Null test 88.2/24 and 44.1/16

[bibo01]

34 minutes ago, cookiemarenco said:

 

Hello and thank you for the mention, 

 

First I'd like to mention that I applaud anyone buying music, especially in high resolution and disc format.  Streaming rate payouts will never support a robust ecosystem of varying music genres.  We want to support you all and the format of your choice.  What ever works best for you, in your listening situation and to fit your budget.  Your continuing enjoyment of music helps support us making new music.  Thank you.

 

Math vs listening tests.... Arguments that could arise from our differences are not often understood by the main stream music listener and even professional audio engineers.  I've been in the pro audio side of thing since opening a commercial facility in 1982.  I left active participation with pro audio to create an audiophile music label in 2007.  99% of the professional audio community is still recording in 44.1/24 or 16 bits.  99% of the music we receive for evaluation, mixing and mastering arrives as 44.1 files.  If you ask 99% of the record labels (and I include the major labels here) for the multitrack masters or even the final mixes pre mastering...  you'll get a look of horror.  They don't know where they are.  This is a tragedy. 

 

I suspect the thought of learning something new or managing large files or spending more money on gear during a time when audio engineering jobs and commercial studios are dying off and labels going out of business, is not really a pleasant consideration.

 

What and how we listen is a personal decision.  When I'm at home and in my office, I listen to youtube, CDs, SACDs, and DSD.. depends on my mood and what I'm doing.  I listen to the baseball games on a 20 year old transistor Sony radio, by the way.

 

What I record to is a different story.  I record to 2" tape and DSD256, no PCM.  If you have more questions, feel free to ask.

 

Do we hear the difference between FLAC and WAV?  yes.  We have repeated this test dozens of times, blindfolded and can teach people how to hear the difference.  Do we hear the difference between the conversion of various levels of FLAC?  Yes, and we optimize our conversions to create the best sounding FLAC.  Do we hear the difference between a FLAC made from a DSD256 and from WAV?  Yes.  Do we hear differences in USB and Ethernet cables?  Yes... for another discussion.

 

In the early 80's we were beta testers for the first digital audio workstations.  Part of my job was to do rigorous listening tests.  For more than 30 years I've been paid by dozens of audio manufacturers (both pro and consumer) to test their gear.  We got started in this because we complained about digital audio conversions.  When engineers discovered we were right, they hired us to test.  

 

But hey, if you want to believe the math, that's cool.    I wanted to believe the math when I started distributing downloads in 2008.  We were told that FLAC sounded the same.  Sure, the files would be smaller, easier to download, cost less to host, etc.  But, before we hosted hundreds of FLAC files, I suggested we do comparative listening tests. As the owner of the business, FLAC was a more financially advantageous file to deliver.

 

My "oh s*&t" moment came when we heard the difference.  WAV sounded better.  We couldn't lie to our customers about what we heard.  It's not a big difference but we heard it... test after test after test. It was going to cost more money to deliver WAV but we promised our customers the best files we could deliver at the time... and we still do.

 

Bottomline... we sell the FLAC, DSD and WAV... we sell all formats available to us at Blue Coast Music.  Buy what makes you happy.  Math?  I love math.  But ...... 

 

This has been a great article.  I'm going to submit it to DSD-Guide.com where you can read more about the tests we do and why.

https://dsd-guide.com

 

Enjoy your listening and support your favorite musicians, 

Cookie Marenco

Blue Coast Music

https://bluecoastmusic.com

 

Thanks for your participation to CA.

Could you please teach us how to listen for differences between FLAC and WAV?

BTW, do you find AIFF and WAV sounding the same? 

[bibo01]

10 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Strange then that I can show (audibly) differences which blow you out of your socks and which not only show differences by these difference test means that are well under 120dB and thus "inaudible", but which show no-difference-at-all.

Hi Peter,

Could you please tell me (perhaps in PM so we do not pollute this thread) about such test that I can pass to my "laboratory friend" to reproduce it. Thanks

[bibo01]

7 hours ago, PeterSt said:

OffTopic : Hi @bibo01, nothing has changed since the time you wanted to work with it back in ... 2009 ?

So it is software (my own, not commercially available) and all what's changed to it since is that the other day (few months ago) I made it suitable for 24 bits. Sort of, because I recall some hurdles and did not finish that. ... Yea, I know again, the hurdle with 24 bits is that it requires down conversion (to 16 bits again) at the graph level, because no PC screen has a sufficient resolution to show the granularity of the lowest bit values where it obviously all happens. This is OK for 16 bits and a say 1080 (vertically) monitor. But 24 bits requires a theoretical 2^8 (256x) more pixels to show the same.

For @bachish, this, while what you show (spectrograph) comprises 16 million pixels vertically which is a bit, eh, too much compressed to see a thing (which you (or me !) don't care about because your subject is far from the same).

I can't replicate anything if you say nothing.

[bibo01]

6 hours ago, PeterSt said:

8 hours ago, bibo01 said:

I can't replicate anything if you say nothing.

 

You mean you forgot ?

(hard to imagine)

I don't think so. But, if you don't give me something to explicitly measure/work, how can I justify your assertion?

Let's not try to run in circles here. Be direct Peter, please. 

[bibo01]

10 hours ago, cookiemarenco said:

Thank you for prompting me to write an article on comparative listening tests.  I scribbled something out this morning for you to read.  It's an off the top of my head guide to how we do the tests.  I'm sure I've forgotten something.

 

Testing is not easy and requires a minimum of people to do a good test and half a day to setup properly.  We listen for differences in sample clips whether it's in the silence, wideness of space, movement of phase, fall off of dynamic response.  It's not easy, but we find we can teach people in a workshop (which we've done successfully at many audio shows).  Here's the article.

https://dsd-guide.com/how-do-comparative-listening-test

 

 

This has been an interesting thread.

 

Enjoy your music!

Cookie Marenco

Blue Coast Music

https://bluecoastmusic.com/

Thanks for your reply.

I would like to be hand accompanied in this "journey of discovery"... if you can.

Could you please pinpoint two or more examples of clips of different res or, better, flac and wav with phase shifts or piano notes not dying in the same way?