Why Do People Come To Computer Audiophile To Display Their Contempt For Audiophiles?

[plissken]

29 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

The gear which is capturing the sound is normally of very high quality; it's the monitoring equipment, that which gives the feedback to the engineer that may lack the finesse.

 

And again: Audiophile Equipment can't reconstitute anything lost in the production chain. It can only reproduce the track the person has in their possession.

[fas42]

6 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

And again: Audiophile Equipment can't reconstitute anything lost in the production chain. It can only reproduce the track the person has in their possession.

 

But the monitoring isn't setting the quality of the recording in itself. Poor mastering decisions may be made, but the monitoring doesn't degrade, or lose the intrinsic information captured in the direct recording chain.

 

Example: you have a three head recorder, the monitoring head/circuit goes "bad" - the off tape quality at the time of the recording run sounds awful, but what is on the tape is still actually "perfect", and can be fully enjoyed by the consumers with fault free playback systems.

[Ralf11]

21 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

And again: Audiophile Equipment can't reconstitute anything lost in the production chain. It can only reproduce the track the person has in their possession.

 

it can upsample and interpolate

[plissken]

26 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

it can upsample and interpolate

 

You can apply any post processing you want. You not add lost fidelity. Regardless if the loss is in choice of mastering equipment or the choices of the mastering or mixing engineer.

 

This is stemming from someone asking what hardware was 'transparent'. I answered that question.

[fas42]

My experience is that the actual recording mechanisms are remarkably accomplished in picking up the raw sound; that is, microphones, tape decks, ADCs, and the associated low level electronics - these are "transparent" in the areas that matter, and means that the huge archives of sound we have, for posterity, are truly wondrous.

 

Playback of these recordings at SPLs matching realistic sound is a completely different game, and there are huge variations, depending upon everything. "Transparency" in this arena is incredibly fragile, hard to do - meaning much work's still to be done ...

[jabbr]

1 hour ago, plissken said:

You can apply any post processing you want. You not add lost fidelity. Regardless if the loss is in choice of mastering equipment or the choices of the mastering or mixing engineer.

 

That depends entirely on what you mean by "lost fidelity" exactly. In many cases a deconvolution does exactly that, restores fidelity. If by "lost fidelity" you mean "lost information" then no, but that's an important reason to "oversample" which allows introduction of error at a level less than the LSB.

[esldude]

So here are some checks of noise floor modulation I did a week or so back.

 

They don't follow the AES17 recommendation that semente posted for us.  Just my idea of how to check it.

 

One signal is two tones at 3 khz and 4 khz that go from nothing to -20 db over several seconds.  I expected if the noise floor was modulated you would see it changing as the level went up.  I thought this range of tones is where we are most sensitive.   Blue is the noise floor with a silent signal playing. Red is the graph with the two tones at -90 db.  Green is with the two tones near - 20db.  I don't see much effect.  Maybe 2 db over silence if that. 

 

Next was a swept pair of tones 1 khz apart right near max level.  Shown as they near 16 khz.  Blue is silent track noise floor.  Red is the swept tones.  You see sum and difference IMD just each side of the tones, and you see a 1 khz difference IMD result a bit below -100 dbFS.  Otherwise not much going on with modulation of the noise floor.   I tried this with 4 tones changing in level and 4 swept tones without seeing anything so I didn't pursue it further. 

 

With other less good gear you would see the noise floor altered by jitter.  Or by aliasing effects as tones reflected around the upper frequency bound altering the noise floor. 

[fas42]

39 minutes ago, jabbr said:

 

That depends entirely on what you mean by "lost fidelity" exactly. In many cases a deconvolution does exactly that, restores fidelity. If by "lost fidelity" you mean "lost information" then no, but that's an important reason to "oversample" which allows introduction of error at a level less than the LSB.

 

"Lost fidelity" happens at the end of the chain, in the replay phase. I gave up checking out expensive, ambitious, "correct" gear years ago ... the "loss of information" trying out my test CDs was so severe, much of the time, that it was pointless listening to anything for more than 30 secs or so - only the most recent kit, the best sorted of the curent crop, is capable of extracting what's on the tracks, if heard on non-optimised systems.

[mmerrill99]

@esldude any inking why your plots are so different to the 10 & 50 multitone plots I posted links to?

[mmerrill99]

Contrary to the claim objectivists make that their measurements are without bias, repeatable, her we have a good example of measurement bias - two measurement plots claiming to be multitone tests (ESL & the ones I posted) yet diverging in radical ways from one another.

 

Solving why they show very different results will give an insight into why measurements are usually not the objective yardstick claimed here.

 

Another point to ponder - I always find it interesting that when flaws or complete gaps in measurements are pointed out, the response is often 'nothing is perfect' or 'prove it matters'. It strikes me as a very defensive response for so called objectivists & much more like a response heard from people who all subscribe to the same belief system, defending their faith - the church it objectivism.

[fas42]

Yes, the glories of graphs, worshipped by many ... several times I have attempted to take the research work of bodies like AES seriously, but glaring through always are huge inadequacies in the experimental procedure - I can never take the conclusions of the papers, etc, on board, because of the massive holes in the fabric of the ideas presented - the excitement of doing "proper research" and "getting numbers" overrules common sense again and again, it seems to me.

 

If these bits of research were done well they would be extremely useful - but they're not, so we have very little of true value to refer to.

[mmerrill99]

Oh you heretic - burn, i say, burn ?

[pkane2001]

5 hours ago, mmerrill99 said:

Another point to ponder - I always find it interesting that when flaws or complete gaps in measurements are pointed out, the response is often 'nothing is perfect' or 'prove it matters'. It strikes me as a very defensive response for so called objectivists & much more like a response heard from people who all subscribe to the same belief system, defending their faith - the church it objectivism.

 

What's objective is not always perfect, but it must be verifiable by others. This is not a defensive stance, it's one of the basic principles of the scientific method. If you want to argue against measurements as an objective approach, you'll need to go back a few centuries to re-litigate your point.

[AJ Soundfield]

6 hours ago, mmerrill99 said:

Contrary to the claim objectivists make that their measurements are without bias

Listening tests for your claims about in head noises, Santa, magic wires, magic resistors, Casper etc, don't require a single measurement. Once you have established that "it" is audible, trusting ears, just listening, then, "biased" measurements become necessary, if one wants cause correlation to level, noise, frequency, etc, etc.

[plissken]

9 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

That depends entirely on what you mean by "lost fidelity" exactly. In many cases a deconvolution does exactly that, restores fidelity. If by "lost fidelity" you mean "lost information" then no, but that's an important reason to "oversample" which allows introduction of error at a level less than the LSB.

 

Oversample a 192kbps mp3 all you like. 

[4est]

11 minutes ago, plissken said:

 

Oversample a 192kbps mp3 all you like. 

 

What do you mean by this in context?

[mmerrill99]

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

What's objective is not always perfect, but it must be verifiable by others. This is not a defensive stance, it's one of the basic principles of the scientific method. If you want to argue against measurements as an objective approach, you'll need to go back a few centuries to re-litigate your point.

You miss the point, again - it's the claims of inaudibility based on measurements that are incomplete which I'm calling out - this mantra about perfection is just a smokescreen

[pkane2001]

15 minutes ago, mmerrill99 said:

You miss the point, again - it's the claims of inaudibility based on measurements that are incomplete which I'm calling out - this mantra about perfection is just a smokescreen

Mantra of perfection is your strawman. Measurements are fallible. So is sighted listening. Measurements can be reviewed, repeated, and proven right or wrong. Sighted listening cannot. End of story.

[AJ Soundfield]

Yes, this whole exercise is for false equivalence, my sighted daydreams are the equivalent of your "biased" measurements.

[mmerrill99]

2 minutes ago, pkane2001 said:

Mantra of perfection is your strawman. Measurements are fallible. So is sighted listening. Measurements can be reviewed, repeated, and proven right or wrong. Sighted listening cannot. End of story.

Look, you try to claim audibility/inaudibility on inadequate measurements & put up a smokescreen of perfection as a means of drawing attention away from this fact or the usual one of "look how flawed sighted listening is"

 

Embrace the fact that your measurements are inadequate to make the claims you make - it's a character building exercise

[mmerrill99]

8 hours ago, mmerrill99 said:

Another point to ponder - I always find it interesting that when flaws or complete gaps in measurements are pointed out, the response is often 'nothing is perfect' or 'prove it matters'.

 

5 minutes ago, AJ Soundfield said:

Yes, this whole exercise is for false equivalence, my sighted daydreams are the equivalent of your "biased" measurements.

Oh, I forgot that this was also the other smokescreen used to distract from the inadequacy of measurements to support claims of inaudibility - the "look at how flawed sighted listening is" - (don't look here, look over there)

[pkane2001]

1 minute ago, mmerrill99 said:

Look, you try to claim audibility/inaudibility on inadequate measurements & put up a smokescreen of perfection as a means of drawing attention away from this fact or the usual one of "look how flawed sighted listening is"

I made no such claim. Sighted listening is fatally flawed. Embrace it, it's a character building exercise

 

[AJ Soundfield]

Since some love analogies.

 

Your honor, I call to the stand our expert witness in this case involving electro-acoustics and pschoacoustics/perceptions.

 

Please state your name and accreditations to the court.

 

Joe Audiophile. I'm a dentist who's been hearing stuff for 40 years. I can hear stuff very few or no one else can.

 

Sir, this case is about electro-acoustics and pschoacoustics/perceptions. Your degree is in Dentistry? What is your knowledge base and certifications in electro-acoustics and pschoacoustics/perceptions??

 

I don't need any, I can hear stuff and don't dare question my abilities!

 

Bailiff, please Baker Act Mr Audiophile and remove from the court, see that he is institutionalized for that hearing stuff in head

 

 

 

[AJ Soundfield]

7 minutes ago, mmerrill99 said:

the inadequacy of measurements to support claims of inaudibility

Ah yes, the old negative proof fallacy with zero cognizance.

 

Quote

"look how flawed sighted listening is"

2017 and horses can still count, Santa is real, dead relatives speak across mediums, power bracelets work, orchestras should be all male, etc, etc.

All posted via a 40 Mbps connection using a 1.5GHz processor, created by biased "measureists"

[christopher3393]

...another small step toward normalizing contempt?