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RE: Digital -still improving

Posted by Thorsten (M) on April 6, 2016 at 09:49:54

In Reply to: RE: Digital -still improving posted by J. Phelan on April 6, 2016 at 08:59:53:

Hi,

> Well, if it's not noise, what else is it ??!!

Here is the crux of the matter. Actually, head over to Audiostream.com, it has a good article by Jason Stoddart (from that company with a name I will not take into my mouth) on this whole subjectivist/objectivist kerfuffle.

What I'd like to add, is that common audio measurements have never been shown to have any positive correlation with perceived audio quality, as long as certain minimum performance levels are met.

Indeed, there is no single instance where we have a formal test that produces single number performance indicators that - if made better - reliably produce better sound.

It is my experience that it is fairly trivial to design audio gear where the frequency response is adequately flat to leave the room as biggest problem, with noise that is so low, even super quiet acoustically treated and isolated rooms have more and HD that is reliably lower than the Quad ESL63, which at least in the mid-range is probably still the lowest distortion loudspeaker bar non.

I am also quite aware of the limitations of the human auditory system. It is so much not like a microphone or speaker, what is amazing that we can even get any credible illusion of listening to music from the current mechanisms (including recording).

It is actually a learned process, I remember reading a story where a TV crew filmed the Bushmen in Namibia. When they tried to show them the recordings on the TV monitors the Bushmen could not see the images, all they saw were colored dots. You might say they could not see the picture for the pixels. Of the story may be apocryphal.

Anyway, unlike the "everything sounds the same" brigade I however am not deluded enough to think just because Frequency response, noise and distortion are below anything that can be heard/perceived in normal or even extreme systems we have eliminated all audible differences.

Let me take an example that is brutal. If you have a 120dB/20Hz tone, you are unlikely to be able to hear around 10 - 20% 2nd harmonics, but you likely will be able to hear 0.0001% if the 100th harmonic. Now no-one measures this high harmonics and in a single number like THD the high harmonics are usually totally swamped by lower order HD.

There are many facets in audio performance which are currently not covered by generally agreed, standardised measurements.

As I said before, in my experience such aspects as the precise noise-shaping algorithms in Delta Sigma system (which in theory at least are all supra-sonic in nature), Dither noise (possibly shaped), digital filter algorithms, the precise nature and spectrum of harmonic distortion (actually the intermodulation distortion products generally are more pernicious in terms of audibility), general time-domain performance (something most "flat response"speakers totally mangle) etc. all impact more than the difference between -110dB SNR and -140dB SNR (in isolation) or the difference between 0.005% THD and 0.0025% THD.

Thor

At 20 bits, you are on the verge of dynamic range covering fly-farts-at-20-feet to intolerable pain. Really, what more could we need?

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