The fact that Atkinson showed up here

[Don Hills]

12 hours ago, semente said:

...

Unfortunately it is not uncommon, quite the opposite actually, for equipment (particularly loudspeakers) to produce appalling measurements unfit for even low-fi supermarket gear and JA to conclude by dismissing this as "character", saying something in the lines of "in spite of it provides a pleasurable listening experience" or "partnered with the right equipment it may satisfy some listeners". ...

 

I find it helps to interpret the language of such reviews in the same way as I interpret real estate agents' descriptions of properties for sale.

 

http://www.macmillandictionaryblog.com/the-unreality-of-real-estate-language

[Don Hills]

8 hours ago, John_Atkinson said:

Thank you. As I said, three years ago, not four :-)

 

My, how time flies when we're having fun.

[Don Hills]

4 hours ago, Tony Lauck said:

...  The optimum filter for playback of 44.1 recordings is going to vary according to the filter used for recording ...

 

Fixed it for you.

 

...  It is not possible to have a system that has full frequency range (e.g. up to 20 kHz), is free of ringing, and does not create spurious frequencies due to aliasing.

 

That's true. But does the "ringing" make an audible difference in practice?

First, ignore what a Dirac pulse shows when passed through the reconstruction filter. That's an invalid scenario that should never occur in practice. (I will grant that heavy handed digital processing during production can cause such signals, but I trust no-one here thinks such mangling has any relevance to hi-fi.)

 

Measure the amplitude of the sum of the >20 KHz components of real world music compared to the critical mid-band. Pass the music through a sharp cut-off 22 KHz low pass filter.  If you can hear the resulting 22 KHz "ringing" over the masking of the mid-band signal, you may have some bat in your ancestry.

 

[Don Hills]

5 hours ago, Tony Lauck said:

... (This is something that mastering engineers know about, it's called "inter-sample peaks".)

 

 

Straw man. As you say, it's a well known phenomenon in the industry and any competent engineer will allow headroom for it. Ditto for DAC designers.

[Don Hills]

3 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Are there any of these "competent engineers"? ...

 

I was thinking in the context of high fidelity. I don't consider such distorted music as high fidelity. (Which is a problem for me, because most of the current music that I like is produced in this style.)