John Atkinson: Yes, MQA IS Elegant...

[Ralf11]

What are the sharpest attacks ??

 

And what is the rise time for the sharpest part?

[Teresa]

20 hours ago, wgscott said:

Next, someone will suggest that "delusional", when applied to audiophiles, is somehow disparaging.

 

Delusional when applied to anyone is disparaging, it is the nature of the word, look it up.

[mansr]

3 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

What are the sharpest attacks ??

 

And what is the rise time for the sharpest part?

I don't know which instrument is the winner here. Percussion and plucked strings have much shorter attacks than bowed strings or wind instruments.

[Ralf11]

I was thinking cymbals vs. snare drums or something...

 

- I still wonder what the steepest part of the attack is (and assume the fall times are not as short?)

[fas42]

57 minutes ago, Ralf11 said:

What are the sharpest attacks ??

 

And what is the rise time for the sharpest part?

 

Amongst conventional instruments, piano, it would seem. At one stage I was doodling with the keyboard which we have, and one can adjust all the parameters of the waveform of the synthesized sounds, attack being one.

And it was noted that the piano sounds had the fastest rise time, by default; the actual time I couldn't say.

 

Which is why piano, played aggressively, often sounds underdone on playback. The transients are not reproduced well, and it's obviously "not right".

 

Which has nothing to do with this "pre-ringing" nonsense, or the way it was recorded - this is a failure of the playback rig to get it correct. One of the obvious markers of a setup reaching competent SQ levels is that, finally, a big crashing piano chord sounds as it should - no excuses have to be made for anything ...

[Hugo9000]

Harpsichord, perhaps, with its very light and quick action.  Iron strings have a shorter rise time than brass, I believe (both types have been used in harpsichords throughout history). 

 

There is also the lute-harpsichord, with gut strings, reconstructed fairly recently based on drawings by J. S. Bach.

[adamdea]

2 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

What are the sharpest attacks ??

 

And what is the rise time for the sharpest part?

It is my understanding that castanets are the nearest you will ever see to an impulse. I don’t listen to a lot of castanet music. 

[adamdea]

3 hours ago, mansr said:

All very good questions. The answers are mainly "no."

As someone once said of the hymn “Jerusalem”.

[psjug]

7 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Certainly ringing exists on CD's and not enough attention is paid for that...

And no it is not below the noise floor, it certainly is clearly seen.

 

Please show some examples so it can be discussed.  I don't mean to sound like I'm challenging you,  just want to see something.

7 hours ago, Miska said:

But luckily that, as many other source filter problems is fixable by using apodizing filters for DAC, while non-apodizing ones will pass the source's ringing through as-is.

Are you saying you always prefer apodizing reconstruction filters?  You consider ringing a worse problem than the phase error problem introduced by apodizing (or alternatively, ringing is worse than the problems introduced by slow rolloff filter).

[crenca]

It looks like a Onkyo has ringing problem figured out...it's all about the vector:

 

https://www.intl.onkyo.com/soundstory/index.html

[esldude]

5 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

What are the sharpest attacks ??

 

And what is the rise time for the sharpest part?

Here is one from a cymbal recorded at 176 khz with wide bandwidth microphones. 

It is like most cymbals.  After initially being struck there are a few cycles of building amplitude and then a slower decay afterwards (most of the decay is chopped off in the picture here).   You'll see it isn't all that steep a transient.  Nothing that rings or pushes the ability of PCM to follow.  I've posted this before after downsampling to 44khz and the waveform shape is hardly changed.  

 

The result makes sense.  You strike a cymbal in one location, the energy travels across the face of it to the edges, reflects, and takes a few trips to reach maximum resonance before dying away.  In the case of cymbals it dies away rather slowly. The picture in people's minds that the harsh loud cymbal sound is a hugely steep initial transient wavefront actually doesn't even make sense once you think about it. 

 

It is a fool's errand to keep looking here for the answer to digital sound or digital harshness or digital problems.  All this is old hat, and a myth that won't die.  PCM works, and is elegant while MQA is solving a non-existent problem while introducing other problems we don't need.  

[vl]

11 minutes ago, esldude said:

Here is one from a cymbal recorded at 176 khz with wide bandwidth microphones. 

It is like most cymbals.  After initially being struck there are a few cycles of building amplitude and then a slower decay afterwards (most of the decay is chopped off in the picture here).   You'll see it isn't all that steep a transient.  Nothing that rings or pushes the ability of PCM to follow.  I've posted this before after downsampling to 44khz and the waveform shape is hardly changed.  

 

The result makes sense.  You strike a cymbal in one location, the energy travels across the face of it to the edges, reflects, and takes a few trips to reach maximum resonance before dying away.  In the case of cymbals it dies away rather slowly. The picture in people's minds that the harsh loud cymbal sound is a hugely steep initial transient wavefront actually doesn't even make sense once you think about it. 

 

It is a fool's errand to keep looking here for the answer to digital sound or digital harshness or digital problems.  All this is old hat, and a myth that won't die.  PCM works, and is elegant while MQA is solving a non-existent problem while introducing other problems we don't need.  

 

Very well said. 

 

If any one of you is interested in comparing the CD format with hires, please visit the Sound Keeper link below.  You can download for free tracks at different digital format levels.  In the past I played the Lift tracks to my friends and most of them preferred the CD version to the hires one!  I like the hires one for its slightly smoother upper end.  I shall be interested in your observations.  The proof is in the pudding, rather than the speculation that MQA has been pushing.

 

http://www.soundkeeperrecordings.com/format.htm

 

Sound Keeping recordings do not use any editing or post processing.  During the recording session when the performers agree on the take, it is published.  This is an example of how good two channel stereo can get.

 

 

[FredericV]

2 hours ago, esldude said:

It is a fool's errand to keep looking here for the answer to digital sound or digital harshness or digital problems.  All this is old hat, and a myth that won't die.  PCM works, and is elegant while MQA is solving a non-existent problem while introducing other problems we don't need.  

 

The co-designer of the John Watkinson Legend speakers (one of the few speakers which get the time domain right and also has real life dynamics, which most can't do) now has complete drumset, so I ask him to do some extra research as well.

He has his own demo where he records his snare drum with a zoom recorder, then plays it back via foobar on a simple netbook, and an Antelope Zodiac Plus DAC connected via XLR to the active Legends.

Well it sounds like the real thing. Not many systems can do this. No need for MQA, just get a better system.

MQA can't fix speaker designs where the time domain is not accurate.

One of the banned MQA shills visited our room last year at X-FI and admitted it sounded very good.
No need for MQA

 

[esldude]

You can download the wav files for many cymbals recorded by J. E. Johnson at this page.

 

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/images/stories/audio/cymbal-samples/cymbal-reviews-index.html

 

Here is a thread with some more info and FFT plots.

 

http://www.drummerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66957

 

[blue2]

23 minutes ago, esldude said:

You can download the wav files for many cymbals recorded by J. E. Johnson at this page.

 

http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/images/stories/audio/cymbal-samples/cymbal-reviews-index.html

 

Here is a thread with some more info and FFT plots.

 

http://www.drummerworld.com/forums/showthread.php?t=66957

 

These could be used to create an excellent speaker test. I've always found a drum kit reveals any shortcomings. Any more test files to complete the set? It seems the original article was just about cymbals https://hometheaterhifi.com/editorial/musings-of-a-drummer/

[Shadders]

10 hours ago, adamdea said:

I see the expression “musical transient” with extreme suspicion. Part of the brouhaha about non orthodox filters is avague idea about smearing and timing and whatever

Hi,

All music contains transients, in fact it is predominantly transients. It just depends on how sharp they are (rate of change).

 

The discussion on MQA threads is always focusing on the boundary conditions such as ringing (step or impulse response), or the steady state response which is the filter frequency response and phase relationship.

 

Every system has a steady state response and a transient response. When music is applied to the filter, it is operating in the transient response. No one really listens to sine waves, which is the steady state response. This is all the graphs show you when the frequency response is shown with phase, is the steady state response of the filter. It tells you nothing about the transient response of the filter (or system).

 

The MQA paper uses the word "smear" once, and this is in relation to the ability of the ear discerning between timing differences.

 

The MQA paper does use "blur" and defines this as dispersion, and this is what MQA is to solve. Linear phase filters have a constant group delay - so no dispersion across the audio band. So, the fact that MQA uses minimum phase or other filters, introduces the error in which they were stating to solve.

 

The transient response of filters appears as added noise to the output, it is low level, and depends on the filters tap length, and stop band attenuation. (high number of taps reduces the noise, and high stop band attenuation reduces the noise). Whether this noise causes an effect that is heard is for debate. The noise is spread across the audio band.

 

If anything, the only benefit MQA has caused, is more focus on the digital filter which will never have happened otherwise.

 

Regards,

Shadders.

[esldude]

5 minutes ago, blue2 said:

These could be used to create an excellent speaker test. I've always found a drum kit reveals any shortcomings. Any more test files to complete the set? It seems the original article was just about cymbals https://hometheaterhifi.com/editorial/musings-of-a-drummer/

Yes, just cymbals.  

[Jud]

11 hours ago, esldude said:

PCM works, and is elegant while MQA is solving a non-existent problem while introducing other problems we don't need.  

 

Supposing at least one problem (ringing filters used in the creation of CDs) exists, there are good filters available to deal with that, and MQA still isn't needed.

[Sal1950]

16 hours ago, Teresa said:

 

Delusional when applied to anyone is disparaging, it is the nature of the word, look it up.

Not if it is an accurate description of that persons perceptions.

Would that apply to a person suffering from schizophrenia?

In today's world of audiophilla there are many that suffer from hearing things for many reasons. Most of them a natural outcome of normal human weaknesses and a refusal by them to examine their delusional occurrences in a scientific manner. Reminds me of the schizophrenic that refuses to take his meds because his imaginary friends go away.

 

"Hearing voices is an auditory hallucination that may or may not be associated with a mental health problem. It is the most common type of hallucination in people with psychotic disorders such as schizophrenia.² However, a large number of otherwise healthy individuals have also reported hearing voices.^3"

 

[wgscott]

There are plenty of delusional beliefs people have that are due simply to the power of suggestion, society, etc., and not due to any recognized mental illness or neurological condition.

 

Religious beliefs are a prime example.

[Miska]

15 hours ago, psjug said:

Please show some examples so it can be discussed.  I don't mean to sound like I'm challenging you,  just want to see something.

Are you saying you always prefer apodizing reconstruction filters?  You consider ringing a worse problem than the phase error problem introduced by apodizing (or alternatively, ringing is worse than the problems introduced by slow rolloff filter).

 

Apodizing doesn't mean that it would need to be minimum-phase. And extremely slow roll-off filter like MQA's is much worse than ringing. So in my opinion different aspects needs to be balanced out, instead of going to extreme in one of them and ruining all the others while doing so. But yes, minimum phase filters are in my personal opinion better sounding. But I don't even try to force that on everyone and that's why I provide both linear- and minimum-phase versions of same filters.

 

If you go back to discussions on this topic around year 2014/2015 on this forum, you can find a lot more examples.

 

First one view of step responses with four different anti-alias filters... First set is linear amplitude scale:

And then second set with logarithmic scale:

 

Already gives you quite a bit different kind of view of things.

 

From one of my test recordings of real instruments, here I think is example of soprano glockenspiel attack at 48k sampling rate, linear amplitude scale:

Here you can already see pre-ringing if you look carefully. But when you turn to logarithmic level scale it is much more apparent:

 

 

Now it is good to remember that logarithmic scale is much better when you compare how humans perceive loudness, instead of linear scale. So in that sense, MQA representing filter impulse response plots using logarithmic level scale is more correct way. For spectral plots, everybody is already using logarithmic scale for level.

 

[Miska]

18 hours ago, mansr said:

All very good questions. The answers are mainly "no."

 

As you should. No natural sound even remotely resembles a mathematical step or impulse. Even the sharpest attacks are actually oscillations building up over several cycles.

 

I was looking at an LSO recording (96/24) of Reich's Music for Pieces of Wood just the other day for this very reason. There are no steps to be found. It's always an oscillation that takes several milliseconds to reach peak amplitude.

 

This is article discussing the topic:

https://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm

 

(the most valid for this is the section VI. Instruments without harmonics

https://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/11.htm#b

 

18 hours ago, mansr said:

A so-called apodising filter will remove "ringing," but it comes at a price. Instead of evil, inaudible ringing, you get high-frequency roll-off and phase distortion, both much more likely to be audible.

 

Well, you can as well have apodizing filter that adds more "ringing" and doesn't add phase distortion either. And given modern anti-alias filters doesn't give you any high-frequency roll-off either. So you are generalizing a bit too much now...

 

[Ralf11]

1 hour ago, wgscott said:

There are plenty of delusional beliefs people have that are due simply to the power of suggestion, society, etc., and not due to any recognized mental illness or neurological condition.

 

Religious beliefs are a prime example.

 

Agreed.  But many hallucinations are due to a wet-ware robot trying to make sense of reality - esp. when that reality differs from the one it was 'optimized' for...

 

BTW, did you see today's NYT?  There is an article on the rabbinical voice - I used to know a mathematician (at Cornell) had the rabbinical gaze over the bifocals down pat.

[Ralf11]

Thx for the cymbal info, and it does make sense based on the shape and size.

 

I see rock singers using castanet like items sometimes...

[fas42]

13 hours ago, blue2 said:

These could be used to create an excellent speaker test. I've always found a drum kit reveals any shortcomings. Any more test files to complete the set? It seems the original article was just about cymbals https://hometheaterhifi.com/editorial/musings-of-a-drummer/

 

Pipe organ extravaganzas played at decent volumes also sorts rigs out - the immense harmonic richness of this instrument, with tremendous sense of space, is very testing.