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

[Jud]

49 minutes ago, mansr said:

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.

Right. So the question is, granting there is an upper frequency limit to human hearing of tones, (for younger women perhaps near 20k, for me around 16k a couple of years ago if the online test I did at that time is to be trusted), do we experience a transient that includes some inaudible frequencies any differently than a transient containing all the same audible frequencies?

[jabbr]

9 hours ago, esldude said:

By resonating the nerve and structure of the inner ear it sends signals that cause the brain to attenutuate the perception of it. 

 

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.

[crenca]

5 hours ago, Jud said:

So the question is, granting there is an upper frequency limit to human hearing of tones...do we experience a transient that includes some inaudible frequencies any differently than a transient containing all the same audible frequencies?

 

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.

[Miska]

3 minutes ago, crenca said:

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.

 

I think this counts as fairly rapid rise:

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

 

I did bunch of my own recordings with various instruments and got pretty fast responses also for example from soprano glockenspiel.

 

To correctly reconstruct the exact spike waveform shape, you need a lot of high frequency harmonics.

 

For these reasons I've also started again to measure TIM distortion from playback gear using the standard method. Too bad it seems to have been forgotten for some decades.

[Jud]

 

Just now, 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.

 

Hear, yes. To be clear, what I'm talking about is not hearing ultrasonics. It's whether anything in the timing (the faster rise time) of a mixed-frequency transient impulse with ultrasonics, as opposed to a mixed-frequency transient impulse without ultrasonics, would alter our perception of the portion we *can* hear. So it has to do with whether we can perceive those (extremely slight) timing differences; which may get into whether different neurons are involved in assessing the sharpness of transients vs. ascertaining pitch of tones.

[Jud]

15 minutes ago, Jud said:

which may get into whether different neurons are involved in assessing the sharpness of transients vs. ascertaining pitch of tones.

 

By the way: I'm aware of research showing extreme neuronal specialization with regard to vision: not just some neurons specialized for color and others for motion, but down to the level of some neurons being stimulated by motion in a horizontal plane, others in a vertical plane; others by stationary objects in the visual field lying mainly in the horizontal plane, yet others by stationary objects lying mainly in the vertical plane.

 

I don't know if there are indications one way or the other regarding specialization or lack thereof of neurons involved in processing auditory stimuli. If anyone knows of good papers in peer-reviewed journals, references would be appreciated.

[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.  

[Ralf11]

Absolutely correct, esldude.  But I am with Jabbr as to keeping HiRes as HiRes - we don't know where that frequency is exactly, and it is prudent to maintain anything that might be there assuming no over-weaning costs or trouble to do so.

 

And I am keeping my HiRes salt too!  If nothing else, it can be sprinkled on trolls.

[Miska]

48 minutes ago, esldude said:

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.  

 

Just use so high sampling rate and bit depth that you have the analog noise floor dominating everywhere and that all harmonics captured by the microphones have long disappeared into the noise floor. And you are safe. And absolutely no reason not to do so.

 

Or use DSD and you don't need any brickwalls anywhere...

 

[jabbr]

27 minutes ago, Jud said:

By the way: I'm aware of research showing extreme neuronal specialization with regard to vision: not just some neurons specialized for color and others for motion, but down to the level of some neurons being stimulated by motion in a horizontal plane, others in a vertical plane; others by stationary objects in the visual field lying mainly in the horizontal plane, yet others by stationary objects lying mainly in the vertical plane.

There is the idea of the proverbial “grandmother” neuron which fires when you see your grandmother. The existence of face recognition neurons in the IT cortex is very well known. The essay “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” was written about a person who had a stroke in this area.

[gmgraves]

18 hours ago, jabbr said:

 

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.

I have been capturing in DSD for over a decade, now, for that very reason. I rarely listen in DSD except on my computer. Ironically, except for my Oppo 205 (the analog output of which is not connected to my amplifier), my main system’s DACs do not support it. No biggie though; If I make copies for anyone (usually the group members, or the orchestra association for the use of the conductor as a “study CD”), I give them Redbook transfers from the master. I also make hi-res LPCM transfers for myself (or my clients, if they wish) which I copy to my NAS for listening on my main system.

[Rt66indierock]

1 hour ago, Miska said:

 

Just use so high sampling rate and bit depth that you have the analog noise floor dominating everywhere and that all harmonics captured by the microphones have long disappeared into the noise floor. And you are safe. And absolutely no reason not to do so.

 

Or use DSD and you don't need any brickwalls anywhere...

 

 

We've had high resolution for a couple of decades and nobody cares at the consumer level. And if you take out Japan does anyone care about DSD? 

 

The whole reason for Mark's test is he really believed high resolution sounded better. Then he met me. 

[gmgraves]

2 hours ago, esldude said:

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.  

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.

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, Rt66indierock said:

We've had high resolution for a couple of decades and nobody cares at the consumer level. And if you take out Japan does anyone care about DSD? 

 

 Do you bother to look at other areas of this forum ? 

There are numerous USA and elsewhere members that love their DSD.

[Miska]

49 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

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.

 

Like Sennheiser MKH-8020 for example that goes to 60 kHz? Or the DPA microphones like 4006 and especially 4007 that go to 40+ kHz? Or Sanken CO-100K that goes to 100 kHz, used for example by Five Four?

 

What I've looked, for example in recordings made by 2L, content goes up to about 60 kHz. So you need at least 120 kHz sampling rate for those.

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, Rt66indierock said:

We've had high resolution for a couple of decades and nobody cares at the consumer level. And if you take out Japan does anyone care about DSD? 

 

Yes, quite a lot of people care about hires (PCM and DSD). All the time new material coming, to nativedsd.com, highresaudio.com and even HDtracks. Nowadays more are more at DSD256 rates.

 

I have two DSD256 capable AD/DA converters (RME ADI-2 Pro) and my own recording software. But of course many of the recordings are made using Merging, TASCAM, Korg or Mytek hardware and edited in Pyramix or Sonoma. Now Merging has three DSD256 capable recording devices (Horus, Hapi and Anubis). All those can do also playback, in addition to their NADAC.

 

[Miska]

2 hours ago, gmgraves said:

I have been capturing in DSD for over a decade, now, for that very reason. I rarely listen in DSD except on my computer. Ironically, except for my Oppo 205 (the analog output of which is not connected to my amplifier), my main system’s DACs do not support it. No biggie though; If I make copies for anyone (usually the group members, or the orchestra association for the use of the conductor as a “study CD”), I give them Redbook transfers from the master. I also make hi-res LPCM transfers for myself (or my clients, if they wish) which I copy to my NAS for listening on my main system.

 

I think I have only three DACs that don't support DSD. All the rest do support DSD, even up to DSD1024...

 

When I buy content I prefer to buy it in the original recording format, not some conversion.

 

I very rarely send LPCM to a DAC though.

 

[Rt66indierock]

25 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 Do you bother to look at other areas of this forum ? 

There are numerous USA and elsewhere members that love their DSD.

 

They don't add up to anything but a rounding error in the market.

[sandyk]

2 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

 

They don't add up to anything but a rounding error in the market.

 

 Sad, but true.

[Rt66indierock]

5 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Yes, quite a lot of people care about hires (PCM and DSD). All the time new material coming, to nativedsd.com, highresaudio.com and even HDtracks. Nowadays more are more at DSD256 rates. 

 

I have two DSD256 capable AD/DA converters (RME ADI-2 Pro) and my own recording software. But of course many of the recordings are made using Merging, TASCAM, Korg or Mytek hardware and edited in Pyramix or Sonoma. Now Merging has three DSD256 capable recording devices (Horus, Hapi and Anubis). All those can do also playback, in addition to their NADAC.

 

 

NativeDSD, Highresaudio and HDTracks are three of the 10 sites I looked at to make the case nobody cares.

 

In my case I use DSD as a sound effect on a few harmonicas and some older resonator guitars. I like to fiddle with things, some say too much.

[Miska]

6 minutes ago, Rt66indierock said:

They don't add up to anything but a rounding error in the market.

 

I only care that music important for me is available in hires. That ranges from Daft Punk to David Gilmour and Mark Knopfler, and to classical music and blues/jazz. I'm not even rounding error as customer for a record company, so I care as much about their market as they care about me.

 

[gmgraves]

12 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Like Sennheiser MKH-8020 for example that goes to 60 kHz? Or the DPA microphones like 4006 and especially 4007 that go to 40+ kHz? Or Sanken CO-100K that goes to 100 kHz, used for example by Five Four?

 

What I've looked, for example in recordings made by 2L, content goes up to about 60 kHz. So you need at least 120 kHz sampling rate for those.

 

Those are the ones, alright! I was unaware of the Sennheiser, but the DPA and the Sanken mics I was aware of!

2L is a Swedish audiophile label, and I have a couple of their Blu-Ray releases. If you want to capture the 60 KHz on them, you do definitely need at least a 120 KHz sampling rate (likely either 176.4 or 192 KHz), but I seriously question why. BTW, I doubt seriously (in fact , I know) that you won’t find the mikes you just mentioned being used on a regular basis at MCA, Warner, EMI, TelDec, or DGG!

[Miska]

13 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

2L is a Swedish audiophile label, and I have a couple of their Blu-Ray releases. If you want to capture the 60 KHz on them, you do definitely need at least a 120 KHz sampling rate (likely either 176.4 or 192 KHz), but I seriously question why. BTW, I doubt seriously (in fact , I know) that you won’t find the mikes you just mentioned being used on a regular basis at MCA, Warner, EMI, TelDec, or DGG!

 

I know both especially the DPA but also the Sennheisers being used for lot of classical recordings by different labels. Especially if you look at 5.1 channel Decca-trees or similar suspended from concert hall ceilings. Like here in Helsinki. DPA used to have 130V phantom versions of 4006 etc, and especially those are used in high quality recordings. Many still have the original versions under B&K brand, before DPA split.

 

When I'm looking at for example HiFi-News reviews of recent hires recordings, many of the 96k tracks, or even most, have content reaching the 48k Nyquist.

 

If someone is making hires releases, it only makes sense to invest into hires capable microphones as well.

 

P.S. 2L is Norwegian, not Swedish...

 

[gmgraves]

12 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

I think I have only three DACs that don't support DSD. All the rest do support DSD, even up to DSD1024...

 

When I buy content I prefer to buy it in the original recording format, not some conversion.

 

I very rarely send LPCM to a DAC though.

 

 My DAC in my main system is a Yiggdrasil, it doesn’t do DSD. Like I said, while my    Oppo UDP-205 with it’s high-end ESS SabreDACs, does do DSD (well, it does SACD, anyway. I’ve never tried it for DSD files), I don’t have the audio output of the Oppo connected to my amplifier system. Right now, I am using an AudioQuest Cobalt in my office system, AFAICS, it does not support DSD, but the Chord Quetest that I have on loan does, and I have used it to listen to my DSD master files. Without that, I have to rely on my Kong MR-2000s or MR-1 to play them back!