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In Reply to: RE: Xiph Foundation Leader Calls High-Res Audio a Waste of Bandwidth posted by tom.dennehy on March 07, 2012 at 11:20:45
Fascinating, to see that acolytes of "perfect sound forever" still remain with us.First, the author's stated premise of the article is specious. Is there really great concern over the bandwidth consumed by high-res audio? The main physical carrier, the optical disc, has essentially the same form-factor for DVD audio, and Blu-Ray, as it does for CD. Increased data storage density has seen to that, and is the raison d'être for the newer disc technologies. Even hard drive capacity is dirt cheap these days, so the storage cost for a music file server is not really much of a concern either. Particularly, given the relative dearth of high-res titles. This isn't an issue of conserving some shared limited broadcast bandwidth resource. There, done with that, as the article's author might smugly say.
Second, I note that the author wisely focuses on playback, not recording. Do we really want to settle for what some arrogantly believe to be good-enough, to capture musical performances by treasured artists? Some of whom may never record a particular work again. Doesn't it seem prudent to record and archive with the best technology available at the time? If that eventually proves to be some amount overkill, so what? Better safe than sorry, yes? Particularly, when so many have expressed misgivings about the perceived sound of CD quality digital.
Third, as far as technical arguments over what constitutes sonically perfect playback, I'll take the research and analysis of Bob Stuart over the rather poorly researched conclusion of the author. Stuart shows that a linear PCM channel of 20-bits dynamic range and 58ksps sample rate are required to deliver audibly perfect digital sound. That the high-res standard is 24-bits is overkill by 4-bits,, so what. What harm does it do? Whether 192ksps is overkill is debateable. No, not in terms of the badwidth of human hearing, but in terms of the time-domain affects of the sharp digital filters necessitated by having the desired information bandwidth so close to the channel bandwidth. Is that bit efficient, in terms of information theory, yes. Should such efficiency be of paramount concern for music reproduction, when the physical storage mediums today have such high capacites and low cost, and where those who do have storage space concerns can easily trade quality for data compactness via MP3 compression? I think not.
http://www.meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Coding2.PDF
Lastly, the author's tone strikes me as inappropriately smug. A tone too prevalent among both subjectivists and objectivists alike. We, unfortunately, encounter such smugly closed minded people all the time in audio.
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Ken Newton
Edits: 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12 03/12/12Follow Ups:
> > Particularly, when so many have expressed misgivings about the perceived sound of CD quality digital. < <
Times have changed, and obviously, some truly excellent sounding 16/44 recordings have been well documented, suggest that the medium itself is not the issue, or at the very least, it's not the only issue effecting sound quality. In my travels, "hi-rez" by simple default, doesn't guarantee "hi-rez" sound.
tb1
TBone:
While I don't really disagree, your point raises another interesting question. Why do some (too few) CDs sound genuinely good, while so many more continue to offend? What technologies or techniques are responsible for the difference, and why haven't those become standard practice in the studios? If it's possible to produce one truly good sounding CD, then it seems that it should be possible to consistently do so. Is it just fortunate happenstance when a good sounding CD is produced?
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Ken Newton
Edits: 03/13/12 03/13/12 03/13/12 03/13/12
"If it's possible to produce one truly good sounding CD, then it seems that it should be possible to consistently do so. Is it just fortunate happenstance when a good sounding CD is produced?"
Of course it's possible since it's proven. Think back to other formats you have used... In my case as an adult: LP/Stereo 33's, R-R tape, Cassettes, CD's, Radio, Internet streaming, SACD, and 78's and 45's as a kid or on jukeboxes. Even 16 2/3... You know what, their sound varied all over the place within each format. All media has limitations but, strictly from my experience, the major limitations are usually at the source and stepping end of the chain.
Regards, Rick
Rick wrote: "Of course it's possible since it's proven."Which is my point. If one truly good sounding CD exists. By which I mean, with great dynamics, full and flat frequency response, low distortion, noise, - the objective qualities. Yet without glare, aural fatigue, and a general lack of sounding natural - the subjective qualities. Then, many more such good sounding CDs should exist than actually seem to.
While those various analog formats you mentioned have had variation in sound quality, such variations revolved around the objective qualities, for which, CD has always excelled. They have not suffered from the same subjective problems which has seemed unique to CD. Since most (but not all) of the early CD releases were recorded and mastered on the same studio equipment as were the analog formats, the problems with CD are not likely attributeable to those factors. It seems obvious that the problems were/are digital domain in origin, which once isolated and corrected, should be possible to consistently and repeatedly eliminate (for digital processing is fundamentally consistent and repeatable) across most production/mastering chains.
I should probably add that I'm not some kind of digital Luddite. I have designed and and hand assembled my own original audio DACs. Although, I hold undergraduate degrees in both electronic engineering and computer science, I also hold a pair of ears and (continue to) hear the subjective problems of CD sound, despite the existence of too few natural sounding comtemporary CDs.
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Ken Newton
Edits: 03/14/12 03/14/12 03/14/12 03/14/12 03/14/12 03/14/12
"They have not suffered from the same subjective problems which has seemed unique to CD."
I don't think you've got the scope quite right, I think they are unique to quantization. Back in the day when LP record QC went to Hell Telarc records were one of the few that remained OK. And then they started using digital mastering... The pressing quality was still fine, but the musical qualities no longer were. I suspect that that was a pretty clean instance of getting to hear the result of changing a single step in the chain.
That was then and today's converters are a far cry from the early ones as is our knowledge regarding the subjective importance of the new factors (although still incomplete). At the risk of stating the obvious, we humans are seldom willing to wait for perfection prior to adopting new technology and that usually means initially standardizing on the "just good enough" rather than holding out for "this is great!". So we plump for trying the new vaccine hoping that the side effect risk is lower than that of contracting the disease.
In my case I got so pissed off at the 40% failure rate of LP's that I stopped buying anything but Sheffield Labs. Well, let's just say that while my tastes aren't as broad as some that that really pinched. So I was receptive to a new medium and was a very early CD adopter. In fact I'm listening to the very first one I bought as I type this. Perfect sound forever! Better than perfect actually because my current chain is better than my original CDP-101...
Sure, if they had delayed the initial release six to nine months so that the servo systems could be worked out further they could probably have been initially 48KS/s which I think would have made a large difference for critical listeners right out of the chute. More resolution wouldn't have since the A/D's du jour were sweating to hit 14 bits monotonic. But that was then and this is now and we all know that Redbook leaves something on the table, but so did all previous media. And since if everything goes well it can sound quite good it's becoming apparent the the main thing it doesn't have is any tolerance for imperfections in the chain at either end, especially in the time-domain. I have experience with detected IFM in a completely unrelated field (avionics) and it is amazing how little it takes to be audible, especially if it's correlated with the signal. It's just unnatural so our brains cringe when they hear it...
So yes, CD is a flawed medium but so were all of it's predecessors in the consumer arena. And like them a good one can be very enjoyable (in my opinion) but going to a higher resolution can be better yet and also improves your odds of getting satisfaction if things aren't perfect.
Regards, Rick
It strikes me as ironic, that while CD is far more robust than it's analog predecessors in terms of archiving/storing music information, it can be far less forgiving than those same predecessors in terms of recording and playback chain implementation.
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Ken Newton
"it [CD] can be far less forgiving than those same predecessors in terms of recording and playback chain implementation."
Well, I guess that's possible but the example I used was an analog recording passing along problems caused by previous digital processing and domain conversions.
Regards, Rick
By less forgiving of recording and playback implementation, I meant in terms of the subjective listening qualities I'd listed earlier. I've listened to many relatively noisy, or high distortion, or limited bandwidth analog sources which, none the less, remained 'musical' and 'natural' sounding in ways which too often eludes CD to my ears. Examples are, FM radio, cassette tapes, and well worn LPs. Again, the issue which critics have long had with CD are not related to the traditional objective parameters. Indeed, CD has always excelled at those. The issue has always been certain, yet important subjective qualities. These have been well enumerated over the years.I hope you realize that I might provide an example to illustrate my chosen point without it necessarily having to have something to do with an example you provided to illustrate your chosen point.
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Ken Newton
Edits: 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12
"I hope you realize that I might provide an example to illustrate my chosen point without it necessarily having to have something to do with an example you provided to illustrate your chosen point."
Brain hurts... But I assume after breakfast I'll agree.
Do you think that there is something specifically wrong with CD's as a medium or is it digital audio in general that is unforgiving?
By the way I suspect the answer is yes, but I am interested in your take on it.
Regards, Rick
The technical problem I have with digital audio in general, and CD in particular, is that the intended signal (music) contains time-domain sensitive information. The 44.1ksps CD channel rate was designed with the frequency-domain requirements of music in mind. As far as I can tell, little to no consideration was given to the time-domain implications of the medium, either for recording or playback.The root of the time-domain problems are two-fold, as I see them. First, the fact that CD's channel bandwidth of 22.05kHz is so close to the recorded information bandwidth creates the requirement for very sharp anti-alias (recording) and anti-image (playback) filter responses. Which necessarily have a poor time-domain response, manifesting as the now fimiliar high-Q filter ringing. As it turns out, this severe ringing is fundamental to producing an accurate frequency-domain reconstruction of the original signal upon playback. Yes, I'm also aware that such ringing occurs at the edge of the ultrasonic range and should be pretty much inaudible, but that is only half the story, to which I'll shortly return. If the information to channel bandwidth ratio were wider, as it can be with high-res. digital, then both the anti-imaging and anti-aliasing filters could be much less sharp, with greatly reduced time-domain distortion. Mike Story of dCS has published a paper concluding that to be one of the reasons why high sample rate digital sounds superior to CD.
My own empirical experiments lead me to suspect that a second, non-obvious mechanism is also at work. I suspect that the time-domain problems extend to the dynamic inter-action, or intermodulation, of the near ultrasonic ringing responses of the multiple SINC filters utilized from recording, to mixing or other re-sampling, and finally to playback. Resulting in artifacts within the audible range.
One of my self designed experimental DACs contains a programmable digital SINC filter. This programmable filter has enabled me to empirically evaluate oversampling, non-oversampling, and apodising digital filters. Here's what I heard. As is well known by now, non-oversampling, aka, NOS - which eliminates the playback SINC filter but does not affect the recording and mixing SINC filters - produces the natural and non-fatigueing sound so typically lacking in CD. Apodising - which retains the playback SINC filter, but removes the affect of the recording and mixing SINC filters - sounds equally natural and non-fatiguing as NOS. Oversampling - with all SINC filter responses in place - on the other hand, produces the typically fatiguing and course CD sound.
My hypothesis is that the primary source for what we have come to know as digititus, or traditional CD sound, is the dynamic intermodulation of the multiple SINC filter time-domain (ringing) responses of the standard CD recording, mixing, and playback chain. Eliminating one or the other of these sharp filter responses greatly restores the natural and non-fatiguing quality otherwise absent. This hypothesis would also explain why high sample rate audio is often disappointingly not completely rid of unpleasant CD type artifacts. The use of SINC filters across a high sample rate chain could still produce time-domain filter response interaction which are audible. I will surmise that high sample rate recording-playback chains which take advantage of the extra channel bandwidth not for increased frequency-domain signal capture, but for utilizing anti-alias and anti-image filters having much less ringing in their time-domain responses, will subjectively provide the best high sample rate audio quality.
I've not yet developed an experiment to test this hypothesis, so it may prove faulty in so far as the exact distortion mechanism responsible is concerned. The empirical results, however, have been consistant and very obvious.
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Ken Newton
Edits: 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12 03/15/12
So you hold it against CD for forcing us into such a low SR huh?
Well, can't argue with that logic, it's too true.
As to the dynamics, I'm afraid that is also, the BW has to accommodate all of the data which includes the sideband energy in case you want to do something rash like tap a cymbal...
I wish I knew the link, but I saw an interesting video from one of the Stereophile show panels where someone, Keith Johnson I think, was presenting data showing how things went when the upper part of the spectrum was modulated. Poorly. Gross distortion from the largely missing USB.
And yet CD's can sound very good. Sometimes.
Rick
I make 44/16 recordings using an apodizing filter. They will sound best when played back with a SINC filter, and perhaps slightly rolled off but still not unpleasant when played back through an apodizing filter. Older recordings made with a SINC filter will sound smoother when played back with an apodizing filter. Thus for best results one may wish to have a choice of playback filters available.
The problem with apodizing filters is that they will ring unless they are very slow roll-off. There is a tradeoff between loss of high frequency detail (dullness and air), harshness (aliasing) and image blurring (ringing) that are unavoidable mathematically given the 44.1 kHz sampling rate. If the original live music had significant high frequencies, there will be unavoidable loss of fidelity when running at this sample rate, and it will appear in different guises according to the tradeoffs made by the recording engineers or equipment designers. Because of these unavoidable tradeoffs, 44.1 kHz recordings will never reproduce anything close to the sound of a live microphone feed, but results can be very good if things go well.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
If a piece is recorded and mixed at 24/96 digital, wouldn't releasing it in that format avoid all problems introduced by converting among representations?
"If a piece is recorded and mixed at 24/96 digital, wouldn't releasing it in that format avoid all problems introduced by converting among representations?"
One would think so, but then this place is an "asylum." :-)
There are people who believe two files that have identical file content (as evidenced by a MD5 file checksum, for example) can sound different, depending on their history of file creation. (Example: WAV file converted to FLAC, then converted back to WAV. When the two WAV files are played back they are said to sound different.)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Hmmm ... said to "sound different?" I just round-tripped a 24-96 WAV file to/from FLAC and got back exactly the same file. (Verified by null test against the original.) What am I missing?
"Hmmm ... said to "sound different?" I just round-tripped a 24-96 WAV file to/from FLAC and got back exactly the same file. (Verified by null test against the original.) What am I missing?"
1. Compare files with MD5 file checksum. (Software below.) You may find that the file contents are different even though the audio samples are the same. This can be due to different metadata or other header information in the file. While this "shouldn't" affect sound quality the altered bits are known to the player software and could do strange things.
2. If the two files coexist simultaneously, they must have different storage locations and file names. While this "shouldn't" affect sound quality it could.
3. Playing the same file (or equivalent files) on different occasions may sound different due to changes in physical environment, component aging, warmup, and most likely, one's different mental state. One may falsely attribute differences for these reasons to some other cause such as switching to an equivalent file.
4. Playback of files from hard drive may involve different electrical activity depending on how these were written, i.e. the timing of bits coming off the spinning rust, the operation of RS error correcting codes, etc. These could somehow affect the sound.
I expect the sound to vary each time I play the music, if only because I've heard it one more time. Before I consider the possibility that a digital copy has somehow become "different" I listen multiple times, even in the case of large differences such as "clicks" and "pops". I will notice, but not attribute until confirmed. If I repeatedly were to hear significant differences between files with identical audio samples I would get rid of my DAC and replace it with one that was more immune from extraneous differences on the input signal or electrical power. I am not concerned about minor differences, rather just those that might affect the realism or musical enjoyment of the playback. Given a choice of two DACs, one that provided consistently good sound or one that provided inconsistent sound that on average was slightly better, I would have absolutely no use for the latter DAC. For me, audio components are tools that are used to make recordings or enjoy music and have no intrinsic interest otherwise. I am not interested in "moody" or "flaky" components.
The only times that I listen hypercritically to music is when I am evaluating a recording that I am making or when I am evaluating or setting up my system. I try to spend as much time as possible just listening and enjoying the music and have no interest in swapping components to get a slightly different sound. If I want to revoice my system I have ample ways of doing so at low cost, including repositioning my listening chair, repositioning my speakers, or readjusting the crossover (11 adjustments total). Usually a simple volume adjustment or polarity reversal suffices to make a recording sound good, unless the recording "needs work" or is "hopeless". Along this line, in over 50 years I have purchased only three amplifiers for my main system. I am not so foolish as to replace components in the vain attempt to make poor recordings sound good. (I prefer to be foolish in other ways. :-) )
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
... remains the common denominator, and therefore mastering will always define the absolute quality of any medium. However ...
If you really think about it, it's not that difficult to imagine the relatively poor sounding equipment quality within many recording studio's. Think of phase-induced equalization, poor attenuators, questionable console wiring, power supplies, etc ...
It's relatively easy to mimic @home ... place an Equalizer (remember those) within the contents of a very transparent true hi-end system, and you'll instantly hear the sound loose dimensionality and focus. That's just 1 consumer high grade equalizer added to the mix, not an entire "studio".
tb1
Well put.
The "perfect sound forever" group seems to have a blind spot when it comes to the actual engineering - and also the possibility that we may not have a full understanding of how hearing works (or at least the understanding we do have, is not reflected in the Redbook specifications!)
Ah well ... we will always be plagued by people who feel more comfortable putting their trust in math and a sheet of paper rather than their own senses - and will invent all manner of excuses when confronted with "but it doesn't sound as it should if it is really prefectly reproduced"
I truly believe based upon my own experience that digital is far better at reproducing the sound of a live event than vinyl - it is by no means anywhere near perfect!
"Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad"
"Fascinating, to see that acolytes of "perfect sound forever" still remain with us."
These people are acolytes of an evil cult that has murdered music for decades. They should be dealt with appropriately.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Agreed. I can't help noticing that they all seem to display the same smug attitude. It borders on self-righteous in some cases. They often seem to fancy themselves as keepers of the one truth. Knights of the realm of objectivism, if you will. They have counterparts in the subjectivist realm as well. Neither seem able to deal with the fact that reality is not always fully defined by complete knowledge, nor complete mysticism. Present reality is usually somewhere along a path between the two, progressing over time. Knights seem comfortable only at one far end of the journey for knowledge or the other. The usually somewhere in-between aspect seems to make them very uncomfortable. Perhaps, displaying smug attitudes helps them to cope.
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Ken Newton
Edits: 03/12/12
"that reality is not always fully defined by complete knowledge, nor complete mysticism. Present reality is usually somewhere along a path between the two, progressing over time."
People who are afraid unless they have easy answers are not likely to progress solving deep puzzles, especially when these puzzles are specific instances of the general mystery: the relationship between spirit and energy, or if you prefer, Shiva and Shakti.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
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