Null test 88.2/24 and 44.1/16

[crenca]

7 hours ago, PeterSt said:

Btw, this does not compare by any the slightest means to being able to see (null) differences as per the thread we're in at this moment....So, nothing whatsoever would appear in any null test because it is by far way too small to "see" in there. This thus means that once we see something anyway and especially as large as bachish so kindly shows it to us,  never mind he thinks or feels that the majority is out of the audio band, the subject is to way out for me or anyone who knows how audio can be controlled at this minute level. Not only by cables but also by software and the whole hoopla in between and beyond. IOW, @bachish, your subject has to be moot, once because e.g. me, myself and I are able to show you enormous differences in SQ....

 

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

I'd much rather argue about math, as the differences there can be resolved between knowledgeable people. Unlike listening tests of the type typically practiced by most here on CA, math is not a matter of opinion.

 

 

Well stated PeterSt.

 

You see pkane2001 and bachish, the subject, the math, is moot.  There is an audio reality in between the math, the digital signal, and it is this in between reality that really matters.  

[crenca]

7 hours ago, PeterSt said:

Btw, this does not compare by any the slightest means to being able to see (null) differences as per the thread we're in at this moment....So, nothing whatsoever would appear in any null test because it is by far way too small to "see" in there. This thus means that once we see something anyway and especially as large as bachish so kindly shows it to us,  never mind he thinks or feels that the majority is out of the audio band, the subject is to way out for me or anyone who knows how audio can be controlled at this minute level. Not only by cables but also by software and the whole hoopla in between and beyond. IOW, @bachish, your subject has to be moot, once because e.g. me, myself and I are able to show you enormous differences in SQ....

 

1 hour ago, pkane2001 said:

 

I'd much rather argue about math, as the differences there can be resolved between knowledgeable people. Unlike listening tests of the type typically practiced by most here on CA, math is not a matter of opinion.

 

 

Well stated PeterSt.

 

You see pkane2001 and bachish, the subject, the math, is moot.  There is an audio reality in between the math, the digital signal, and it is this in between reality that really matters.  

[crenca]

29 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

To be as precise as I can be (as a layperson) about what I'm asking:

 

Miska and Fokus have made some criticisms (both of ringing; Fokus of aliasing, see edit to my last comment) of typical ADC filters.  I don't know what decimation filters Cookie used for her DSD/44.1k comparison, or 2L used for its DXD/44.1k comparison; and I am supposing the decimation filter @bachish used might be different from either.

 

I would be curious to see how if at all these various decimation filters - typical, Cookie's, 2L's, the OP's - might change the measurements in the hi-res/44.1k comparison.

 

To answer your quesiton would require an analysis such as this:  https://www.computeraudiophile.com/forums/topic/49646-null-test-88224-and-44116/?tab=comments#comment-864221t 

 

 

But such a thing requires access to both the "master" and knowledge of which specific software/DAW and the settings (filters, etc.) used.  None of this is normally available, or even appears to be understood and/or remembered by those who do it on "most" recordings at "most" labels (certain "audiophile" lables being the exception).

 

So it appears to be all analysis and informed guessing on the backside...

 

 

[pkane2001]

6 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

 

Well stated PeterSt.

 

You see pkane2001 and bachish, the subject, the math, is moot.  There is an audio reality in between the math, the digital signal, and it is this in between reality that really matters.  

 

Yes, that's absolutely true. Math, logic, measurements, science, engineering are all moot when it comes to audio and healing bracelets.

[Jud]

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

Nobody is talking about ADCs here.

 

OK, then I've managed to become confused about what goes on between when the signal hits the mics and when it becomes a CD or a 44.1k download (not an unusual thing for me).  Is the chain - sigma-delta conversion, then decimation - the same when @bachish records and in the music @pkane2001 is analyzing as occurs to produce the music and files Fokus and Miska were talking about, or not?

 

18 minutes ago, mansr said:

 

You made the assertion that the filters used by DAWs such as Pyramix when exporting to CD format are somehow "bad." Maybe they are, but the discussions you've referenced are about other topics and neither support nor refute this idea.

 

I have no idea what the difference is between what Fokus and Miska are talking about and what occurs with filters in DAWs (I never mentioned filters in DAWs, or Pyramix specifically, since I didn't know enough to do so).  I've read Fokus and Miska talking about ringing and aliasing, and in my mind the approximate sophistication level of the analysis that went on was something like "Ringing and aliasing bad!"

 

Mea maxima culpa.  Absolvo a me.

 

Good, now that we're hopefully done with this little side discussion about the state of my knowledge: What I'm curious about, for anyone who feels like being helpful, is whether and to what extent music in 44.1k from the "majors" has had different filtering used in its creation than the 44.1k examples 2L and Cookie have put up, and if so, what if any differences might be seen in the types of comparison measurements @bachish and @pkane2001 are doing.

[Sonicularity]

A professional audio engineer with numerous prestigious accolades jumped into this thread with mostly a self-directed appeal to authority while making extraordinary claims that support their business and cater exclusively to their customer base.  To add, the position offers nothing but anecdotal references as any proof.

 

If a digital copy sounds different, and this is verifiable, it would seem that something is broken.  That should be the end of the discussion until all avenues have been explored in an attempt to discover which equipment or process is responsible.

 

[Jud]

And now we are well and thoroughly down the usual drain.  Paul and @bachish, if/when you'd like to post any more measurement comparisons or have further discussions about them, I'll await that with interest.

[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.

[Jud]

47 minutes ago, crenca said:

But such a thing requires access to both the "master" and knowledge of which specific software/DAW and the settings (filters, etc.) used.

 

If you were looking at a specific track, sure.  I was thinking more along the lines of using a generic filter, of the type that Fokus describes in the comments I linked, on one of the 2L DXD files to get a 44.1k file, for example, and comparing that to the 44.1k example posted by 2L, to see whether there's any measurable difference in the files.

[cookiemarenco]

12 hours ago, bibo01 said:

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? 

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/

[crenca]

1 hour 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!  Bookmarked for future reference!  On what has been discussed here on this thread this part of your writeup is relevant:

 

"Phasing issues.. this is tricky to hear, but when comparing 1st and 2nd generations of digital transfers at the DSD256 range, comparing FLAC conversion levels, etc, we have found that using an orchestral or multi mics recording of live jazz can expose shifting phase issue (seemingly instruments move differently in various clips)."

 

This implies a filter like "transform" (is that the correct digital/mathematical term?) of the PCM by the FLAC algorithm, in particular a phase shift.  This would of course be an unintentional side effect, one that is not understood in math.  No computational evidence is known as far as I understand it.  Other explanations would lie outside the math, such as some unknown effect of software and hardware outside of the file/specific FLAC computation itself, but such an explanation really strains what we know about digital implementation in modern hardware (which, it must be remembered, is always "analog" at the bottom "physical" layer - but this does not imply what many audiophiles thinks it does)...

[PeterSt]

1 hour ago, bibo01 said:

I can't replicate anything if you say nothing.

 

You mean you forgot ?

(hard to imagine)

[PeterSt]

43 minutes ago, crenca said:

(which, it must be remembered, is always "analog" at the bottom "physical" layer - but this does not imply what many audiophiles thinks it does)...

 

Well, if it is allowed to be off-topic slightly again, this is exactly how the digital "response" of the analogue in there implies different sound in the far end. Only when this is analyzed from the analogue things of the matter (or the matter of things) we can explain how e.g. a protocol implies a distortion. Good example : 8KHz USB noise seen at the DAC output. The 8KHz is simply the 0.125ms interval of packet transmission.

Want to go further ? then we load the initially empty "data frames" with data, and the 8KHz goes up (rises for amplitude). How ? well, because the analogue part of the so-called digital stream has more "RMS value" because of the now more 1's (of say 1.2V) than with an empty stream (more close to everything 0V but with now and then protocol overhead of again 1.2V)

 

And now suddenly the digital contents of the cable has analog influence.

But there you have it as I said earlier : via-via-via because it is about current usage hammering on to ground planes etc.

Influence the current spikes by "some" means, and you control noise, which controls SQ eventually. Not real control, but still some, and thus very indirect.

 

[mansr]

39 minutes ago, crenca said:

This implies a filter like "transform" (is that the correct digital/mathematical term?) of the PCM by the FLAC algorithm, in particular a phase shift.  This would of course be an unintentional side effect, one that is not understood in math.

It is trivial to verify that the digital sample values come back unaltered after being encoded by FLAC. If someone suggests that computer files possess other properties, undetectable other than by listening, we are no longer talking about physical reality and further discussion is pointless.

[PeterSt]

Maybe people talk too much in terms of math. It's just "computers" (or computing, if you want).

[bachish]

12 hours ago, cookiemarenco said:

 

Hello Bachish, I did read your thread from the beginning.  I thought it was quite charming and adventurous for a first post.  I was familiar with the null test from years gone by.  I'm not sure how much has been deleted from this forum, but there have been some very interesting responses over the years to issues you brought up about the math.  I find no reason to argue any more.  I understand we all have different opinions and different experiences in life.

 

I'll listen more closely to your recordings tomorrow when I'm in a better listening environment.

 

I agree that most of the classical recording engineers record in at least 24 bit (even if 44.1).  Two of my best buddy engineers are Jack Vad (San Francisco Symphony engineer for 30 years and now records to 192) and Michael Bishop (records in DSD).  Classical music represents a good percentage of the music audiophiles buy (though still not as much as rock/pop).  That said, beyond classical it's a very different world of professional audio engineers.  Classical is a small percentage of the total music recorded in the world.  My generalization was about the total spectrum of music being created and how few audio engineers work above 44.1 (24 or 16 bit).  Sorry if there was a misunderstanding.

 

I'm not suggesting audio engineers don't care about sound, but there are different definitions of what that sound is.  Very few are taught good recording techniques these days.  We get a lot of interns at the studio from audio programs that are unaware of good techniques for recording. 

 

If I were asked what was the most important part of the recording to get a great sound, it would start with proper grounding and understanding gain structure.  Everything else is simplified once you get gain structure and grounding right.. and have a good set of ears.  .  

 

All the best to you and your recording projects.  It seems like you have good taste in music.

 

all the best,

Cookie Marenco

Blue Coast Music

https://bluecoastmusic.com

 

Thank you for the response! I guess I am out of the loop in regards to the bigger picture of audio recording. My (limited) experience is that the recording industry is churning out some amazing recordings and, judging by the engineers I know and gearslutz.com, the engineers are very committed.  But you are obviously in a better position to know.

 

BTW, if you'd like the high res versions of the recordings, let me know and I'll send a link. It's nice of you to offer to listen. Much appreciated!

 

 

 

 

[mansr]

14 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Maybe people talk too much in terms of math. It's just "computers" (or computing, if you want).

Is there a difference?

[bachish]

22 hours ago, Jud said:

 

The various things she thinks make a difference to eventual sound quality.

 

Yes, no doubt she is a great engineer. What she has described reminds me of what recording engineer Hudson Fair does, recordist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  He also records to analog tape and mixes in an analog mixer. He says it sounds better than mixing on computer and, no doubt, it would sound different but subject to one's aesthetics. But, IMO, what gives Cookie her distinctive sound isn't so much tied to DSD vs PCM but what she is doing in the analog domain prior to converting to digital. That is where the magic happens. 

 

If interested, to see Hudson Fair's website see http://www.hudsonic.net/. Some interestimg pics there.

[PeterSt]

5 minutes ago, mansr said:

19 minutes ago, PeterSt said:

Maybe people talk too much in terms of math. It's just "computers" (or computing, if you want).

Is there a difference?

 

Yes. That is, if you regard the error-free transfer of a file "math" as such, then there isn't. But that would be a strange approach.

So it is not what math would depict (as in : there can't be a difference between FLAC and WAV for the resulting WAV file in either case), but what computers just do to us. Personally I never think of math when I transfer a file. What I do though, is knowing that I certainly don't need to check the result against the source, just because I know what computers (not) do to you.

 

Filters are math and not computers. But computers can make them by means of applying math.

Or coils and such - they also can make (or be) filters. Or OpAmps in the right configuration.

Well, you knew.

 

Anyway, I think that the OP poses that math may tell us different about what we hear, opposed to what we hear in reality. I don't see math applied there anywhere, unless someone makes the mistake that math should tells us that sound as such can not change. It can and it is obvious. But the subject is also "filters". And they are math.

Combining this with the robustness of digital transfer is just confusing. It is not related. And yes, both are done by computers.

[Jud]

1 minute ago, bachish said:

 

Yes, no doubt she is a great engineer. What she has described reminds me of what recording engineer Hudson Fair does, recordist for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.  He also records to analog tape and mixes in an analog mixer. He says it sounds better than mixing on computer and, no doubt, it would sound different but subject to one's aesthetics. But, IMO, what gives Cookie her distinctive sound isn't so much tied to DSD vs PCM but what she is doing in the analog domain prior to converting to digital. That is where the magic happens. 

 

If interested, to see Hudson Fair's website see http://www.hudsonic.net/. Some interestimg pics there.

 

Thank you for the link. 

 

Yes, that's kind of what I was getting at in my initial comment about Cookie - that regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with anything she says, it's indicative of a degree of care to produce a quality product that's borne out in the result.

[bachish]

8 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

Thank you for the link. 

 

Yes, that's kind of what I was getting at in my initial comment about Cookie - that regardless of whether one agrees or disagrees with anything she says, it's indicative of a degree of care to produce a quality product that's borne out in the result.

 

Yes, she certainly has a deep commitment to sound. We agree. 

 

I guess I just like to emphasise a couple points, directed to anyone here and myself included, that there are many recording engineers who record for mainstream lables that are as committed to sound and recording techniques as "audiophile" lables. And that the focus on DSD vs PCM is, by far, the least important aspect of recording and playback, IMO.  Just because someone doesnt record to alalog tape or mix in all analog or use DSD doesn't mean it is less in quality. I personally like all digital for classical. I love the transparency.  

 

 

[Jud]

Returning the favor of the Hudson Fair link - I've always liked the quality of the recordings Mark Knopfler's been involved with.  Here are a couple of links with some information about his (quite non-purist!) recording techniques:

 

https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/Producer_Chuck_Ainlay_on_Recording_Mark_Knopfler

 

http://guyfletcher.co.uk/the-diaries-2/recording-tracker-2014/

 

Edit: I saw your previous post after I posted my comment.  Looks like my "non-purist" remark was right in line with what you're saying.

[bachish]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

Returning the favor of the Hudson Fair link - I've always liked the quality of the recordings Mark Knopfler's been involved with.  Here are a couple of links with some information about his (quite non-purist!) recording techniques:

 

https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/Producer_Chuck_Ainlay_on_Recording_Mark_Knopfler

 

http://guyfletcher.co.uk/the-diaries-2/recording-tracker-2014/

 

Edit: I saw your previous post after I posted my comment.  Looks like my "non-purist" remark was right in line with what you're saying.

 

Thanks for the links!  I quickly read the first one. I like a lot of what he is saying. Analog for sure has a nice warmth to it and sounds great.  I'll check out the other link too.

 

There are definitely many ways to record and recordists get great results with all types of techniques. I used to be more dogmatic about how music ought to be recorded - that is until I heard some recordings that were drop dead gorgeous using mic techniques I didn't particularly like! Like virtually everything in life there are trade offs and what somebody likes will be determined by their priorities.

[bachish]

14 hours ago, crenca said:

 

Hey no worries.  Believe it or not, I am not after yet-another-audiophile-cable debate.  Rather, your explanation "...For copying this is completely different from playing an audio stream over the same cable." is what I wanted to indicate to the OP.  This is the "audiophile" assertion I wanted him to understand, which shows that for (some, most probably), digital is digital up to a certain point, when it becomes something else (i.e. the "sound" of digital files say FLAC vs. WAV, or the "sound" of USB signal transmission, or whatever).

 

The why of your assertion, the how of any other file transmission vs. audio (file) transmission (the assertion that USB becomes something different when an audio file is transmitted over it) is never explained really at all but it is simply considered normal and accepted wisdom in Audiophiledom...

 

Yep, I do see your point and believe I see the concern of audiophiles.

 

I am sitting here thinking...I have a 20year old digital Spdif cable....I could stream from the digital outs of my Roland recorder (the field recorder I mentioned) to the Spdif inputs of my 20+ year old Marantz CD burner. I could then stream back to the Roland recorder via the same digital cable. In other words, I'd be streaming in real time with a low end cable. I could upload the double streamed version to the computer and null test it with the original. If it nulls, then it looks like the cable doesn't matter much. If it doesn't null, more tests would need to be done to isolate the problem (could be errors in writing to CDR by an older machine, for example).  

 

Just a thought. If it nulls, would that satisfy the concerned?

[bachish]

9 hours ago, Jud said:

Two further steps might be interesting: comparisons with a 44.1 file produced by @bachish's own decimation filter; and with a 44.1 file produced by someone's version of a simple "bad" decimation filter of the type a major music company might use, that I've seen criticized occasionally here.  For the latter, @mansr @Miska, @PeterSt, Cookie, any ideas? 

 

Hi Jud,

 

The filters used in the major professional DAWs are actually very good. Here are some measurements that visually show any artifacts from the sampling. Again, it's extremely difficult to avoid any ringing or aliasing, but the vast majority of DAWs have excellent results.

 

The worst performer of this list is Sadie. But even though it looks terrible, the artifacts are all under -100 db. The list includes Abletom Live, Logic, Pro Tools, Pyramid, Reaper, Sadie, Samplitude, and Sequoia.

 

You can look at others at http://src.infinitewave.ca