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In Reply to: RE: "goal is bit-perfect, high-res, analogue, output from the PC" - whose goal is that? posted by Jaundiced Ear on September 12, 2014 at 17:25:02
"The first group thinks that "Redbook CD" is pretty darn close to the limitations of human hearing and so is "transparent"
The better recording engineers and subjective audiophiles have known for a long time that high resolution digital audio is needed to transparently reproduce what humans can hear. These people have simply used their God given senses to note the obvious. For a long time a different gang of pseudo scientific hobbyists, calling themselves "objectivists", have conducted experiments that they mistakenly claimed showed that the "subjectivists" were delusional and that nothing better than 44/16 PCM was necessary for transparent reproduction of music.
Recently, the ground on which the objectivists stood has been washed down the river to the sea. The linked thread (and some threads linked off this thread) discuss how this was done.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Follow Ups:
Hi Tony!
Golly! Do I have to read that entire 1,000+ post thread?
"Recently, the ground on which the objectivists stood has been washed down the river to the sea."
I'm not sure I'd be willing to declare that just yet. I've only read a few pages of your link so far. First of all I'd like someone to check the provenance of the "smoking gun" files to make sure there wasn't an issue in preparing them. Secondly, are we testing the transparency of 16bit, 44k files or the audibility of the conversion of files to that format? Finally, if the test is legit and the results correct, then that would be insanely cool! Could these results be expanded to more general musical files than some homemade files of jingling keys?
All the best and looking forward to reading more of that thread!
JE
You have to read all three threads. More like a total of 4000+ posts! You will see all of your questions, and more, discussed and debated ad nauseum. There are musical files too, from AIX records.Plus you have to download the audio selections and listen to them. To understand some of the discussions it is also useful to run the ABX software and see if you can hear differences or artifacts from the test software itself.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Edits: 09/13/14
Something tells me it's going to be neither.
Hi Tony!
"You have to read all three threads. More like a total of 4000+ posts!"
Yeow! You're going to have to give me some time for that.
JE
For full appreciation it will be also necessary to download test software and the test files and listen to them. You can have an extension. :-)
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
There seems to be passionate support for both 'sides' of this discussion. However, I'm not prepared to accept the word of one unknown individual over my own experiences on any subject, not even when his findings agree with my own. And given that we have the tools to do our own digging, and that the results of such digging will be unique for each of us, I don't see that we should even contemplate it.
There's an "I owe an apology to BIS" thread in the HiRez Asylum, after a few public trashings of a new piece of equipment the OP had his hearing tested and discovered that his ears were at fault. For many people there is going to be no benefit gained from Higher-res audio, either due to physical impairment of unsuitable equipment.
I have an image of speakers topped with various colours of lights that represent the frequencies a listener can't hear.
The necessary files and tools are easy to download and run. Several people have reported positive results, e.g. ability to pass blind tests 20 out of 20 times repeatedly, except for an occasional time when a nearby dog barked.
Regardless, the claim that no one had ever passed such a blind test no longer stands. Of course the deniers remain unconvinced. But this just proves that these "objectivists" were not and are not objective. Reading all the threads all the way through says a lot about the personalities.
Tony Lauck
"Diversity is the law of nature; no two entities in this universe are uniform." - P.R. Sarkar
Sorry, I'm just not sold on the validity of self-administered blind tests....besides which, I don't think blind tests of any sort are necessary.
The tone generator method I described earlier will give a much more accurate result of what resolution the listener or his equipment can achieve, while fidelity can be measured via spectrograph.
This might all spoil what is supposed to be an enjoyable past-time though, so I'm not recommending this level of analysis for anyone who enjoys listening more than fiddling.
Edits: 09/13/14 09/13/14
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