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

[gmgraves]

4 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. 

That ultrasonics modulate hearing is not grounded in certainty either. There are only two things about hi-res that are for certain: 1) that a very high sampling rate moves the Nyquist frequency further away from the audible pass band, and 2) 24 or 32 bit sampling allows for better low-volume resolution and/or more headroom. A possible third “advantage” (at least commercially) is that hi-res plays on several neurotic audiophile beliefs, among which is the old adage that “if some is good, then more must be better”. This manifests it self in Hi-res downloads costing more than CD quality downloads. There is really no reason why this should be so except that audiophiles seem willing to pay $25 per hi-res album for the same music that is available at CD resolution for often less than half that! Never let it be said that retailers would deny folks the privilege of paying all that the market will bear. 🤑

[Miska]

18 hours ago, Ralf11 said:

it may not be the impurities but the grain size for salts

 

Just dissolve it in water or food and compare.

 

I rarely have non-dissolved grains of salt left in cooked food...

[Miska]

12 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

That ultrasonics modulate hearing is not grounded in certainty either. There are only two things about hi-res that are for certain: 1) that a very high sampling rate moves the Nyquist frequency further away from the audible pass band, and 2) 24 or 32 bit sampling allows for better low-volume resolution and/or more headroom.

 

Especially with DSD, you have Nyquist at minimum of 1.4 MHz...  And don't need to worry about number of bits, but instead get even better low level linearity.

 

13 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

This manifests it self in Hi-res downloads costing more than CD quality downloads. There is really no reason why this should be so except that audiophiles seem willing to pay $25 per hi-res album for the same music that is available at CD resolution for often less than half that! Never let it be said that retailers would deny folks the privilege of paying all that the market will bear.

 

Given bitrate factor of 3.3 between 44.1/16 and 96/24, I don't consider album price of 16,50€ bad for 96/24 midres.

 

[Ralf11]

Miska - do you have a cite for the initial attack paper?

[Miska]

Just now, Ralf11 said:

Miska - do you have a cite for the initial attack paper?

 

Sorry, I don't have that kind of database in my head. And I'm not trying to be librarian either. It goes more into music research side about instruments and less to about engineering sciences though.

 

[Jud]

1 minute ago, Ralf11 said:

Miska - do you have a cite for the initial attack paper?

 

I mentioned it in another thread a while back. I'll look up the cite later, but I think it may be from the mid-60s.

[Jud]

Here it is: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3345201?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

[Steve B]

On 11/7/2019 at 7:44 PM, Archimago said:

What I noticed was that there was a distinct group of folks who seemed to hear the difference probably because they had abnormal hearing. For example, one fellow admitted that he had hearing damage from previous injury so he's missing certain frequencies and so could tell the difference between what would normally be very similar sounding material to most of us. Another fellow found that a certain signal consistently made his tinnitus worse so could differentiate them (this could have been MQA 🙂).

 

 

Could this be simulated with a hearing device?

[crenca]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

....There frequency content defines shape of the initial attack wavelet. If you remove any part of it, it breaks down more or less; the shape doesn't match anymore. IOW, it is different to have separate uncorrelated discrete tones, vs having correlated combination of harmonics that define exact shape of a waveform....

 

I always find this conversation interesting.  When you say "shape" Miska, you are saying that ultra high (out of band) frequencies effect the frequency (i.e. the "shape") of...lower (in band) frequencies no?  If you are not saying this, what are you saying exactly?  Perhaps that the same frequency can have a different "shape"?  All this begs the question if there is an fundamental aspect/nature to sound (i.e. a pressure wave) that is beyond timing and pressure...

[Jud]

51 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

I always find this conversation interesting.  When you say "shape" Miska, you are saying that ultra high (out of band) frequencies effect the frequency (i.e. the "shape") of...lower (in band) frequencies no?  If you are not saying this, what are you saying exactly?  Perhaps that the same frequency can have a different "shape"?  All this begs the question if there is an fundamental aspect/nature to sound (i.e. a pressure wave) that is beyond timing and pressure...

 

Miska I believe is talking about the steepness of the rise time of the initial pressure wave. I recall reading (somewhere) that there are different neurons involved in transient response than in response to tones, but whether this would result in response to two transient events differently, one with an initial rise time equal to that of a 20kHz wave (somewhere around 16kHz for me🙂 ), the other with a steeper rise time, I have no idea.

 

Of course there's the intermodulation effect we all know about, where ultrasonics are in that way part of our everyday sounds, but if we posit that Redbook can reproduce all the audible frequencies, that would leave any possible effect to ultrasonics on the reproduction end, which is at least controversial.

[asdf1000]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

Thus the initial attack part of the signal is very fundamental.

 

So pre-ringing is very important for this?

 

So minimum phase with no pre-ringing is bad?

[crenca]

49 minutes ago, Jud said:

Miska I believe is talking about the steepness of the rise time of the initial pressure wave....

 

This is just another way to say "frequency" is it not?  If it is not, what is it exactly and how is it fundamentally different from pressure and timing?  Does the rapid "rise time" (what most of these conversations explicitly or implicitly refer to) translated into a frequency greater than the audio band, and if so how does this interact with the part of the pressure wave that is in the audio band?  The answer is normally answered with the known "intermodulation effects" to which you refer.  If Miska (and others who make this argument - John Atkinson for example) are talking about some other kind of phenomenon, what are the specifics of this phenomenon?  What is the "science" of "rise time" exactly, and how what does this science add to what we know about frequency?  

 

[crenca]

6 minutes ago, asdf1000 said:

 

So pre-ringing is very important for this?

 

So minimum phase with no pre-ringing is bad?

 

This is a separate issue.  Like Miska notes, if you assume DSD then you don't have "ringing" but you still have this leading edge rise time phenomena allegedly...

[gmgraves]

4 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Especially with DSD, you have Nyquist at minimum of 1.4 MHz...  And don't need to worry about number of bits, but instead get even better low level linearity.

 

 

Given bitrate factor of 3.3 between 44.1/16 and 96/24, I don't consider album price of 16,50€ bad for 96/24 midres.

 

It’s fine that you don’t consider a higher album price for Hi-Res a deterrent to buying 24/96, but that’s not really here nor there. My only point was that on-line vendors who sell hi-res at a higher price than standard res do so because they can. There are really no higher costs incurred in producing hi-res content than there is for standard res (with the exception of the greater storage room required), and so, the higher price is simply a reflection of the fact that there are those who are willing to pay it, or who are convinced that it NEEDS to be that way.

It reminds me of the early days of disc brakes for cars here in the USA. Garages, in those days, charged two to three times more to do a brake-job on a disk brake car than on one with drums. From a cost standpoint, this makes no sense, of course. It’s much easier and quicker to replace the pads on a disk brake equipped car than it is to replace the shoes on a drum-brake system, and the pads were cheaper than drum shoes. But it was “new” and most car owners didn’t understand how disk brakes worked. They assumed that the technology was “exotic” and therefore simply must be more expensive, so they paid the premium and gave it no more thought. I was a student in those days and had a used MK II Sprite. I couldn’t afford to have my pads replaced, so I did ‘em myself. They were cheap, just a few dollars for the set of four, and took scant minutes to change. It was then I noticed that repair shops were ripping-off customers by charging a healthy premium to do what I had just done for practically nothing and in no time!

[Jud]

18 minutes ago, crenca said:

 

This is just another way to say "frequency" is it not?  If it is not, what is it exactly and how is it fundamentally different from pressure and timing?

 

No, of course frequency (and the harmonic portion of the tone of which it is a part) is essential. But every instrument also has its characteristic inharmonic attack. The question is whether our hearing can discriminate between an inharmonic attack where the initial pressure wave has a rise time “within the audible range,” and one where the initial pressure wave has a rise time faster than “the audible range” (quotes because we’re talking about transients rather than frequencies).

[jabbr]

6 hours ago, esldude said:

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

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.

[crenca]

19 minutes ago, Jud said:

 

No, of course frequency (and the harmonic portion of the tone of which it is a part) is essential. But every instrument also has its characteristic inharmonic attack. The question is whether our hearing can discriminate between an inharmonic attack where the initial pressure wave has a rise time “within the audible range,” and one where the initial pressure wave has a rise time faster than “the audible range” (quotes because we’re talking about transients rather than frequencies).

 

Ok thanks.  In the end this question appears to be a twist on the one that asks if utra sonics are audible in some form or another.  Is there any evidence that "transients" are a special case where ultrasonics become audible?  Also, what is special about the attack leading edge?  Why would it be here that you would need to reconstruct (in digital domain with high sample rates) because an ultra sonic rise becomes "audible" in a way where over the rest of the pressure wave it is not?

[jabbr]

5 hours ago, gmgraves said:

That ultrasonics modulate hearing is not grounded in certainty either.

 

No. First of all I think that the wavelet model that @Miska mentioned more closely responds to the cochlea that the FFT model. I'm not convinced one way or another but erring on the side of caution prefer music in as high a resolution as was recorded/available. Also design equipment to handle above 20kHz ... that isn't difficult ... high-res audio isn't gigaHz. Really I'm just saying that CD Redbook is an assumption.

[Jud]

1 hour ago, crenca said:

 

Ok thanks.  In the end this question appears to be a twist on the one that asks if utra sonics are audible in some form or another.  Is there any evidence that "transients" are a special case where ultrasonics become audible?  Also, what is special about the attack leading edge?  Why would it be here that you would need to reconstruct (in digital domain with high sample rates) because an ultra sonic rise becomes "audible" in a way where over the rest of the pressure wave it is not?

If an impulse lasts less than 1/20,000th of a second, is it inaudible?

[jabbr]

13 minutes ago, Jud said:

If an impulse lasts less than 1/20,000th of a second, is it inaudible?

 

Ha ha!!! 

[fas42]

2 hours ago, crenca said:

 

... .  Is there any evidence that "transients" are a special case where ultrasonics become audible?  Also, what is special about the attack leading edge?  Why would it be here that you would need to reconstruct (in digital domain with high sample rates) because an ultra sonic rise becomes "audible" in a way where over the rest of the pressure wave it is not?

 

What's "special about the attack" waveforms is that typical audio rigs usually don't do a very good job reproducing them - and has absolutely nothing to do with ultrasonics. I've looked at clips over the years which combine the sounds of live instrument, or noise makers, and system reproduction of the same - and what is trivially obvious, when you examine the waveforms visually, is that the 'attack' of the sound is severely compromised in the case of the replay - all in the good ol' normal FR, 😉.

 

Very esoteric answers or explanations are completely unnecessary - just get the system to behave itself, and then the need to supply "special concepts", to explain things, simply evaporates 🙂.

[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

 

[marce]

21 hours ago, mansr said:

Which brand? If it was the boring Walkers, I'm not surprised. There's hardly any correlation between the flavour name and the actual ingredients.

Can't remember, probably....

[marce]

21 hours ago, Rexp said:

So you're an expert in the taste of salt? I mean in comparison to the average Joe who could care less? 

Why don't you ever post anything constructive instead of having a sad little dig at someone... TROLL.

DID I SAY I WAS AN EXPERT IN SALT... NO

All I did was post a response to Ralf's post, of some experience I have learned from watching the numerous cookery programs I watch and experiences from experimenting with cooking, that I like doing.

[mansr]

7 hours ago, Jud said:

If an impulse lasts less than 1/20,000th of a second, is it inaudible?

The duration is unimportant. The frequency content is determined by the rise and fall times. It starts at zero and extends higher the steeper the slopes are. There will thus be some audible frequencies also in a very short pulse.