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Forgive me Computeraudiophiles, for I have sinned


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44 minutes ago, fas42 said:

The trap that is so easy to fall into is to 'tune' a rig so that the 'right' CDs come across well, and others sound ordinary, or even awful. A well sorted setup can "handle anything", and all recorded music is then available to be fully enjoyed, with no excuses needed ...

I agree also... but this goes against the advice you gave me to tune my system to the worst sounding recording I could find!? What am I to do now, Frank?

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13 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

Paul, it's all about the approach - consider an extremely bumpy road; you could give your car marshmallow suspension, so that it would just wallow across all the irregularities, and fly off into a tree as soon as you meet a tricky corner - or you could refine that part of the car so that it absorbed the "punishment", yet still gave the driver complete control in traversing the route. I'm thinking the latter, while you may be thinking the former ...

 

The "worst sounding" is such because the state of the playback chain is causing your attention to be drawn to the "wrong things" - all the misdemeanours of the recording, and not the underlying captured musical event. I've had my setups in "that place" more often than in the "good zone", but I know it's merely a stage in the optimisation process - I'm using the irksomeness in what I'm hearing to identify what factors alter those qualities; when I experiment in some area, and the quality of "irksomeness" changes, for better or worse, then I know that I've identified a "sensitive spot" - the medical analogy is that a doctor prods you, until you give out a sharp yelp - ah-hah, he says, that's where you have an issue.

 

Never liked marshmallow suspensions. I prefer to feel the road and know what the car is doing at any given time. But that's exactly what your method of making a bad recording sound good will do: it'll cover up the bumps. My expectation is that you should feel the bumps and hear the distortions in a bad recording, rather than try to adjust it out. You've been suggesting the opposite. 

 

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28 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Very much so. I've had the setup at the time not be at optimum for 'trivial' reasons, and those CDs then sound very off. I resolve what was the particular issue at that moment, which may be as simple as having something electrical running in the house which is creating too much interference - and the perceived SQ is then restored to a good level.

 

I've been doing this sort of thing for years, exploring all sorts of linkages - and the message keeps coming through loud and clear: get the playback chain to operate to a crucial degree of absence of disturbing audible anomalies, and the SQ of even "the worst" is lifted to a dramatically superior level, subjectively.

 

Frank, doing this for years is no proof of anything. Since your experience seems to be diametrically opposed to that of most others here, and since you insist on describing your experience so frequently in every thread, you owe us just a bit more than "I know so because I've been doing this for years". Please provide real evidence and not car analogies.

 

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12 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

 

The phrase is, "most others". Right now you have a thread running on the Lush^2 cable, which when configured to best suit the particular rig, is providing a number of users with "breakthrough" SQ experiences - phrases like "I can't believe it", "Impossible!" are being posted - you have those members getting a burst of what I chase.

 

So, it's rare ... so what? I just happened to get this experience over 30 years ago, and have spent many years "playing with it". Others can achieve it if they decide to pursue it - I'm here to prod people not to go down "wrong roads" ... :P.

 

Sorry Frank, but the 'I can't believe it' and 'veils lifted' and 'increased microdynamics' and 'toe tapping good' and 'wider soundstage' and 'performers breathing on me' ... are exactly what audiophiles chase. All of them. All the time. You don't need to keep repeating this in every thread; everyone already got it, or else they wouldn't be here!

 

What's different is how you seem to approach it. That's not just rare, but mostly non-existent. Your method lacks any evidence, scientific foundation, corroboration from others, or even a credible explanation. And you keep failing to provide any. So why keep bringing it up?

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2 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

Besides, the LAST anybody wants is  'performers breathing on me' - think of their infection rates and lifestyles.  One bunch of them even refused to go in and perform by the side door!  

 

Infection is not a problem except with the most highly resolving systems, the kind Frank builds. You never know what kind of nasties might be hiding in a hi-res recording...

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20 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

If everyone gets it, why are audio shows filled with terrible sounding systems? - the problem, as I see it, is that higher standards of replay are very fragile, disappear like the morning mist. And I have experienced the very same behaviour in my systems.

 

So what I'm interested in is in understanding how to properly control the situation. Which because of how I tick is tackled using a troubleshooting hat; I see the lack of a required standard of SQ being due to fixable shortcomings of a particular setup. And all my experience up to the present time has reinforced that viewpoint.

 

Of course I want to buy a system, off the shelf, at a reasonable price, that delivers the 'right' SQ! But there ain't any such animal ... as yet. I can always hear the flaws in the sound, which means the engineering is not good enough. Full stop.

 

If you buy a brand new car, and it's full of rattles and creaks you would immediately return it, and demand a refund - it's a lemon! To my ears, that's what nearly all systems are - so, I would roll my eyes and patiently work through the issues until "it's good enough". If that sort of approach requires an explanation, well, I can only scratch my head ... 9_9.

 

Where's the evidence, Frank? Not stories or generalizations, real evidence? 

 

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8 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Evidence of what?

 

That capable systems can produce convincing sound?

That one can troubleshoot a system so that it becomes capable?

That "poor" recordings on a capable system are eminently listenable to?

 

etc ...

 

That your method of troubleshooting can produce what you claim.

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1 minute ago, fas42 said:

 

Different parts of a chain can be a "weak link". I've never used USB, so don't have to account for such. But once can finds a "sensitive spot", wherever it is, doing almost anything in that area affects what one hears. Of course, one can 'dumb down' the sound, so that it nominally "always sounds the same" - but that's not the path to hearing the qualities which are possible ...

You’re missing the point.

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10 hours ago, fas42 said:

 

So you accept that a capable system, however you may perceive such, can produce convincing sound?

 

Frank, I've been happy with my system for about 20 years. Great sound, wonderful sense of space, depth and width. I built it with a mix of objective and subjective evaluations. By luck or by design, it's been sounding incredibly good to me and I kept it unchanged for most of that time.

 

Only in the past few years I've ventured into PC audio, mostly for convenience and because I hated all those thousands of CD cases. Aside from upgrading the DAC and the source to PC+NAS, I kept the rest of the system as is. It still sounds amazing. In the process, I took a side trip into headphone playback and that's been a bit of a learning curve. I'm getting that part sorted out, but there's still quite a bit to learn. From measuring/modeling HRTF to building a head tracker, these are complex, but on-going projects for me.

 

I take these things seriously, and I rarely accept what others say or recommend without having some sort of validation. So you'll forgive me questioning you, as your 'method' is the opposite of what I've learned over the years. What's more, it seems to achieve completely the wrong results, assuming it actually produces results of any kind.

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9 hours ago, bachish said:

 

Nope not a professional recordist. 

 

Anyway, talking to Barry Diament or Cookie Marenco won't convince me either way. I need to see a repeatable double blind study showing trained listeners were able to hear the difference.

 

The closest study to date I know of that shows trained listeners may be able hear the difference between 4424 and 8824 is an Audio Engineering Society Convention Paper, Sampling rate discrimination: 44.1 vs. 88.2 from May 2010.

 

They had three versions to compare:

 

2 versions recorded at 88.2 and 44.1 simultaneously.

1 version down sampled from 88.2 to 44.1

 

Here is a quote,

 

"Listeners were free to adjust the sound level and their position if needed. The duration of the experiment ranged between two and four hours per participant [plenty of time to become familiar with the files]...three expert listeners out of 16 listeners obtained significant results p<.05, 2 tailed. However, they significantly selected the wrong answer, suggesting they could hear the difference between A and B but picked the wrong one [in other words, they choose the 4424 file thinking it was the 8824]...The remaining 13 participants did not perform above chance level, either at the individual or group level...On a scale of 0 to 10, expert listeners reported that the difficultly level of the task was 9 on average...They commented that the task was very demanding in terms of concentration and that it was hard to stop doubting about what they heard..."

 

In summary, it was primarily the down sampled version that was discernible from the original 88.2, not files recorded at 44.1 and 88.2 simultaneously. 

 

In other words,

 

Files recorded at 88.2 and down sampled to 44.1 were distinguishable to a few but they chose the wrong answers.

Files recorded at 88.2 and 44.1 were mostly indistinguishable to everyone.

 

A couple of points...

 

It's not exactly an endorsement of the benefits of high sample rates when the 3 that had significant results picked the wrong answers.

 

The ADCs were RME Mictasys, not considered high end converters. 

 

As has been pointed out by those who know much more than me, recording w ADCs at different sample rates simultaneously introduces possible artifacts.

 

All said it was quite difficult.

 

The study may only show that the down sampling of Pyramix at the time was somewhat audible.  

 

This paper was presented in May 2010. The study was likely done prior to the year 2010, which puts the technology at approximately a decade old. Not only is the study a decade old but the converters were meh...I'd be curious to see if these results are repeatable today with top converters and the best modern SRC. Personally, I seriously doubt it would be. But I'm willing to change my mind if double blind tests show otherwise.  And besides people, they weren't even picking the 88.2 files when they detected differences! They chose the 44.1 files!

 

There are other such studies. A few people on some occasions have been able to hear just a bit above 20KHz, possibly because of poor equipment reflecting some of that energy into the audible range, or maybe just due to exceptional hearing. Nobody can hear to anywhere close to 48KHz. But don't quote studies or science to sandyk he prefers to hear only about tests that confirm his beliefs. Anything else gets him angry.

 

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17 minutes ago, sandyk said:

I don't see anybody claiming to directly hear 48KHz, only the effects of it's presence /absence with musical instruments, some of which even have harmonics to past 100KHZ

 

And this is important why? If human beings can't hear it, why is it important to capture this information? Just in case bats decide to listen in?

 

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40 minutes ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

I don’t often agree with @sandyk, but I also agree that hirez potentially avoids many of the filter artifacts of RBCD by shifting them up to ultrasonic frequencies, both on A-D in recording and on D-A in playback.

 

Of course Alex was talking about higher sampling rates and not greater bit depth, and not about recording and mastering, but playback. 

 

So, if I understand you correctly, you're saying there is a benefit to using higher sampling rates in playback. What is it, aside from allowing noise shaping/filtering above audible frequencies (which doesn't require content to be hi-res, simple oversampling will do the same)?

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3 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

 I thought I was fairly clear that many, if not most, of the advantages of hirez seem to occur on the recording production side, but that to hear all of those advantages, one must play in hirez.

 

What confused me was you saying that you agreed with Alex ;)

 

3 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

I don’t think there is any consensus agreement on the notion that oversampling is exactly equivalent to upsampling, or that oversampling produces the same measured and perceptual results as hirez recording + playback.   Theoretical arguments are not my thing.  I base my views on many, many measurements of actual DACs from many sources, most of them using oversampling with RBCD vs. hirez.  That, plus my own, non-scientific, anecdotal listening experience.  

 

Then we agree. I've been building software to do waveform analysis using PCM and now DSD files to determine differences and to allow direct comparisons of captured data, so no pure theory for me. I do prefer to understand the theory before doing any measurements.

 

3 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

But, measurably, there seem to be consistent, measured filter artifacts in RBCD playback, even with oversampling, that are shifted into ultrasonic inaudibility with hirez recording/playback.  I don’t think there is any solid evidence that oversampling, which we have had since the ‘80’s, accomplishes the same thing.  

 

OK, yes. But if these are shifted into ultrasonic range and then filtered out, what is the problem?

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2 hours ago, Fitzcaraldo215 said:

I am not seeing the elimination of filter artifacts in typical DAC measurements in RBCD, even with oversampling.  These are most visible in the time domain, not the frequency domain..  But, even if a DAC were near perfect with RBCD in this regard, the filter artifacts are likely to still be there in the signal itself from the A-D on the recording production side, unable to be fully and accurately dealt with in D-A.  

 

I agree: artifacts created in ADC process will be hard to remove. You can see artifacts in the frequency domain, too. I've been playing with an interesting tool that makes ringing and aliasing easy to spot. Here you can see some spikes resulting from ringing due to oversampling and filters being used. Horizontal axis is frequency, vertical is a factor indicating how strong the ringing is (as a pattern, not as volume):

 

image.thumb.png.eeeb80725816e42b252b0a050840c40c.png

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