What inability? That the few people on the losing side of the argument declaring it so, doesn't make it that. I mean the proof is in what you say: none of you have bothered to go and buy the papers and read them! How little can you care about this topic when you have no motivation to go and spend the cost of one or two CDs to really understand the research?
What the what dude. You have perfectly encapsulated my entire point here. I did not buy it. I am not an audio engineer or researcher, so I trust others to do this for me. Others who HAVE READ THE ARTICLE offered you pointed, direct, and compelling contradictions, and your response is to throw logical fallacies back and never address the point. If you need help, this was a 2 part critique: 1. Data is an outlier, 2. they used a homebrew mic without specifications provided to get the outlier data. If that is true, then the paper is bunk. Period. Note the reason for this is that the data is an outlier, and when you come up with an outlier data point, then others must be able to replicate your work. This is a basic part of the scientific method. I gave you a link to a university's "How Science Works."
You could say that is not true - that they used a standard mic, that they provided the specs and others have replicated their work, etc., and that would be an actual refutation. By dodging the critique you clearly imply that it is true, and you're using obfuscation to cover up that fact. I have actually read a lot of AES papers, and they're almost universally really bad research, maybe it's all you're exposed to, and to be honest it's fine if you are. It's way more important that drugs are researched well, for example, than audio gear. But it's typically bad science. Knowing that, and hearing a legitimate critique of the paper you cite that you seem unable to debunk tells me what I need to know.
Feel free to actually address the claim now. But I am sure you'll instead point me to more biographies and tell me that I haven't read enough science and therefore am way less smart than you. Because you either are so arrogant that you don't care about properly defending your assertions, or they're indefensible.
So that it is clear what the research states, it goes thought *every bit of the chain* in both recording and playback to see what the effective dynamic range could be. It examines everything from venue, to hearing thresholds, microphones, amps, DACs, ADCs, etc., etc. And it builds on other published work. Furthermore, this research is hugely references in later papers by many others. It simply is end of the story.
That it is referenced by others is meaningless. It could be referenced in papers that refute it, it's still referenced. It is not the "End of the story," and if you think it was then you don't actually understand how science works.
As to whether I know how to interpret the data, this is my professional background:
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/a-bit-about-your-host.1906/. Bigshot walks around with an AES workshop link in his signature. Did you know I hired one of those luminaries, J-J, to be my audio architect while at Microsoft? This is what I did professionally. I have the ability to understand the paper in question. And have written articles on it that has gotten wide distribution without a single person writing in and saying, "oh, your author doesn't have the ability to understand the resaerch." Now this may sound like bragging but it is not. Your doctor is not bragging when he says that he understands research that you have not even read. He can dismiss your protest out of hand and be right.
Cool, so this is what we call appeal to authority. I've pointed this out to you time and again, yet you
still go back to it. I do not care about your resume or who you've hired. It does not give you carte blanche, does not make you right, and your
repeated falling back on it demonstrates that you can't argue on the merits. You don't use appeal to authority if you can argue the merits of something. I get it, you were a VP at Microsoft, and I am therefore to grovel at your feet. I don't care because you've repeatedly demonstrated an inability to back your claims - and when your fallacies are pointed out to you by I and others, you use the
same fallacies in your responses! I know lots of VPs, and I can tell you your titles don't impress me. Some people in authority never have to point out that they're in a position of authority.
When I was in the Army, you could tell a Ranger from a Green Beret, the Ranger always told you how bad and tough he was. The Green Beret just was. Never had to say it.
As to what you all are saying, I have heard it countless times. I have debated them at length on other forums with people taking your positions but frankly, doing a lot more research than you all that are doing by protesting. What is in the OP is one of the most frequent myths spread on forums about dynamic range of our hearing and what is recorded in content. It is time to stop it and not use debating tactics of "oh, don't you want our respect" or "you don't get it." I get it and am not looking for the respect from people who don't bother spending a few bucks learning about audio science as published in real world and not talking points in forums. Yes the "logic" of it makes lay sense. It even makes semi-technical sense. That is why people run with it without doing any research of their own. But ultimately it is just gut feeling stuff that is not correct.
What
I am saying is not what others are saying. What
I am saying is that you keep using logical fallacies in all of your posts, which makes them unconvincing. I come to this and other forums to learn, mainly, because this is not the area where I am expert. I am trying to point out to you that your posts are unconvincing to someone like me because they're riddled with straw men, appeals to authority, and other logical fallacies.
If you want me to make a point regarding audio, it's that there is plenty of dynamic range in CD's. I know this because I have a CD that, if I am listening to it at normal listening volumes, there is a section where suddenly a horn plays at such a volume that it causes me physical pain. Again, this is contained within the 16-bits of a CD. If that CD can fit within its dynamic range very quiet sounds, and also at the same volume on my amplifier it can
hurt my ears then why would I need more? To hurt my ears more?
Instead of responding to this with your typical explanations of why I must take everything you say at face value because of who you are rather than the merits of your argument, or to promote my purchasing of papers for no other purposes than an internet argument, why don't you explain to me why I am mistaken. Why I need more bits than all the way up to physical pain from all the way down to extremely quite sections also contained on that CD. If you need to know what I am talking about, the one I always think of is on
Ella and Louis, the tack is
Isn't This a Lovely Day, around 4:15. I love this album and am so used to this part that I don't have to look up from my work, I instinctually reach over and turn down the volume as I approach this point in the song.
Yes, we can push fidelity of audio way, way down. An MP3 at 128 kbps will be transparent to vast majority of public and many audiophiles for that matter. Better yet, at highest level, a lossy codec can fool even the best of the audiophiles. So the point you are trying to make is not in dispute in that sense.
What you are not considering is what I have said repeatedly: a channel needs to be transparent for all people and all content. That is my standard of reference. It is something we can achieve today. It takes content that is not butchered and hardware implementations that are right.
While you may not be able to hear lossy codec degradations a few of us can. I have post countless blind listening test showing this. I have also done it with high-res vs CD rate. So when you walk around and say things like the OP, you better indicate that your paper napkin math excludes critical listeners, some content and some equipment. In that case, you better say lossy compression is good enough, because that would be true of that too.
In summary, I am very aware of your position and knowledge. What you are not aware of is my position and knowledge. If you want to get close to what I know, you need to start reading and understanding incredible body of research that is published that never makes it to forums.
You have clearly demonstrated that both you don't know my position and knowledge, and that you have a wildly inflated sense of your own. For starters you seemed to have jumped from the topic, telling me that the OP is wrong (the OP being about 24-bit music, and you saying that the OP is a frequently stated myth) and now you're telling me about lossy compression, which I never mentioned once in this thread. Maybe you read me talking about the bit-rate of the Opus files on my phone - but I never brought that up to you, you're bringing that up now. As an aside, I'd love to see you in a double blind test of Opus vs your format of choice where there was an actual impartial referee to keep you honest.
For my own purposes, I don't care about ABX ability. I care about music and I find the topics here interesting - mainly because I was once duped by drivel when I knew even less than I do now about music formats - and I'm a bit of a gear head. I never brought this up, you've put those words in my mouth. All I did was to point out to you that you obfuscate every single argument made against your own. I suspect that is intentional.