Lies about vinyl vs digital

[STC]

3 minutes ago, STC said:

 

Now I know why it is so hard to trust scientists. Anyway, I am referring to immediate effect of ultrasonics.   

 

It doesn't cure headaches or fever but it prevents the disease that causes them. 

[sandyk]

13 minutes ago, lucretius said:

 

Apparently, infrasonic sound is better for that -- a good blast of 17Hz. 

 

There are numerous reports of Electricity generating Wind Farms causing problems to people several KM away.

[Ralf11]

2 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

There are numerous reports of Electricity generating Wind Farms causing problems to people several KM away.

 

who put the psycho in psychoacoustics??

[STC]

8 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

 

who put the psycho in psychoacoustics??

 

That was true but it got to do with infrasonic. 

[Paul R]

5 hours ago, STC said:

 

I think this was based on Oohashi’s papers. But he also said that that Fr from 16 to 32 kHz were not beneficial or triggers the brain negatively. 

 

Are you basing that on the very old 1990/1991 AES paper? If so, it is relevant that nobody had home equipment back then - other than vinyl - that could possibly reproduce those frequencies. I do not think the study was conducted with high-resolution music. I am not aware of later studies he might have done. References? 

 

[Paul R]

5 hours ago, Rexp said:

So given 16/44 is good enough, ultrasonics are irrelevant. 

 

Only if you don't consider 18khz - 20khz+ as being supersonic. 

 

I'm a little confused which what you are saying.  It is quite possible that supersonic frequency reproduction is nothing more than a blue herring. But many audiophiles find that higher sample rates equal better sound.

 

Now that is partly due to equipment and various digital filters, and it absolutely is not due to some kind of fairy dust magic.  But the truth is somewhere in between the two extremes.

 

[The_K-Man]

7 hours ago, sandyk said:

 

 It has also been used in tests by the Military to maim or disorient the enemy.

 

That's better.

[sandyk]

31 minutes ago, The_K-Man said:

It has also been used in tests by the Military to maim or disorient the enemy.

That's better.

 

Sounds a bit like you !

 

disorientate

/dɪsˈɔːrɪɛnteɪt/

verb

British

verb: disorientate; 3rd person present: disorientates; past tense: disorientated; past participle: disorientated; gerund or present participle: disorientating

1. cause (someone) to lose their sense of direction.

   "when he emerged into the street he was totally disorientated"

   synonyms:

   confused, bewildered, perplexed, nonplussed, at a loss, (all) at sea, in a state of confusion, in a muddle; More lost, adrift, astray, off-course, off-track, having lost one's bearings, going round in circles; informalall over the place, not knowing whether one is coming or going; archaicwildered, mazed "when he emerged into the street he was completely disorientated"

   • make (someone) feel confused.

     "being near him made her feel weak and disorientated"

[The_K-Man]

13 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

Sounds a bit like you !

 

disorientate

/dɪsˈɔːrɪɛnteɪt/

verb

British

verb: disorientate; 3rd person present: disorientates; past tense: disorientated; past participle: disorientated; gerund or present participle: disorientating

1. cause (someone) to lose their sense of direction.

   "when he emerged into the street he was totally disorientated"

   synonyms:

   confused, bewildered, perplexed, nonplussed, at a loss, (all) at sea, in a state of confusion, in a muddle; More lost, adrift, astray, off-course, off-track, having lost one's bearings, going round in circles; informalall over the place, not knowing whether one is coming or going; archaicwildered, mazed "when he emerged into the street he was completely disorientated"

   • make (someone) feel confused.

     "being near him made her feel weak and disorientated"

 

"Disorientate" sounds redundant to me. I did not know it had Her Majesty's endorsement.  Sort of like 'Where are you AT?'..  I reply: 'Right before the AT'   😆

[mansr]

20 minutes ago, The_K-Man said:

"Disorientate" sounds redundant to me. I did not know it had Her Majesty's endorsement.

Both forms are acceptable.

[STC]

4 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

Are you basing that on the very old 1990/1991 AES paper? If so, it is relevant that nobody had home equipment back then - other than vinyl - that could possibly reproduce those frequencies. I do not think the study was conducted with high-resolution music. I am not aware of later studies he might have done. References? 

 

 

There are papers that referred to his research. Oohashi published a few of his own. IIRC, he used DAT. 

[Confused]

11 hours ago, Teresa said:

 

Have to disagree with that. If ultrasonic overtones effect lower frequencies, they can have no effect if you record at 16/44.1 kHz since the ultrasonic overtones are removed by the brick wall filter at 22.05 kHz. So for them have an effect they have to be in the recording. Or to put this another way if you remove ultrasonic overtones they can no longer effect the timbre of the fundamental tone.

Actually, the fact that 16/44.1 removes the ultrasonic content was key to my point, although I do not think I explained the point very well.

 

Looking at this another way, if we give a name to the audible change made to the fundamental frequency that is caused by the ultrasonic content, lets call this "toneX".  During the original performance the subject instrument will generate the ultrasonic content, create tonex, and tonex can be recorded with brick wall filtered 16/44.1, because it is in the audible range.  During playback via 16/44.1, tonex will be reproduced because it has been recorded and is in the audible range.  

 

Using say 24/192, tonex will be generated during the original performance and recorded.  During playback, the original recorded tonex will be reproduced, the original ultrasonic content will be also reproduced , and this will generate a second tonex.  So using 16/44.1 you would get one tonex per the original performance, using 24/192, you would get an additional tonex generated during reproduction, which would be a distortion to, or at least additional to, the original performance. 

 

I am not sure if that explains it any better, but it makes sense to me at least!

[esldude]

7 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

Only if you don't consider 18khz - 20khz+ as being supersonic. 

 

I'm a little confused which what you are saying.  It is quite possible that supersonic frequency reproduction is nothing more than a blue herring. But many audiophiles find that higher sample rates equal better sound.

 

Now that is partly due to equipment and various digital filters, and it absolutely is not due to some kind of fairy dust magic.  But the truth is somewhere in between the two extremes.

 

Many audiophiles probably would find cable lifters made of blue herringbone to be a sonic improvement.  The truth might be somewhere in between.  But I bet it leans very heavily in one direction vs another.  

 

And since when did 44.1 khz loose the ability to reproduce 20 khz?

[Paul R]

1 hour ago, Confused said:

Actually, the fact that 16/44.1 removes the ultrasonic content was key to my point, although I do not think I explained the point very well.

 

Looking at this another way, if we give a name to the audible change made to the fundamental frequency that is caused by the ultrasonic content, lets call this "toneX".  During the original performance the subject instrument will generate the ultrasonic content, create tonex, and tonex can be recorded with brick wall filtered 16/44.1, because it is in the audible range.  During playback via 16/44.1, tonex will be reproduced because it has been recorded and is in the audible range.  

 

Using say 24/192, tonex will be generated during the original performance and recorded.  During playback, the original recorded tonex will be reproduced, the original ultrasonic content will be also reproduced , and this will generate a second tonex.  So using 16/44.1 you would get one tonex per the original performance, using 24/192, you would get an additional tonex generated during reproduction, which would be a distortion to, or at least additional to, the original performance. 

 

I am not sure if that explains it any better, but it makes sense to me at least!

 

Well reasoned, but a couple of other factors may be there as well. 

 

First, in the theory presented above, the results of ultrasonic sound may not be directly audible, but instead may change what a lister hears.  This is loosely-goosey without a lot of research, but it is at least possible. 

 

Any further, in in relation to commercial releases of music as well as to things like recorded vinyl, there is the issue of what CD Format does to the music. Commercially, you have brick wall filters that do all sorts of irritating things - alias problems, phase shift problems, and other similar issues. Can these change or affect the sound? I do not think it is even slightly controversial to answer that with a yes. They can certainly change the sound, usually for the worse. 

 

In in relation to recordings of vinyl, same issues may apply. Vinyl certainly has content above the Nyquist limit for audio. Can you hear that directly? No. Does filtering it out for CD resolution change the sound? Arguably yes. With vinyl, it is a little bit tricky, since when vinyl music is recorded, the bass is turned way down and the treble is turned way up. Equalization is required to make it sound right.

 

Incidentally, this is also one reason why CD and vinyl can sound different, even when from the same master. The CD process either did not turn down the bass, or sometimes even turned it up, since digital can easily reproduce it. Sometimes the treble was modified too. Point is, there are always more factors to look at than might be obvious when this subject comes up.

 

It is like storing your files in compressed format. Probably little or no harm storing in FLAC instead of AIFF, but with disk and cloud storage so cheap these days, why would you bother with compression that *might* have an effect in the future? Same idea also applies to high res. If you have genuine high res, why throw it away? It *might* make a difference to you in the future, even if it does not now. 

 

Just my $0.02 there! 

 

-Paul

 

[Paul R]

17 minutes ago, esldude said:

Many audiophiles probably would find cable lifters made of blue herringbone to be a sonic improvement.  The truth might be somewhere in between.  But I bet it leans very heavily in one direction vs another.  

 

And since when did 44.1 khz loose the ability to reproduce 20 khz?

 

LOL!  Unless I unintentionally did a double negative, that is same thing I was pointing out, I think. 😉 

 

[SoundAndMotion]

7 hours ago, Paul R said:

 supersonic. 

Since I'm a both private pilot and neuroscientist, and since I'm too limited to deal with many context-specific definitions, I define terms as such:

sonic: relating to (audible) sound

ultrasonic: sound higher in frequency than the normal or typical cutoff for humans, i.e. 20kHz

supersonic: faster than sound waves (Mach 1, about 344 m/s, 1,125 ft/s, 768 mph, 667 knots, or 1,235 km/h), up to about Mach 5 (5 times the speed of sound), above which the speed is called:

hypersonic: above Mach 5

 

Since my membership in the dictionary police has lapsed, I'm just sharing, not enforcing!

 

15 hours ago, Kal Rubinson said:

Of course, by definition, ultrasonic frequencies cannot be perceived as sound.

I would say the perceptual cutoff is subject-dependent, while the term ultrasonic is defined as above the typical human perceptual cutoff 20kHz, and may not apply to 100% of the population (see below). It is a useless, semantic point, but often people write something like "21kHz is ultrasonic, so by definition, no one can hear it", which is untrue.

 

 

1 hour ago, Confused said:

13 hours ago, Teresa said:

 

Have to disagree with that. If ultrasonic overtones effect lower frequencies, they can have no effect if you record at 16/44.1 kHz since the ultrasonic overtones are removed by the brick wall filter at 22.05 kHz. So for them have an effect they have to be in the recording. Or to put this another way if you remove ultrasonic overtones they can no longer effect the timbre of the fundamental tone.

Actually, the fact that 16/44.1 removes the ultrasonic content was key to my point, although I do not think I explained the point very well.

 

Looking at this another way, if we give a name to the audible change made to the fundamental frequency that is caused by the ultrasonic content, lets call this "toneX".  During the original performance the subject instrument will generate the ultrasonic content, create tonex, and tonex can be recorded with brick wall filtered 16/44.1, because it is in the audible range.  During playback via 16/44.1, tonex will be reproduced because it has been recorded and is in the audible range.  

 

Using say 24/192, tonex will be generated during the original performance and recorded.  During playback, the original recorded tonex will be reproduced, the original ultrasonic content will be also reproduced , and this will generate a second tonex.  So using 16/44.1 you would get one tonex per the original performance, using 24/192, you would get an additional tonex generated during reproduction, which would be a distortion to, or at least additional to, the original performance. 

 

I am not sure if that explains it any better, but it makes sense to me at least!

You and I interpret what @Teresa said differently, and what you are saying doesn't make sense to me anyway. I interpret what she says to mean timbre (a perception) is changed by the combination of tones, even tones you can't hear when presented alone. Say an instrument produces 7, 14, and 21kHz. I think she is saying ( @Teresa correct me if I'm wrong) that 7+14+21kHz may sound different to someone than just 7+14kHz, even though they can't hear a 21kHz pure tone. I don't know if that is true or not, but since the ear is certainly highly non-linear, it is not impossible. The shape of the wave could produce different responses, even if an ultrasonic sine wave can't be perceived.

 

By the way, just because the population average measures some value for the highest perceivable pure tone, that does not mean it's true for everyone. See, for example:

Ashihara, K. (2007). Hearing thresholds for pure tones above 16 kHz. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 122(3), EL52-EL57

wherein not all subjects can hear 20kHz, but some subjects hear 22, 24, 26 and even 28kHz.

[lucretius]

8 hours ago, Paul R said:

But the truth is somewhere in between the two extremes.

 

Golden mean fallacy.

[Paul R]

7 minutes ago, SoundAndMotion said:

Since I'm a both private pilot and neuroscientist, and since I'm too limited to deal with many context-specific definitions, I define terms as such:

sonic: relating to (audible) sound

ultrasonic: sound higher in frequency than the normal or typical cutoff for humans, i.e. 20kHz

supersonic: faster than sound waves (Mach 1, about 344 m/s, 1,125 ft/s, 768 mph, 667 knots, or 1,235 km/h), up to about Mach 5 (5 times the speed of sound), above which the speed is called:

hypersonic: above Mach 5

 

Since my membership in the dictionary police has lapsed, I'm just sharing, not enforcing!

 

LOL, I am old enough that I had teachers and professors who used “supersonic” in the old sense, referring to high frequency sound as well as referring to travel faster than the speed of sound through a medium. I just never realized exactly how “old” that old usage was!  Modern, and I suppose correct, usage is “ultrasonic.” Thanks!

 

supersonic

adj.

1919, "of or having to do with sound waves beyond the limit of human hearing," from super- + sonic. Attestedfrom 1934 in sense of "exceeding the speed of sound" (especially as a measure of aircraft speed), leaving the original sense to ultrasonic (1923).

Online Etymology Dictionary, © 2010 Douglas Harper

 

 

 

 

 

7 minutes ago, SoundAndMotion said:

I would say the perceptual cutoff is subject-dependent, while the term ultrasonic is defined as above the typical human perceptual cutoff 20kHz, and may not apply to 100% of the population (see below). It is a useless, semantic point, but often people write something like "21kHz is ultrasonic, so by definition, no one can hear it", which is untrue.

 

 

You and I interpret what @Teresa said differently, and what you are saying doesn't make sense to me anyway. I interpret what she says to mean timbre (a perception) is changed by the combination of tones, even tones you can't hear when presented alone. Say an instrument produces 7, 14, and 21kHz. I think she is saying ( @Teresa correct me if I'm wrong) that 7+14+21kHz may sound different to someone than just 7+14kHz, even though they can't hear a 21kHz pure tone. I don't know if that is true or not, but since the ear is certainly highly non-linear, it is not impossible. The shape of the wave could produce different responses, even if an ultrasonic sine wave can't be perceived.

 

By the way, just because the population average measures some value for the highest perceivable pure tone, that does not mean it's true for everyone. See, for example:

Ashihara, K. (2007). Hearing thresholds for pure tones above 16 kHz. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 122(3), EL52-EL57

wherein not all subjects can hear 20kHz, but some subjects hear 22, 24, 26 and even 28kHz.

 

Well said.

[esldude]

3 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

Well reasoned, but a couple of other factors may be there as well. 

 

First, in the theory presented above, the results of ultrasonic sound may not be directly audible, but instead may change what a lister hears.  This is loosely-goosey without a lot of research, but it is at least possible. 

 

Any further, in in relation to commercial releases of music as well as to things like recorded vinyl, there is the issue of what CD Format does to the music. Commercially, you have brick wall filters that do all sorts of irritating things - alias problems, phase shift problems, and other similar issues. Can these change or affect the sound? I do not think it is even slightly controversial to answer that with a yes. They can certainly change the sound, usually for the worse. 

Usually it is those non brick wall filters that have aliasing and imaging problems.  They also are the ones that generally cause more phase shift than brickwall filters.  As all the available evidence is we don't much care about phase in the upper ranges the filters with a sound are those that do something else.  Like minimum phase to fix ringing when ringing isn't really a thing we hear anyway. 

3 hours ago, Paul R said:

 

In in relation to recordings of vinyl, same issues may apply. Vinyl certainly has content above the Nyquist limit for audio. Can you hear that directly? No. Does filtering it out for CD resolution change the sound? Arguably yes. With vinyl, it is a little bit tricky, since when vinyl music is recorded, the bass is turned way down and the treble is turned way up. Equalization is required to make it sound right.

 

Incidentally, this is also one reason why CD and vinyl can sound different, even when from the same master. The CD process either did not turn down the bass, or sometimes even turned it up, since digital can easily reproduce it. Sometimes the treble was modified too. Point is, there are always more factors to look at than might be obvious when this subject comes up.

 

It is like storing your files in compressed format. Probably little or no harm storing in FLAC instead of AIFF, but with disk and cloud storage so cheap these days, why would you bother with compression that *might* have an effect in the future? Same idea also applies to high res. If you have genuine high res, why throw it away? It *might* make a difference to you in the future, even if it does not now. 

 

Just my $0.02 there! 

 

-Paul

 

Vinyl is simply a second rate medium for basic fidelity.  Some people may like it, but it isn't of as high a fidelity as digital.  

 

AIFF and FLAC are not going to have an effect in the future because they don't have an effect now.  They do store metadata better.  That will effect you now and in the future.  

[Paul R]

17 minutes ago, esldude said:

Usually it is those non brick wall filters that have aliasing and imaging problems.  They also are the ones that generally cause more phase shift than brickwall filters.  As all the available evidence is we don't much care about phase in the upper ranges the filters with a sound are those that do something else.  Like minimum phase to fix ringing when ringing isn't really a thing we hear anyway. 

Vinyl is simply a second rate medium for basic fidelity.  Some people may like it, but it isn't of as high a fidelity as digital.  

6

 

I thought phase was rather important, with mid and high-frequency phase shifts causing all sorts of confusion to listeners? As in ripple in the passband causes echos in the time domain?  Drawing that from memory, so could easily be wrong. 

 

-Paul

 

 

 

 

[sandyk]

5 hours ago, esldude said:

Usually it is those non brick wall filters that have aliasing and imaging problems.  They also are the ones that generally cause more phase shift than brickwall filters.  As all the available evidence is we don't much care about phase in the upper ranges the filters with a sound are those that do something else.  Like minimum phase to fix ringing when ringing isn't really a thing we hear anyway. 

Vinyl is simply a second rate medium for basic fidelity.  Some people may like it, but it isn't of as high a fidelity as digital.  

 

AIFF and FLAC are not going to have an effect in the future because they don't have an effect now.  They do store metadata better.  That will effect you now and in the future.  

 Just because you personally are unable to hear a difference between .flac and the original .wav file does NOT mean that many members are unable to notice and appreciate the improvement that not directly playing .flac files can give.

 Yes, with most well recorded material I am quite easily able to verify this under NON sighted conditions.

 

 Note also, that I am by far from the only member that prefers .wav over .flac.

See also the T.A.S. 220-221 articles on the subject which I have a copy of in .pdf format.

Of course many of the Objective posters will dispute/ridicule those findings, but they dispute/ridicule  almost ALL subjective findings even where DBTs were performed.

[mansr]

4 minutes ago, sandyk said:

See also the T.A.S. 220-221 articles on the subject which I have a copy of in .pdf format.

Are those the ones with the tape measure?

[sandyk]

7 minutes ago, mansr said:

Are those the ones with the tape measure?

 

It wouldn't matter what the contents were, because you disagree with virtually all subjective reports, no matter where they are published.

 Anyway, That was published in October of 2014 (see TAS, Issue 246).

[kumakuma]

5 minutes ago, mansr said:

Are those the ones with the tape measure?

 

No, those came later: 

 

https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/new-methods-for-quantifying-sonic-performance/

https://www.theabsolutesound.com/articles/new-methods-for-quantifying-sonic-performance-part-two/

[esldude]

I've a weak digestive system. I couldn't stomach those TAS articles again.