Hi-Res - Does it matter? Blind Test by Mark Waldrep

[esldude]

3 hours ago, sandyk said:

Yet more flogging of a dead horse by those who wish to take away the pleasure that others get from 24/192 recordings from Barry Diament, and the recent DSD releases from Cookie Marenco and others .

It's bad enough having crappy MQA dumped on us  without concerted efforts to try and dumb down what we already have available from HD Tracks etc. by way of biased Uni results.

 If those with above average gear, and not having closed minds on this subject wish for more immediate results, then try these examples provided by FrederickV several months back, despite FrederickV insisting that most participants previously failed the test , I had NO problem originally deciding which file was which, and which is the original high res version, and posted the differences that I heard at the time.

Even a few minutes ago when I checked to see if they are still available, I had no problems readily hearing the differences within several seconds.. 

 I feel sorry for those who are unable to appreciate recent genuine high resolution material, and I am 80 years old with industrial type  hearing damage. 

However, I use Class A , NOT Class D amplification. .

 

Do not cheat by looking at the files first !!!

http://klinktbeter.be/hushhush/x.wav

http://klinktbeter.be/hushhush/y.wav

I assume you'll not be taking part in the listening tests despite your ability to hear such resolutions once Again.  Even worse your response is to offer your own files for people to listen to.  Wouldn't be a problem normally, but to refuse participation as futile in other's online test files while offering up your own is a bit rich.  

 

I also think you have Mark Waldrep all wrong.  He has been a career long supporter of the idea that high resolution is beneficial.  Making all his recordings in 96 khz form.  So how you can try to characterize him as "flogging of a dead horse by those who wish to take away the pleasure that others get from 24/192 recordings from Barry Diament, and the recent DSD releases from Cookie Marenco and others "?  This makes no sense.  He doesn't wish to take away anyone's pleasure of high resolution. He has believed in it. 

 

Now he has been surprised that others don't hear benefits of his high resolution recordings.  So he is making yet another attempt to see if the wider public can hear them at greater than chance levels.   In other words he is submitting his beliefs to the scrutiny of the cold hard world of reality.  Something that should be applauded and pursued by more people.  

 

He has steadfastly said he thinks hearing recordings in their native format is best, and that 96 khz 24 bits is worthwhile.  Now he is trying to see if that is so or if lesser bits or lesser sample rates are effectively just as good.  

[esldude]

@sandyk What dither and software was used to resample those files you posted?

[esldude]

50 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 Why not also get rid of 4K Video , despite it's clear advantages over 1920 x 1080 for many people ?

 

🍎 and oranges.  You can easily spot 4k vs 2k video blind 20 times out of 20.

[esldude]

31 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

How do you know that both files were affected in the same way?

 

For example, they may have been stored on different servers, one with clean power and the other with dirty power.

Gives me a business idea.  Audiophile VPN.  We host verified digital files made with all clean linear power supplies and give you a VPN connection to your home with least degradation.  

[esldude]

24 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

Come on then Dennis., which of the X and Y files that FrederickV posted did YOU prefer and why ?

Before any analysis listening only I thought B was the better file. I suspect however after some analysis that A may have been resampled without dither.

[esldude]

2 hours ago, sandyk said:

 The files are X and Y , not A and B. Are you sure that you listened to the correct files ?.

 No amount of Dither would have fixed FrederickV's  16.44.1 version. The distortion is way too obvious.

Yes, X and Y.  I was working with some other files yesterday that were A and B.  Y or the second one is the better sounding to me. As for dither fixing something or not well yeah, no dither can cause distortion.  Of course I don't know what was done to @FredericV files so maybe he can say. 

[esldude]

41 minutes ago, Rexp said:

Could you not judge by measuring both? 

Yes, and I did. 

[esldude]

1 hour ago, FredericV said:

Tidal and the x and y files on my own server are served via HTTP.

HTTP guarantees bitperfect transmission. If you hear a difference from 2 files which both have the same cryptographic hash, you either are very good at breaking crypto (which I doubt) or you have a different issue.

Off course x and y are different files, but if you download x twice and hear a difference between both copies, then something is obviously broken

So did you do the down sampling or download each sample rate from tidal? Or more generally how were each of these created.

[esldude]

I've seen discussion by recording people that 15 ips was preferred because it has that good tape sound.  30 ips was considered too clean sounding by such people.  There was a brief period in the late 80's when 30 ips was something of a fad to get something cleaner as music was going onto CD, but digital processing was rather slow for studio use in those days.  

 

Here is a good article on tape. 

http://www.endino.com/graphs/index.html

 

Fellow measures various common pro tape machines at 15 ips and 30 ips.  Low end response bumps were problems. 

[esldude]

1 hour ago, Rexp said:

And I'm willing to bet you are wrong haha

You greatly over estimate the influence of poor downsampling.

[esldude]

3 hours ago, Rexp said:

And you think RTR and CD sound the same, nuff said

Someone has a reading  comprehension problem along with a listening issue.

[esldude]

4 hours ago, ralphfcooke said:

Elsdude, that does sound like an 'ad hominem' comment to me, care to rephrase it?

Reading comprehension.  I posted comments that comparing RTR, CD, and LP, that RTR, and CD sounded similar in general balance, and that LP was an odd man out.  This was on three different high quality systems with friends using a couple dozen recordings available in all three formats.  I never said that RTR and CD sounded the same, only that we were surprised they were more similar than LP.  That LP was in every case very different while RTR and CD has similar balances in FR and general impression of the recording.  Obviously RexP didn't comprehend what he read.  My other choice would be to assume he intentionally misrepresented it. 

 

Rexp seems to have this thing that LP is the optimum and the reference by which to judge and everything else is inferior.  I'd call that a listening issue.  He even has commented that if you've only listened to digital versions you don't know how something is supposed to sound like.  Again a listening issue.  Especially as LP's are almost always in the past made from tape, and listening to tape has a good chance of being the correct sound vs a medium we know requires considerable alteration to even make it onto the LP disc and be playable.  So if I hear quality tape, and I then listen to LP and CD with LP sounding odd and CD not, well which is the right sound? Rexp would say the LP.  A listening issue. 

[esldude]

12 hours ago, Steve B said:

I'm not sure there's a problem, but hoping someone can confirm what I see comparing the X and Y files in Deltawave.

 

The first screen shot is the original x and y files.  The white line is the 96 kHz file.  The blue line is the 44.1 kHz file.  The blue line should be hidden behind the white line from 0 to about 21-22 kHz.

 

The second, third, and fourth screen shots are the original 96 kHz file (white) and sample rate conversions (blue) that I have done from the original 96 kHz file to 44.1 kHz 24 Bit with SoX, then converted to 44.1 kHz 16 Bit with (2)Foobar2000 dither, (3)Reaper dither, and (4)no dither.

 

The results are not what I expected, so I hope someone can confirm.

 

I'll try other dithers.  

 

(I've varied from the Deltawave default corrections a little, using only the phase drift correction,  But using the default corrections makes little difference in this case any way).

 

Everything looks right to me.  Sox is a very good resampling algorithm.  Foobar may use Sox or something else depending upon how you have it set up.  Reaper has a mediocre resampling algorithm built in.  Secret Rabbit code I think it uses.  

[esldude]

10 hours ago, rvb said:

The worst thing ever happened in music was mp3. 

 

Second worst : the compact disc.

 

If they made just a vinyl disc 24/96 then everything would be fine.

The world's best forgotten musical analog format is........................... frequency modulated video tape for audio.  You encode at video frequencies the audio in FM form (yes like FM radio only better) and you get great low distortion, low noise etc. etc.  

 

We'll have to make do with PCM digital however.  

[esldude]

6 hours ago, sandyk said:

 Y was indeed the real 24/96 file,  as can be seen in my previous Sound Forge 9 screen grab.

 Your observations were spot on.

 According to FrederickV , most participants previously have actually preferred the noisier 16.44.1 X file.

I preferred Y as well, but that doesn't tell me much.  Should we assume you, FrederickV, Audiobomber, and myself are wrong, because most people preferred X?  And if you insist we were correct, well this bit of data doesn't support the idea.  Which is actually illuminating in regards to this methodology of yours where you send out files, count as positives those that agree with you and dismiss those that don't.  

[esldude]

27 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

How were you able to test 24-bit PCM files 30 years ago?

Time travel.  Travel to the future.  Listen.  Make up your mind.  Go back to your own time, and no need to waste time worrying about the problem in between.  

[esldude]

12 hours ago, sandyk said:

 It's not my problem if people like yourself and several other participants in this thread are unable to hear what many others report, including the benefits of higher resolution audio formats such as 24/192 and DSD, due to not accepting what  many Audiophile members are telling you, when you treat all solutions to the various problems such as IsoRegens , improved USB cables, markedly lower noise PSUs  etc. as Snake Oil .

This is evident with the recent nasty attacks on Uptone and John Swenson by one member of this small vocal group of Anti Audiophiles.

I note also that Kumakuma doesn't appear to have enough confidence in his own  listening abilities to even  report what differences (if any) he heard between the X and Y files, despite saying previously that he had listened to them, and that he would post his impressions.

 

Got around to comparing your x and y files in some software.  Blue is x and white is y.  A more than 10 db difference in much of the upper octave.  I wonder if on the louder more transient portions this is why it sounds different.  It does go down with lesser differences into the top 2 khz I can hear.  So often audible differences turn out to be FR variation.  Sample rate likely has nothing to do with sound differences in these two files. 

 

[esldude]

1 hour ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Interesting. 
 

When I talked to Archimago at Axpona he mentioned the possibility that people with certain types of hearing damage may be prone to hearing high resolution files. This was only based on his very very very limited sample, but it’s kind of interesting. 

Yes, that isn't really news.  It is just ignored quite often.  Among other things as we age and our hearing is stressed or damaged, the masking curves change.  The masking filters become less sharp.  So some material that might be masked if young, can be unmasked when older.  In some senses that is sort of like hearing what you couldn't hear before, but in general except rather odd circumstances your hearing acuity is really worse.  An obvious subjective experience is how well you can hear and carry on a conversation at say a sporting event with a crowd and its incessant noise or say conversation at a crowded party.  Something you could do when young that with deteriorating masking the same situation becomes a constant noise you can't pierce through and separate out. 

 

At first  blush this explanation might seem backwards.  With normal hearing our ears parse things out into maybe 30 shifting bands.  With a widened filter with age multiple bands may be activated when only one or fewer would be with better hearing.  In situations of simpler stimulus this might result in one band being activated by an out of band signal that when younger would have been ignored resulting in a subjective increase in loudness or prominence of the sound.  MP3 indeed would fit as such a stimulus.  

 

Here is another odd little thing I've run across.  Our perception changes in regard to which temporal lobe of the brain is most involved with age.  This article also examines "babble noise levels" vs age.  The crowd situation I mentioned above.  

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4348517/

 

 

[esldude]

3 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

It has been reported in the literature that ultrasonics can affect tinnitus. This is by definition a non-linear effect ie the ultrasonics are not directly heard, rather modulate the hearing system. 

 

The reason this is so important is that it provides a clear cut mechanism for the audibility of ultrasonics — not that you can hear, for example, a 30 kHz tone, rather that the full range sound of a cymbal might sound different than the 20 kHz stopband filtered recording of this cymbal. 

 

There are many people who are certain that Redbook CD contains all that we can possibly hear because of something they read about concerning the cochlea. The fact that ultrasonics modulate hearing means this belief is not grounded in certainty. 

Wasn't this only at very high sound levels where the ultrasound was making the air non linear?

[esldude]

5 hours ago, jabbr said:

There are different reports and techniques but here: http://www.hearingreview.com/2009/11/audiologist-invents-ultrasonic-tinnitus-treatment-device/  ... I don't claim to know the details but after 60 seconds of ultrasonics, the effect lasts for e.g. hours. Somehow the ultrasound is doing something to the auditory system.

That is a variation that has been investigated in a few forms since at least the 1980's.  Most use bone conduction of ultrasound.  That can resonate the inner ear stimulating the nerves there.  The brain apparently de-tunes at frequencies that are related to the resonance which can include the lower frequencies at which tinnitus is perceived.  In essence your damaged inner ear is sending signals to your brain's hearing centers that aren't there.  By resonating the nerve and structure of the inner ear it sends signals that cause the brain to attenutuate the perception of it.  Rather like how your low level hearing sensitivity is raised after being exposed to loud sounds. 

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3719163

 

Something more recent.

https://www.pnas.org/content/109/21/E1344

 

[esldude]

1 hour ago, jabbr said:

 

Ok the point is that ultrasonics modulate sound. When you remove ultrasonics, this modulation is also removed. The overall perception is altered. 

 

You are probably going to argue that we could apply an equalization filter to the audio to reproduce the perceived sound, except that this modulation differs from person to person and is not guaranteed to be constant over time. You could try to encode the modulation ... then you’d be doing something like MP3... alternatively you could simply record and distribute the full range audio including ultrasonics.

The examples of ultrasonic effects are either via bone conduction or focused ultrasonics.  Neither are comparable to just listening to wide band music via air conduction.  

 

So ultrasonics in recordings in my opinion matter somewhere from very, very little to effectively not at all.  If you think they matter, then record to 88 or 96 khz.  You are covered. This also happens to Mark Waldrep's opinion which he apparently now doubts.  Thinking maybe going beyond 48 khz is meaningless or close to it. 

[esldude]

38 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

When you say "experience", you mean "hear" right?  If not, what do you mean?

 

The question seems to be asking if there the widely recognized limit's on hearing are "broken" or "different" if you take a tone (by which I think you and Miska mean a rise and fall) and only look at a rise (Miska refers to a 'wavelet').

 

Also, @esldudeposted some measurements on some thread (can't remember which one) where he looked for a "transient" or 'rapid rise'  of the usual suspects (a drum and a brass instrument if memory serves).  He could find none if I recall correctly.

What I posted was your typical hard struck cymbals showing they didn't stress the rise time of redbook. 

 

There are some things which could stress it.  Miska shows some in his post.  But those would look to be from something at more than 60 khz.  

 

Guys, there is some frequency beyond which it simply cannot matter to us humans.  Maybe it is a little more than 20 khz for some rare situations maybe it isn't.  Even people with good high frequency hearing have a steep, steep rise in the threshold once you pass 15 khz.  The idea 44 or 48 khz sampling drastically effects playback quality is quite ridiculous I think.  If you do everything else right in the chain, 44 khz recordings vs higher rates might be just barely audible as different.  It isn't like 44 khz will sound significantly degraded and 96 khz or higher will sound wonderful.  Of all the things involved in getting a good recording the sample rate ranks way down near the bottom of such a list, and may not matter at all.  

[esldude]

7 hours ago, gmgraves said:

One thing that I don’t see mentioned in this conversation much, are the microphones themselves. While it is possible to buy microphones that have significant frequency response out beyond 30 KHz (Ray Kimber used four Japanese-made omnidirectional microphones for his “IsoMike” recordings that are said to be flat to more than 50 KHz. Wish I could remember the brand and model, but I don’t), but these mikes are eye-wateringly expensive. Such mikes are rarely, if ever, used in most professional, mainstream recording studios. 
The Neumann, AKG, Telefunken, Sennheiser, and Sony condenser mikes as well as the dynamic varieties and contact mikes favored for pop and rock recording, and likely to be found in a professional recording studio’s complement, simply have little response above 20 KHz. I’m looking at the frequency response graph for a Neumann SM-2 condenser microphone. (Second edition, “The Audio Cyclopedia” by Howard M. Tremaine, page 162) right now. After a very wide +5dB peak at 6 KHz, the frequency response falls-off like a rock above 10 KHz, and is down -5dB at 15 KHz and is off the charts at -20dB at about 20 KHz. In my experience, this is pretty typical of most condenser mikes. More modern mikes have lighter Mylar diaphragms, of course, and the peak is at a higher frequency because of it, but response still falls off rapidly above the peak. Also, one would be surprised to see how many microphones used daily in recording studios around the world are really old! Many are tubed models from the 50’s and 60’s. The most ubiquitous models are the Neumann U47 and U87, and the AKG-414. These are very old designs. While the modern iterations of these mikes have sputtered Mylar diaphragms, the older ones have diaphragms made of etched brass or similar materials.

Those microphones you are describing approximate the human hearing curve at those frequencies.  Yes, I know you would want them flat beyond the human limit ideally.  

[esldude]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

 

Have also heard good things about these guys: http://recordinghacks.com/microphones/Earthworks#:~:targetText=Microphones

I love my one and only Earthworks microphone.  If I weren't so cheap or they weren't so expensive I'd have more.  And in fact was recently trying to re-orient on microphones.  Sell some, buy some better, thin the herd (or is that heard) and up the quality. 

[esldude]

So a few of you are now touting wide bandwidth microphones and the needed system FR to capture them.  Many of the really nice recordings these days use very high quality ribbon microphones.  Ribbons are definitely not wide bandwidth, but they seem to capture something special in the sound.  Maybe it is the whole velocity vs pressure thing.