Audiophile objections to blind testing - an attempt from a layman

Jan 5, 2025 at 7:33 PM Post #106 of 148
Basically stating I passed a blind test with statistical significance.
Exactly, you claimed to be able to pass a blind test of 16bit vs 24bit with statistical significance and now you’re admitting that claim, when previously you stated you made no claim! What does that make you?
And nowhere was it stated it was “Relatively easy”, as you claimed I said.
You stated you passed 3 times, which implies it was “relatively easy” and I did not claim I was directly quoting you, I specifically stated I was paraphrasing!
Do you see a claim of fact here?
Hang on, are you now admitting that you “stating I passed a blind test with statistical significance” is not a claim of fact, that factually it never happened and you just made it up? Maybe it was only a passing thought or a personal opinion, or maybe you were just “sharing your impression” that you passed with statistical significance, rather than a fact? Are you arguing against yourself again? Is it OK if I just sit back and lol?

G
 
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Jan 5, 2025 at 8:36 PM Post #107 of 148
Exactly, you claimed to be able to pass a blind test of 16bit vs 24bit with statistical significance and now you’re admitting that claim, when previously you stated you made no claim! What does that make you?

You stated you passed 3 times, which implies it was “relatively easy” and I did not claim I was directly quoting you, I specifically stated I was paraphrasing!

Hang on, are you now admitting that you “stating I passed a blind test with statistical significance” is not a claim of fact, that factually it never happened and you just made it up? Maybe it was only a passing thought or a personal opinion, or maybe you were just “sharing your impression” that you passed with statistical significance, rather than a fact? Are you arguing against yourself again? Is it OK if I just sit back and lol?

G

My head hurts…
 
Jan 7, 2025 at 12:58 PM Post #109 of 148
You are wrong and people already tried to explain why a higher bit depth won't yield a "more accurate" recording after a certain point.
I will link this one last time although you always ignored it in the past. Maybe read and digest it this time:

At least pretend you try to understand digital audio before you keep posting your misconceptions in this forum. I'm not expecting you to understand bit depth, quantization error, dither and how they relate to each other (as you never did or made an effort to do so), so I will give you one last example that you might be able to grasp before I accept that some people just never learn.

You have a device that can be set to output any voltage between 0 and 9 with perfect accuracy. This device is completely ideal, if you set it to output 5V, it will generate exactly that, not something between 4.9V and 5.1V. It's 5.000... volts to infinity and beyond (like a perfect microphone combined with a perfect sound source).

You also have an ideal multimeter not bound by physics that can measure voltage perfectly. However, it still have to show the measured voltage in a typical 8 segment LCD display, effectively quantizing the result. Let's say you set the ideal voltage generator to output exactly 5.4321V. How many digits (bits/steps) would you need for that if you weren't allowed to lose precision? You would need to quantize to 5 digits (0.0001 steps) because 5.4321 fits on a 5 digit display. Having more digits would not make the result more accurate as 5.432100 is still the same.

What happens if you pick a trickier output voltage like the square root of 2 or something like pi? The voltage measurement before the display is still perfect but unless you want to use an ...extremely large LCD display, you will have to settle for a finite number of digits and some precision will be lost due that, because the display will quantize the result to some digits. In this case, adding more digits would always make the result more and more accurate.

However, voltage measurements are bound by physics, so let's say you can measure the voltage with a certain amount of precision, like +/- 0.1%.
So if you set the perfect voltage generator to output pi volts (3.14159265359 and so on), the measured voltage can be anywhere between ~3.1385 and ~3.1447.
What do you think, how many of the digits are meaningful in this case, how many digits do you need to not lose the 0.2% precision? The value of the 10th digit is about 0.00000029% compared to pi (I might be off by a 1-2 zeros, it does not matter at all). This combined with the fact that the measurement's precision itself is limited to 0.2% makes displaying anything beyond the fifth or so digits completely pointless. The reading is not more accurate, the numbers will be completely random after a certain point (called "noise" in certain contexts) because the measurement already lacks precision. The only way to make the result more precise would be to increase the measurement's precision itself from +/- 0.1% to something better, displaying more numbers won't help.

The same rules apply when recording (measuring) a signal and recreating (generating) a signal. Both of these steps have a finite precision. Depending on how precisely these steps are done, more bits won't add anything of value because at the recording side, it just encodes random fluctuations coming from the studio, mic preamps even from the ADC itself (noise). Likewise at the generating side, it doesn't matter if the bits tell the DAC to create 1000.001mV if the DAC has a noise floor of 0.1mV, then everything after the first digit of the decimal point will be random. On top of that, the driver itself might not even respond to such a small change, and if it did, the tiny movement in air that it might create should reach the ear instead of getting obliterated by some other random sound coming from PC fans, fridges, passing cars, even people. 24bit is pointless for listening because all in all, neither step comes even close to utilizing the last couple of bits.

You seem to be arguing bit depth doesn’t matter.. because dither.

If that is your argument, simply take a 16 or 24 bit signal and dither it down to 8 bits.

Still noisy even with dither?
 
Jan 7, 2025 at 1:58 PM Post #111 of 148
You seem to be arguing bit depth doesn’t matter.. because dither.

If that is your argument, simply take a 16 or 24 bit signal and dither it down to 8 bits.

Still noisy even with dither?
No, I haven't mentioned dither in that post because it's clear you don't understand how dithering works. I tried to make a more general point that should be easier to understand than dithering.

A measurement taken with a finite precision (like sampling) does not need an infinite number of digits for displaying the result (like bits).
In short, if you repeatedly measure a known quantity such as 5 (of anything, the unit does not matter at this point) with a tool having +/- 20% randomness, the tool will report any number between 4 and 6. The digits will be completely random between the different measurements. Displaying the measurement result as 5.23432454 will not add any precision to that because it already lacks precision.
 
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Jan 8, 2025 at 4:31 AM Post #112 of 148
You seem to be arguing bit depth doesn’t matter.. because dither.
So you don’t even know what he was arguing but you’re going to argue with him anyway!
If that is your argument, simply take a 16 or 24 bit signal and dither it down to 8 bits.
Still noisy even with dither?
If we do make the argument about dither, then why stop at 8bits, why not go the whole hog down to 1bit … still noisy after dither? Why isn’t 1bit (SACD for example) almost nothing except noise?

Again, you demonstrate a complete ignorance of dither despite it being explained to you and the science being presented. Your question is ridiculous, dither converts quantisation error into noise, so “with dither” must by definition be “still noisy”, that’s the whole point of dither! Contrary to your argument, the resolution/accuracy of the signal is the same at any bit depth, what changes is the amount of (dither) noise, hence why bit depth defines dynamic range rather than accuracy/resolution. So duh, yes, dither it down to 8 bits and we have an effectively perfectly accurate signal with more noise than 16bit because 8bit has 8 fewer bits than 16bit and therefore 8 bits less dynamic range!

This brings us back almost to where we started, do you really lack the intellectual capacity to understand something easily within the grasp of school children, or are you just trolling?

G
 
Jan 8, 2025 at 8:49 AM Post #113 of 148
So you don’t even know what he was arguing but you’re going to argue with him anyway!

If we do make the argument about dither, then why stop at 8bits, why not go the whole hog down to 1bit … still noisy after dither? Why isn’t 1bit (SACD for example) almost nothing except noise?

Again, you demonstrate a complete ignorance of dither despite it being explained to you and the science being presented. Your question is ridiculous, dither converts quantisation error into noise, so “with dither” must by definition be “still noisy”, that’s the whole point of dither! Contrary to your argument, the resolution/accuracy of the signal is the same at any bit depth, what changes is the amount of (dither) noise, hence why bit depth defines dynamic range rather than accuracy/resolution. So duh, yes, dither it down to 8 bits and we have an effectively perfectly accurate signal with more noise than 16bit because 8bit has 8 fewer bits than 16bit and therefore 8 bits less dynamic range!

Sony:
“How much of the original analogue sound is captured by the digital recording depends mainly on the sampling rate and the bit depth.”

“Bit Depth​

The bit depth of a digital recording describes how many digits are used to store each sample of the analogue signal. The standard bit depth for CD audio is 16, with a sampling rate of 44.1kHz. This means that 44,100 samples per second are taken and each sample stores 16 bits of information. In general, a higher bit depth means greater sound quality, but also a larger file size.”

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/00165079


Phillips:
“2. What frequency do high-resolution audio files use?

High-resolution audio files usually use a sampling frequency of 96kHz or 192kHz at 24-bit. Still, it is possible to have 88.2kHz and 176.4kHz files too.

Sampling frequency means the number of times samples are taken per second when the analog sound waves are converted into digital. The more bits there are, the more accurately the signal can be measured in the first place, so there is a noticeable leap in quality from 16-bit to 24-bit.”

https://tv-sound-monitors.philips.com/s/article/Hi-Res-Audio-FAQ-1647588986483?language=en_US
 
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Jan 8, 2025 at 9:51 AM Post #115 of 148
Anytime eq1849's false argument gets properly addressed, "let me jump onto some new one to try and escape being wrong again".

 
Jan 8, 2025 at 9:55 AM Post #116 of 148
Folks, I'm not sure how useful it is to continue this argument with @eq1849.

eq1849 simply has it stuck in their head that more bits means a higher resolution and they personally claim an improved perception. You can argue until you are green in the face that that is an overly simplistic interpretation of what is actually happening in digital audio (dither, noise shaping of quantisation errors, filters, finite ability of our hearing, etc. etc.), but that isn't going to change their mind.

By now it is clear that in their minds more bits = finer quantisation steps = higher resolution, and they are simply not going to entertain the idea that a combination of PDM, dither and noise shaping methodologies mean that there is no longer an immutable relationship between bit depth and resolution, a fact that is fundamental to e.g. the understanding of 1 bit DSD delta-sigma modulation. This isn't helped by the misinformation published in the kind of marketing materials like they mentioned above.

It is also clear that eq1849 has no desire to learn more about digital audio than the simplified rudimentary and flawed marketing used by the main manufacturers. Marketing aimed at giving the wider public a very rudimentary basic understanding and acceptance of (or preference for!) the different digital audio methodologies. But as most of us here know full well, that is a level of understanding which neither acknowledges nor allows for careful consideration of the relationship between DSD (PDM) vs PCM, sampling rates, bit depths, dither, oversampling, quantisation error, noise shaping, and resolution.

Hence eq1849is destined to keep arguing from a perspective of ignorance.

They are right in thinking that in its most rudimentary form 24 bit data capture offers a higher resolution than 16 bit data capture. But bring up that digital audio is much more than just rudimentary data capture, and eq1849 simply goes deaf to the argument.

I do wonder how they accept a monochrome laser printer can print perceptible shades of grey, using just black toner...
 
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Jan 8, 2025 at 11:06 AM Post #118 of 148
Here's 16-bit converted to 8-bit.
(but at the same time from 44.1k to 352k sampling rate and with shaped dither)
:wink:
We know eq1849 is going to claim tile "...to.8" is clearly inferior “blind testing”
 
Jan 8, 2025 at 12:44 PM Post #119 of 148
So, we give you technical explanations, quote and link you to the relevant encyclopaedia entries and even link scientific papers and you respond by supporting your argument with a scientific paper that didn’t even investigate bit depth and now marketing material. All while failing to respond to the question or ANY of the points put to you.

How does that do anything other than confirm the dichotomy? (“do you really lack the intellectual capacity to understand something easily within the grasp of school children, or are you just trolling?”)

G
 
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Jan 8, 2025 at 1:24 PM Post #120 of 148
So, we give you technical explanations, quote and link you to the relevant encyclopaedia entries and even link scientific papers and you respond by supporting your argument with a scientific paper that didn’t even investigate bit depth and now marketing material. All while failing to respond to the question or ANY of the points put to you.

The paper I posted investigated how inaudible frequencies stimulated brain activity while listening to music for 400 seconds.

Gregorio then did a False Equivalence with other research that performed short micro bursts and clicks, and tried to make inferences between the research to discount it.

Beyond that, claims of bit depth doesn’t matter, dither fixes everything, etc and Benny Hill videos, and a slew of ad Hominem. And now the companies statements, companies which developed CD technology, none the less, are simply discounted as “ marketing material”.

Good lord..


How does that do anything other than confirm the dichotomy? (“do you really lack the intellectual capacity to understand something easily within the grasp of school children, or are you just trolling?”)

G
Oh look, more ad Hominem…
 
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