[dalethorn]

 
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Responses in bold.  This just feels like an over the top troll at this point.
 
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There's a fascinating article on the Web about how to spread disinformation when your position on an issue is threatened.  Please stop the FUD, stop the dithering, stop the whining.

 

 

[dalethorn]

 
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Well maybe you're already gone, but whether or not its worth it to continue the conversation depends on what your goals are.  If your goal is to convince, within this single thread, dalethorn and others who are firmly on his side that they are wrong then I agree that it is useless to continue.  No single argument is likely to give someone a sudden epiphany and change their mind.  Its a more gradual process.
 
If your goal is to convince people who are on the fence or don't know anything about the subject then its worth it to continue.  That's what I'm trying to do here.  I can either convince them with evidence and logical arguments or by simply making a fool of the opposition.

Wrong again.  Our duty here is not to convince.  It's to provide information so people can do their own further investigations themselves.  And make up their own minds.
 

 

[Shike]

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. . . or by simply making a fool of the opposition.

Hey, you can't take all the credit . . .
 
He's doing a lot of the legwork for that himself.
 

 

[haloxt]

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Lol apple pushing 24bit. They can use that to push sales of new ipods, since current ipods play 16bit. I don't think I'd listen to 24bit music on an ipod, but with an ipod dock, a nice option.

Now all we have to do is wait for Apple's music distribution software to say "We guarantee that these are copies of the original 24-bit masters, and are not upsampled versions of 16-bit downsamples." What do you think? Trust them?

Of course I don't trust them I'm as paranoid as you! I would be using rockbox of course. I agree with you, 16 vs 24 bit is a question of whether or not 16 bit is "good enough". Nothing says 16 bit is perfect, but neither has experiments to date suggest it is difficult, and some say impossible, to differentiate between 16 and 24. But they also said it was impossible to land a man on the moon. I propose apple spend their research money and a decade to find out before they release 24 bit.

 

[dalethorn]

 
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Of course I don't trust them I'm as paranoid as you! I would be using rockbox of course. I agree with you, 16 vs 24 bit is a question of whether or not 16 bit is "good enough". Nothing says 16 bit is perfect, but neither has experiments to date suggest it is difficult, and some say impossible, to differentiate between 16 and 24. But they also said it was impossible to land a man on the moon. I propose apple spend their research money and a decade to find out before they release 24 bit.

It would be interesting to read an explicit proposal by Apple of exactly what they would be doing.  Getting the "real genuine" 24-bit originals and releasing those, or maybe something a little different.
 

 

[Shike]

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Of course I don't trust them I'm as paranoid as you! I would be using rockbox of course. I agree with you, 16 vs 24 bit is a question of whether or not 16 bit is "good enough". Nothing says 16 bit is perfect, but neither has experiments to date suggest it is difficult, and some say impossible, to differentiate between 16 and 24. But they also said it was impossible to land a man on the moon. I propose apple spend their research money and a decade to find out before they release 24 bit.

They could release it next month for all I care if there was at least some statistically relevant evidence that shows there is indeed an audible difference.  Like Uncle Erik has mentioned before, if there were proof for cables almost any skeptic here would jump on board.  I imagine the same for 24 bit.
 
Instead I rather worry about things we know is proven audible, like the crappy mastering jobs that leaves us without dynamics.

 

[dalethorn]

 
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. . . or by simply making a fool of the opposition.

Hey, you can't take all the credit . . .
 
He's doing a lot of the legwork for that himself.
 

You can't prove anything to anyone here, and if you "convince" someone that there's no difference between 16 and 24 bits, I don't have to tell anyone of the absurdity of that. do I?  So if y'all are really sincere, just admit that this is not the place for proof or convincing.  Those things belong in religious or political arenas.  In this forum we should merely exchange information and let people make up their own minds.

 

 

[dalethorn]

 
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Of course I don't trust them I'm as paranoid as you! I would be using rockbox of course. I agree with you, 16 vs 24 bit is a question of whether or not 16 bit is "good enough". Nothing says 16 bit is perfect, but neither has experiments to date suggest it is difficult, and some say impossible, to differentiate between 16 and 24. But they also said it was impossible to land a man on the moon. I propose apple spend their research money and a decade to find out before they release 24 bit.

They could release it next month for all I care if there was at least some statistically relevant evidence that shows there is indeed an audible difference.  Like Uncle Erik has mentioned before, if there were proof for cables almost any skeptic here would jump on board.  I imagine the same for 24 bit.
 
Instead I rather worry about things we know is proven audible, like the crappy mastering jobs that leaves us without dynamics.

I hooked up different cables to loudspeakers a few years ago and demonstrated to my grandmother (who is not an audiophile) the enormous differences.  Those differences, from what I remember in technical articles, had mainly to do with different capacitance in the cables.  Electronics are very complex, even to the cables and interfaces between different equipment.  Headphones, especially at the electronic level, are hugely complex.  It's easy to be dismissive of small differences in complex gear, but some people are concerned, and they want their concerns to be treaded respectfully without dismissiveness and contempt.

 

[Shike]

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You can't prove anything to anyone here, and if you "convince" someone that there's no difference between 16 and 24 bits, I don't have to tell anyone of the absurdity of that. do I?  So if y'all are really sincere, just admit that this is not the place for proof or convincing.  Those things belong in religious or political arenas.  In this forum we should merely exchange information and let people make up their own minds.

I didn't say there was no difference did I?  I have said however there's no audible difference backed with non-anecdotal evidence discovered to date (which has held water this whole debate mind you).
 
"just admit that this is not the place for proof or convincing"
 
Err, actually this IS the place for proof.  It tends to require it (sub-forum is sound science you see?).  Convincing is debatable, if that's maverickronin's personal goal that's up to him to decide.  My goal is that people make their decisions off of all evidence presented and not marketing and anecdotes from people that don't take the effort to provide true results of testing.  Once again, if you came with a paper from AES that showed even a handful of people producing positive results in a DBT for 24 bit vs. 16 I would welcome it with open arms.  We don't have that though.
 
EDIT:
 

I hooked up different cables to loudspeakers a few years ago and demonstrated to my grandmother (who is not an audiophile) the enormous differences. Those differences, from what I remember in technical articles, had mainly to do with different capacitance in the cables. Electronics are very complex, even to the cables and interfaces between different equipment. Headphones, especially at the electronic level, are hugely complex. It's easy to be dismissive of small differences in complex gear, but some people are concerned, and they want their concerns to be treaded respectfully without dismissiveness and contempt.

 
 
You're free to take this to one of the various cable debate threads.  If she knew you changed the cable and gave her any impression of which should sound better (even by seeing or feeling them) then the sample pool has been tainted.  It NEEDS to be a level matched DBT to avoid any possible auto-suggestion, and even with a DBT the tester needs to avoid any emotion in their voice or speaking unnecessarily or it could scew results again anyway.
 
The capacitance, resistance, and frequency response of cables measured have shown no measurable impact to date as far as audibility in concerned except for severely long runs attached to a turntable cartridge.  This has been shown in various DBTs to date.  The only time contempt is shown or claims dismissed is when we're expected to believe claims just because they said so, even if they didn't follow any widely accepted testing protocol.

 

[haloxt]

edit in my last post: meant to say experiments to date suggest it is difficult* or maybe impossible.
 
dalethorn, such experiments as you did with your grandmother are good to do, but unless we can prevent false positives, well, there's a chance of false positives . There are certainly a lot of audiophiles who think there's a difference in 16 vs 24 or in cables, and they're entitled to that opinion, but until they rule out all false positives in a test they have to objectively admit the POSSIBILITY that they may be wrong. Skeptics ought to admit the possibility that after a decade of research apple may prove a difference. If you ask the question, But how can EVERY cable believer be wrong? Because no subjective listening test has yet been published that rules out the possibility of false positives. I think this is important to keep in mind, because trying to argue against the need for DBT using tests like you did with your grandmother that invite false positives is just going to attract more ire from the skeptics. I prefer to argue against the need for DBT with the sin of sloth .

 

[Satellite_6]

You seem like anything but a skeptic. . .
 
So the argument is that the process of converting 24 -> 16 causes issues. Can someone explain this to me in detail (just trying to learn). downsampling is a lossless process though right, so whats the point of having 96khz or whatever?

 

[dalethorn]

 
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edit in my last post: meant to say experiments to date suggest it is difficult* or maybe impossible.
 
dalethorn, such experiments as you did with your grandmother are good to do, but unless we can prevent false positives, well, there's a chance of false positives . There are certainly a lot of audiophiles who think there's a difference in 16 vs 24 or in cables, and they're entitled to that opinion, but until they rule out all false positives in a test they have to objectively admit the POSSIBILITY that they may be wrong. Skeptics ought to admit the possibility that after a decade of research apple may prove a difference. If you ask the question, But how can EVERY cable believer be wrong? Because no subjective listening test has yet been published that rules out the possibility of false positives. I think this is important to keep in mind, because trying to argue against the need for DBT using tests like you did with your grandmother that invite false positives is just going to attract more ire from the skeptics. I prefer to argue against the need for DBT with the sin of sloth .

The experiment had only one premise and one conclusion.  The premise was that there was an audible difference.  The conclusion was to get some background on what might be causing that difference.  The difference was not subtle, like the CD -vs- 24-bit thing.  It was huge.

 

 

[pocketrocket]

I wouldn't complain getting movies in 2K or even 4K format with better bit depth either, although the difference in consumer displays and projectors today wouldn't be immense if visible at all. Mass storage is so cheap nowadays I wouldn't mind storing my lossless music in 24-bit, but I'd also like to see a 96KHz or even 192KHz sample rate everywhere, on recordings, YouTube, Spotify, iTunes etc. No matter do I benefit from it because my DAC, amp or speakers/headphones aren't up to par, it'd be cool seeing that all the way from the mastering to the distribution of the music they'd cater a bit to the hi-fi people too.

Not that I'd be one or that I'd ever be able to hear a difference, I'm too poor to be "an audiophile", I consider myself not even an enthusiast, maybe a hobbyist. But the tech and capability is here, why not use it? Well for one it'd render older CD players etc. useless, and of course it's a bit of a drag if they want people to pay up for such luxuries though. I get my music in CD's anyway.

Maybe when people have moved on completely to modern formats, players etc?

 

[Satellite_6]

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The experiment had only one premise and one conclusion.  The premise was that there was an audible difference.  The conclusion was to get some background on what might be causing that difference.  The difference was not subtle, like the CD -vs- 24-bit thing.  It was huge.

 

You should be able to do an ABX then, and that would go a long way to convincing non-believers. But others in this thread claim that no successful ABX has ever been done.
 

 

[Shike]

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The experiment had only one premise and one conclusion.  The premise was that there was an audible difference.  The conclusion was to get some background on what might be causing that difference.  The difference was not subtle, like the CD -vs- 24-bit thing.  It was huge.

See here's the problem: every cable believe says that.  However when proper testing methodology is followed these differences vanish in almost all tests to date (the phono cart being the one case where it hasn't).  This is why testing methods are extremely important, they can eliminate potential impression bias either from listening to someone else or seeing/feeling/knowing what cable is used (which also creates bias).
 
I wonder if Uncle Erik still plans on doing his DBT test at Can Jam (or whichever he's planning on heading to) with the brined/paper clip cables still.