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Just what percentage of digital artifacts removed

Ok I refreshed myself by doing a little research. The question, probably can't be answered because of the quality and price range of equipment.  Also the engineering differences  of recordings. I'm just trying to see if there is a common consensus. Just how much of the of the digital artifacts below are audible??? Have modern design technologies made digital artifacts a non issue and not audible?    I tend to favor analog for various reasons. For 2 weeks after my knee surgery I could not spin a record and listened to CDs. I have a TOTL SACD player by a well known manufacturer by the way. When I started playing vinyl again I could tell the sound was more involving and pleasing. Below is what I found.

Digital artifacts

Quantization error.

Quantization error is the difference between the analog signal and the closest available digital value at each sampling instant from the A/D converter. Quantization error also introduces noise, called quantization noise, to the sample signal

.

Aliasing

To remove aliasing, you need to use an anti-aliasing filter. Quite often, an anti-aliasing filter takes the form of a low pass filter. The issue here is that when you cut the problematic frequencies, you also cut the desirable frequencies above the cutoff point.

What aliasing sounds like depends on the material being played, because it's derived directly from that material.

For example, with high plucked notes such as an acoustic guitar, it might sound like birds chirping. With a low percussive sound such as a kick drum, it might just make the initial hit sound like a cardboard box. With a steady-state tone it might sound like fast frequency modulation. Aliasing is weirdest on bent notes like an electric guitar or synth lead, because the note might be bending upward while the aliasing shifts downward.

One of the most obvious manifestations of aliasing is spoken word encoded at low bitrates. Listen closely to the voiceover in the video linked by IrionDaRonin above, which ironically has noticeable aliasing. It's most noticeable on "S"s and "T"s

.

In all cases, aliasing sounds bad. Our ears are especially sensitive to it because the aliased frequencies are not harmonically related to the source tones, making them stand out. It's like intermodulation distortion in that respect - even a little bit is offensive to the ear

.

Jitter

What sort of negative effects are caused by jitter in DAC? ΔΣ (delta-sigma) DAC also puts many discrete digital samples together with a fast sampling clock to create a continuous analog signal. As the sampling jitter causes the sampling point to go out of sync in this process, it causes deterioration in the quality of the final analog signal. Current high level ADC/DACs incorporate technologies that allow them to minimize the jitter of the master clock, but they are fundamentally unable to completely remove the influence of sampling jitter. Therefore, making a sampling clock with low jitter is an important step in improving sound quality.


A recorded sound or one that is played back with a high sampling clock with a high jitter level can lose its stereo effect and become distorted. Audio interfaces exist to record an original sound and authentically reproduce them.

Thanks for reading.

128x128blueranger
7 responses Add your response
mahler123
3,318 posts
 
Funny how when you go back to listening to vinyl you apparently don't notice any sources of distortion such as wow, flutter, pitch instability, rotational speed errors, surface noise, also restricted dynamic range....And  are all of your vinyl discs purely analog recorded, or are their any that have been made from digital masters, as so many new lps are?  Do the ones made from digital masters exhibit the same flaws you hear from your SACD player?
   I don't understand the original question.  Are you assuming that the signal sent from the DAC is flawed from the get go and the DAC  is some kind of washing machine that is supposed to get those pesky stains out?  And you want to know much stain each DAC scrubs out?  Let me turn that around. What percentage of what emerges from your speakers is distortion introduced by the analog playback system?  How much of what you hear is artifact caused by extracting musical information that is  embedded in a slab of petroleum with a needle slashing its way through the grooves that then has to convert that vibrational energy into a sound wave and then pass it down the rest of the chain?  Are you going to claim that no distortion is introduced in that process?
   I hope that you recover from your knee surgery.
erik_squires
16,056 posts
 
In my experience, over the past 10 - 15 years or so DAC's have gotten so good that the only real "artifact" you mention has more too do with the anti-aliasing filter causing changes in the frequency response of the upper octaves.

Simple over and upsampling corrects this issue quite easily.
tomcy6's avatar
tomcy6
2,588 posts
 
I think we've debated this topic enough.  You prefer vinyl.  Enjoy it!  I will enjoy my digital.  On my system, guitars never sound like birds chirping (except that bit that Duane Allman did on  Layla) and kick drums never sound like cardboard boxes.
yage
400 posts
 
Here’s a practical way of testing whether or not some of these digital artifacts are audible.


Go to to the Audiocheck website. Click on ’Sound Tests’. Look for the ’Aliasing’ test and the ’Dynamic Range, Dithering, and Noise Shaping’ test.

If you want to hear what jitter sounds like, try Archimago’s blog. He has a post that covers jitter and provides sample files for you to listen to. Link here.


Go through each of these tests. I bet you’ll be surprised at the results.


If you donate to the Audiocheck website, you can download the sound files themselves to store on your streaming setup. Or you could burn them to a CD-R and test your disc player. I’ve done both.
artemus_5's avatar
artemus_5
1,927 posts
 
And THIS is what you get with a Wav files or the original recording. Consider that a large majority of people are listening to mp3 through a phone. I have been surprised at how many in the younger gen didn't understand compression and its effect on music. People believed that cd quality was 128kbps. Far from it. I won't listen to 128 unless mono talk. 
A full copy of one minute of music takes 10 megs of space. In 128 it takes 2.5  or so megs The best is 320kbps. It takes 4 meg for the same 1 min, whereas the copy is 10 megs. So over half is gone. Yet THIS is many peoples experience. 
ivan_nosnibor's avatar
ivan_nosnibor
1,047 posts
 
I’m not sure that the "digital" sound these days that people have said they object to is necessarily due to purely digital shortcomings. I think the Nyquist theorem, et al, has proven itself at least fairly well since the CD player’s inception.

I think that identifiably ’digital’ sound is likely more of an electrical noise thing, than anything else. Or, at least, in my case, I was able to overcome it completely by treating that noise problem.

Digital circuits contain "digital noise" and that is a little different than analog noise in analog circuits. Digital equipment is actually a little more susceptible to the very kind of digital noise that digital gear itself radiates.

And there is a ’cross-contamination effect’ of both types of noise between both types of circuits in proximity. Digital noise has an even slightly nastier effect on analog circuits than does analog noise into either type of circuit.

The output stages in all CDP’s and DAC’s are analog circuits. Power supplies are analog.

But, treat the noise across the board and IME the "digital nasties" (loss of ’life’, colorless ’tinny’, or uninvolving sound) all go away.
recluse
270 posts
 
When I go from listening to vinyl, back to cd, which is rare because I prefer CD most of the time, I always have the same impression- that CD has some annoying global sibilance, for lack of a better descriptor.

I remember this same impression of CD back in the 80s.

Maybe it is from an subclinical hearing deficit? 

Anyone else?
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