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

[sandyk]

29 minutes ago, marce said:

This couldn't be two identical files are different, could it...

As the files are identical if you sent them me and I renamed them how would you tell which is which... Want to try it.

I have no interest in playing your stupid games . 

As far as I am concerned I have done far more than enough in the last >10 years already.

 Neither are my reports any different to those from several HiFi reviewers around the same time.

The only thing different is that I have dared to mention the "sacred cow" called checksums, and had a series of 6 correctly performed DBT sessions performed on the .wav files I supplied to verify my results .

 I am damn sure that these reviewers made sure that their CDs were accurately ripped too.

BTW, my previous skirmishes with you in DIY Audio would have pre-dated this magazine article.

 

Click on the image several times for a larger image.

[marce]

It was a serious question and would be a valid test.

As to doing something, present the same belief with no backing evidence, you could have got a degree in electronics in less time and solved all our audio issues.

As for the joke advert from Hi-Fi Choice, April 2009, probably the first...

Any more humorous articles to back you up or maybe a bit of name dropping... Martin hasn't appeared for a while!

[sandyk]

7 minutes ago, marce said:

It was a serious question and would be a valid test.

As to doing something, present the same belief with no backing evidence, you could have got a degree in electronics in less time and solved all our audio issues.

As for the joke advert from Hi-Fi Choice, April 2009, probably the first...

Any more humorous articles to back you up or maybe a bit of name dropping... Martin hasn't appeared for a while!

 

 Anything that challenges your firmly entrenched beliefs is a joke to you. Neither was the attached a joke. It was a mini review of the Naim Uniti Serve.

 

[marce]

48 minutes ago, sandyk said:

 

 Anything that challenges your firmly entrenched beliefs is a joke to you. 

 

Pathetic reply, we all have to abide by the same laws of physics, you call on them when they support your viewpoint and call them textbook learning, entrenched beliefs etc. when there is no support for your viewpoint.

I am open to new evidence, unlike you, despite thousands of EE's and other technical people disagreeing with your viewpoint on ripped files you still keep harping on about it, yet present no evidence or and theories about how it can happen.

I've learned and changed my views over the years...

Why not start your own thread instead of bringing it up on every thread you can, endlessly.

[audiobomber]

This is the message I sent to Alex before I knew which file was which:

I found Y had more relaxed and natural sounding highs with more depth/ambience. If that wasn't the true hi-rez file, I will be shocked and dismayed.

[sandyk]

1 hour ago, audiobomber said:

This is the message I sent to Alex before I knew which file was which:

I found Y had more relaxed and natural sounding highs with more depth/ambience. If that wasn't the true hi-rez file, I will be shocked and dismayed.

 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.

[Ralf11]

8 hours ago, marce said:

This couldn't be two identical files are different, could it...

As the files are identical if you sent them me and I renamed them how would you tell which is which... Want to try it.

 

Not a valid test, as the renaming would cause bit infection in the file.  It's like activating a dormant virus in the human body...

 

Anything that challenges science is a firmly entrenched belief to some people....

[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.  

[kumakuma]

7 minutes ago, esldude said:

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.  

 

This is only one of the issues with his "methodology".

[sandyk]

2 hours ago, esldude said:

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.  

 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.

 

[robocop]

I've only felt new recordings in 24bit and beyond really show the improvement over 16/44. I have a large number of so called remastered 24 bit and these really are a mixed bag some better and some not.

 

Giles Martin's Abbey road is a marked improvement over the vinyl, cd and remastered CD. This alone means its well worthwhile pushing for 24 bit recordings.

 

I do notice more and more new recordings are now being done at least with 24/48 if not 96. Having participated in Mark's last blind test where it was obvious many could not tell the difference between music files.  This is doomed to be repeated and is only happening within a small community of HiFi followers.

 

Even if 16/44 was realised to its full potential for all the right reasons 24 is a worthwhile quest and improvement in my view. 

 

Robert

[fas42]

Recording using 24 bit makes sense - releasing the finished product in more than 16 bits makes zero sense, unless you like spending money for the sake of extra bandwidth, and storage.

 

I did listening tests 30 years ago, which ably demonstrated that 16 bits is way good enough - if 24 bits sounds better, then it's because the particular playback chain has been 'tuned' to work better with that format - and no other reason.

[gmgraves]

18 minutes ago, fas42 said:

Recording using 24 bit makes sense - releasing the finished product in more than 16 bits makes zero sense, unless you like spending money for the sake of extra bandwidth, and storage.

 

I did listening tests 30 years ago, which ably demonstrated that 16 bits is way good enough - if 24 bits sounds better, then it's because the particular playback chain has been 'tuned' to work better with that format - and no other reason.

You might be very right there, Frank. In my considerable experience, the way that a recording is captured and processed on it’s way to “market” seems to influence the final SQ a lot more than do either bit-depth or sample rate.

However, I can’t say the same about your second statement. I mean how the heck does one “tune” a system to favor High-Res recordings over say, Redbook?

 

[kumakuma]

26 minutes ago, fas42 said:

I did listening tests 30 years ago, which ably demonstrated that 16 bits is way good enough - if 24 bits sounds better, then it's because the particular playback chain has been 'tuned' to work better with that format - and no other reason.

 

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

[kumakuma]

1 hour 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.

 

 

Nice deflection but this has nothing at all to do with what we are talking about (the issues with your test methodology).

[fas42]

11 minutes ago, gmgraves said:

 

However, I can’t say the same about your second statement. I mean how the heck does one “tune” a system to favor High-Res recordings over say, Redbook?

 

 

Usually by the choice of DAC. Some chips, and the support circuitry will do an intrinsically better job of of getting the conversion from digital to analogue right - people mention the requirements of output filtering of the analogue being tougher to make work as well as it should, for the CD format; Hi-Res makes that job easier - so components quite often sound better playing the higher resolution: because the designers could play with more design options, while still meeting the technical requirements.

[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.  

[fas42]

16 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

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

 

This was purely assessing the 16 bit format ... listen to the same, classical, piece, reduced digitally by 20dB in volume in stages - effectively using less bits at each point - what's lost? Even when only 6 bits are active, in the encoding of the music, the sense of the piece is fully there - with a significant level of digital 'noise' in the quiet bits. Which could only be heard with the gain set to maximum, and my ears pressed hard against the speaker driver.

 

This told me that the format had no problem 'capturing' everything that mattered.

[kumakuma]

10 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

This was purely assessing the 16 bit format ... listen to the same, classical, piece, reduced digitally by 20dB in volume in stages - effectively using less bits at each point - what's lost? Even when only 6 bits are active, in the encoding of the music, the sense of the piece is fully there - with a significant level of digital 'noise' in the quiet bits. Which could only be heard with the gain set to maximum, and my ears pressed hard against the speaker driver.

 

This told me that the format had no problem 'capturing' everything that mattered.

 

In other words, you've done none of the testing discussed in this thread.

[gmgraves]

24 minutes ago, fas42 said:

 

Usually by the choice of DAC. Some chips, and the support circuitry will do an intrinsically better job of of getting the conversion from digital to analogue right - people mention the requirements of output filtering of the analogue being tougher to make work as well as it should, for the CD format; Hi-Res makes that job easier - so components quite often sound better playing the higher resolution: because the designers could play with more design options, while still meeting the technical requirements.

I don’t think the choice of DAC will make 24-bit sound better than Redbook through the same DAC and audio circuitry unless the 24-bit recording in question, actually sounds better than the Redbook recording to which it is being compared. I think your logic is faulty here.

[Rexp]

1 hour ago, robocop said:

I've only felt new recordings in 24bit and beyond really show the improvement over 16/44. I have a large number of so called remastered 24 bit and these really are a mixed bag some better and some not.

 

Giles Martin's Abbey road is a marked improvement over the vinyl, cd and remastered CD. This alone means its well worthwhile pushing for 24 bit recordings.

 

I do notice more and more new recordings are now being done at least with 24/48 if not 96. Having participated in Mark's last blind test where it was obvious many could not tell the difference between music files.  This is doomed to be repeated and is only happening within a small community of HiFi followers.

 

Even if 16/44 was realised to its full potential for all the right reasons 24 is a worthwhile quest and improvement in my view. 

 

Robert

Did you compare the 24/96 Abbey road to the exact same recording downconverted to 16/44?

[fas42]

35 minutes ago, kumakuma said:

 

In other words, you've done none of the testing discussed in this thread.

 

Ahh, you're into the more, the better syndrome ... silly man - why are you wasting your time with 24 bits; 32 bits is where the action is - and 64 bit audio recordings are just around the corner, I hear - these must be astronomically good!

 

You see, you take a bit away from something - and see if it makes a difference ... if it doesn't, then what you have is adequate. Or is ego engineering the way to go?

[The Computer Audiophile]

3 hours ago, sandyk said:

note also that Kumakuma doesn't appear to have enough confidence in his own

Alex - This is a warning. Stop the personal attacks. 

[sandyk]

47 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Alex - This is a warning. Stop the personal attacks. 

 

So  it's OK. for both Kumakuma and Ralf11 to continually snipe at me including telling me to cut back on the medication and worse ?