wickedly bad SNR to illustrate that for audio where SNR is high, that it is pretty much non issue wrt providing well beyond subsample resolution. That you think they are not relevant either shows you don’t understand the underlying concepts or your argument is a red herring. Which is it?


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.


I provided actual scientific papers. You quoted a post on a forum. That I think says it all.

blueranger
So are we hearing distortions in the electronics? Digital filters not removing all distortions and disrupting electronics downstream. There is something going on that people hear.

>>>>What you’re hearing is jitter caused by scattered laser light and by vibration from various sources. It’s a failure of the Reed Solomon Error Detection/Correction Codes as well as the CD laser servo feedback mechanism to keep up with external vibration, vibration induced by the transport and/or transformer and fluttering and vibration of the CD itself. The CD flutters because it’s out of round and/or because the disc is frequently not absolutely level whilst spinning 
"....and not stuff about rice prices in China...."
It is a science of a magnitude many cannot imagine.
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.
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.
So basically the system didn’t filter out high frequencies like it should have bean designed to? Bad example.


yes I am a guy on the forum who is not quoting other people on other forums I’m actually providing links to real papers. I am also not saying anything that conflicts with well-established Shannon Nyquist.

I don’t need to channel Fermi to understand how scientific Labs work or engineering labs for that matter. If you get a measurement but doesn’t correspond to what you expect your first inclination is not to think you’ve discovered something new it is to assume that you made a mistake in your measurement. At that point you will review your equipment redo the measurement try to do the measurement a different way look at how you may have made the measurement wrong or what is wrong with your hypothesis. Only after exhausting all other options will you assume you have made a discovery. Even then you were probably wrong.
Basically because you have ignorance about this topic and refused to accept the fact that you are wrong you are expecting me to prove Shannon Nyquist that is essentially what you are asking.


the one paper I did link to that shows timing under severe signal to noise restrictions says everything that is essentially needed on this topic.


You on the other hand have provided absolutely nothing to support your position. Your position is essentially that Shannon Nyquist is wrong and you’re not qualified to say that. And because you were trying to say Shannon Nyquist is wrong you can’t find anything that will support your position because it doesn’t exist.


given that you have illustrated you don't have the technical acumen on this topic how would you know a good paper if you saw one?
I ... Ya me, did provide articles. Who do you think you are fooling with this childish game asking for more? You ...what did you provide? ... You cut and pasted from a forum post, but didn’t provide the link to that post. That is bad form. Is that because the poster was getting roasted due to his inaccurate claims. He did not even understand something as basic as impulse in a bandwidth limited system. That is your "proof" you are right. All my posts in this thread are easily researched. My examples easily understood.

The one that needs to provide supporting articles is not me, it is you Taras22. You continually attack but can’t back it up. It is your credibility on this topic that needs help.
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.
The articles were very cogent for those with the knowledge to understand them. Both were fairly simple actually as papers go.


If you need it applied to music, then again, you clearly don’t understand the science behind sampled data systems. Reality doesn’t suddenly change for the hifi industry no matter what some would wish. When a 30db SNR system achieve timing on the order of 100th a bit, audio systems at 90+ are not going to have an issue.


The whole premise of the article is laughable and you keep beating the dead horse. And yes, you did you the quoted and linked text as attempted proof that I was wrong. Why you didn’t cite it, only you can answer.
I'm not even going to try to settle the argument but I can tell you as a the husband of a woman with a PhD who studies brains and neurophysiology for a living, each of us perceive sound differently. It was mentioned earlier that the re-creation of music is a mechanical process. That is true up to the point that that process is converted to an electrical signal and de-coded by our brain's neural pathways. That perception is what makes us all uniquely different AND why we will never agree on the best sounding format.
Here is something to consider. What sounds "better", live music where some bozo is coughing in the background while another couple are chatting during the music or the same piece recorded in a high end music studio and replayed on high quality equipment? It's all about perception. You decide.
falconquest,

I would like to think that no one is suggesting we don’t all perceive sound differently. I think that is a given. This is not even a discussion of whether 44.1/16bits is enough bandwidth/resolution. It is about whether audio sampled at 44.1 khz has sub-sample timing resolution. Well really it is not even a discussion, no more than 1+1 = 2, or whether the earth is round or flat. No one who understands sampling theory and digitized systems thinks that audio timing resolution, monaural or binaural, or any bandwidth limited system is limited to the sampling rate. The author of the paper flat out states that timing resolution is limited to sample rate. That is just not true. Unfortunately, things like this pop up every few years, then get smacked down, but people have short memories and don’t do the required due diligence.

If the author had just stuck with 20KHz is not enough bandwidth, then he would have had a fairly supportable position (no matter how many scream Redbook is enough). There is a pretty strong case to be made that 20KHz is not enough. There appears to be no case for beyond 96ksps (40KHz).

Unfortunately, people from both sides of the argument are more interested in emotional positions than ones based purely on facts.