Can you hear a difference between DAC's?

[mbphotox]

Still basing your theory on existing science eh? I imagine in Ancient Greek times you would have been insisting the earth was flat.

he's got a point though.

Current measurement technology is at a point where we can measure things that no human ever could hear.

(it's different with, say, pollution. All of a sudden, we find radioactive pollution in rivers where there was "none" before. The media go crazy about this, while scientists know that measurement devices in the past simply couldn't pick up concentrations this low.)

With measuring distortion and other things in audio, we are at a point where we can already measure WAY beyond what the human ear can detect. (120 dB signal to noise ratio?! Listening at regular volumes of maybe 70 dB(C) you cannot even perceive an S/N of 60dB unless you live in a sound deafened environment)

24 bits of resolution? iirc, humans cannot perceive anything beyond 16 bits anyways.. (and 16 bits of dynamic range is already way past the pain threshold!)


Those are not opinions, they are facts!


We all agree that humans perceive music differently from one another. We all agree that your mind has a massive impact on how you perceive the music you are listening to.

Now we should just be able to all agree that your mind can trick you into believing things that aren't actually there, because it makes us feel better or something...

 

[LisaShayBrown]

How dare you challenge them - they're just here to give us plebs the "facts". We should be grateful for their generosity!

i would be if one learned anything real from them. but they regularly say (in the forum where they hang out) the most ridiculously wrong things. like a piano does not produce a complex waveform. like audio processing is not to make audio sound better. like what he said here: that the brain stores sound. and so many more.

one would think the bar would be set higher in the sound science area. it is, in fact, quite the opposite.

 

[LisaShayBrown]

.

 

[LisaShayBrown]

This is very disappointing for those of us who simply wanted to share our impressions of DACs. I hadn't been aware I may be required to explain my impressions in some technical sense, let alone justify them. I hadn't been aware I might be challenged or critiqued for choosing not to do that. I guess this isn't the friendly, non-threatening place I had imagined it to be.

totally agree.

they're supposed to confine their beloved harassment of people to their playpen in sound science: there's a post in this very thread about it from a moderator. i'm not sure why the mods are letting it go on.

 

[LisaShayBrown]

and 16 bits of dynamic range is already way past the pain threshold!

@jamesjames

see, yet more ridiculous wrongness, proclaimed a "fact".

but bit depth has absolutely nothing to do with SPL.

such incessant, arrogant wrongness should be put to pasture in sound science where it belongs.

 

[Ferdinando1968]

With measuring distortion and other things in audio, we are at a point where we can already measure WAY beyond what the human ear can detect. (120 dB signal to noise ratio?! Listening at regular volumes of maybe 70 dB(C) you cannot even perceive an S/N of 60dB unless you live in a sound deafened environment)

24 bits of resolution? iirc, humans cannot perceive anything beyond 16 bits anyways.. (and 16 bits of dynamic range is already way past the pain threshold!)

In this article they talk about 120dB and 20bit of quantization:

https://emastered.com/blog/dynamic-range-in-audio

It's wrong ?

 

[LisaShayBrown]

a professional engineer cannot be a hobbyist.

individuals cannot simultaneously be hobbyists and professionals in the same field. And, whether others or myself share or don’t share a belief is irrelevant, it does not change the proven/actual facts!

@jamesjames

to your point, more ridiculous wrongness.

i am a professional engineer sometimes and a hobbyist engineer at others. and so is every other recording engineer i've ever known.

one would think that a people who pretend to seek evidence for claims would know that yelling "fact" in a crowded room does not make it so.

one would be wrong.

 

[LisaShayBrown]

Of course we all have biases. I don't think anyone in this thread is trying to deny that.

Anyone who states they “know what they’re hearing” is “trying to deny that”!

so a person who states they know they hear cars going by is somehow trying to deny they have biases.

it's very hard to think of something that could be more ridiculously wrong.

 

[mbphotox]

In this article they talk about 120dB and 20bit of quantization:

https://emastered.com/blog/dynamic-range-in-audio

It's wrong ?

this is ignoring the fact that you should NEVER listen at levels beyond 100dB, bc that's damaging your hearing.

and it's also ignoring that the background noise in any normal environment is around 30-40 dB at any given time.

So, in a regular listening environment, with 30dB background noise, and you listening at ear-splitting 120dB SPL, how much dynamic range can you actually make out?

90dB
because everything beyond that gets drowned in the background noise.

listening at above-normal 85dB levels, you're forced to deal with as little as 55 dB of dynamic range...



that's why, if you want to make use of 16 bits of dynamic range, you'd need to listen to music at 125dB or louder...

 

[castleofargh]

In this article they talk about 120dB and 20bit of quantization:

https://emastered.com/blog/dynamic-range-in-audio

It's wrong ?

In isolation in an anechoic chamber we can hope for 0dB SPL(even a little less, although there's irony in that as 0dB was initially defined as the minimum noticeable ^_^).
And around 120dB SPL is what we consider a painful level. We can go louder, it's just a terrible idea.
So the maximum dynamic given as 120dB is reasonable in that context. We just have to keep in mind what happens in practice:
We don't tend to listen to music in an anechoic chamber. Rooms are already considered quiet at around 30dB SPL.
We are affected by auditory masking (here is a video I really enjoyed when I first saw it, about some of the basic concepts if you feel curious, ). In a nutshell, a tone can attenuate or mask completely another tone nearby. With musical instruments full of harmonics, there is little hope left to perceive much of the quiet sounds emitted at the same time the loud ones come up. That means our instantaneous dynamic range is nowhere near 120 in practice.
That's made even worse by the acoustic reflex. It can vary from people to people, but I think somewhere around 70 to 90dB SPL is somewhat common for the trigger level. When triggered, we get an attenuation in sensitivity of maybe 15 to 20dB. So in that state when you listen to music at normal to loud level, the 0dB SPL audibility threshold is no more. You'd need a quiet passage long enough for the muscle to relax and the eardrum to get its best sensitivity back.
There is also some masking effect spread in time, instead of over a frequency range(but that's really short).

So with all that mess, in practice for 120dB to remain true, the music has several strict requirements that just aren't all that common. Loud sounds and quiet sounds very well separated in both time and frequency, all recorded in ultra quiet studios with little to no level adjustments to mic levels, little to no processing or mixing of several channels (as most of those actions would bring up the noise floor), while the listener himself needs to be in an unnaturally quiet room.





P.S.
Sorry for disturbing the tiny but loud mob and its ongoing lynching, with my little bit of informative reply to an actual question. Please get back to explaining how a public forum should only contain the posts you in particular care to read and agree with, while the people you don't like for reasons entirely separate from this thread, should shut up. Very respect, many tolerance, much freedom of speech!

 

[Ferdinando1968]

In isolation in an anechoic chamber we can hope for 0dB SPL(even a little less, although there's irony in that as 0dB was initially defined as the minimum noticeable ^_^).
And around 120dB SPL is what we consider a painful level. We can go louder, it's just a terrible idea.
So the maximum dynamic given as 120dB is reasonable in that context. We just have to keep in mind what happens in practice:
We don't tend to listen to music in an anechoic chamber. Rooms are already considered quiet at around 30dB SPL.
We are affected by auditory masking (here is a video I really enjoyed when I first saw it, about some of the basic concepts if you feel curious, ). In a nutshell, a tone can attenuate or mask completely another tone nearby. With musical instruments full of harmonics, there is little hope left to perceive much of the quiet sounds emitted at the same time the loud ones come up. That means our instantaneous dynamic range is nowhere near 120 in practice.
That's made even worse by the acoustic reflex. It can vary from people to people, but I think somewhere around 70 to 90dB SPL is somewhat common for the trigger level. When triggered, we get an attenuation in sensitivity of maybe 15 to 20dB. So in that state when you listen to music at normal to loud level, the 0dB SPL audibility threshold is no more. You'd need a quiet passage long enough for the muscle to relax and the eardrum to get its best sensitivity back.
There is also some masking effect spread in time, instead of over a frequency range(but that's really short).

So with all that mess, in practice for 120dB to remain true, the music has several strict requirements that just aren't all that common. Loud sounds and quiet sounds very well separated in both time and frequency, all recorded in ultra quiet studios with little to no level adjustments to mic levels, little to no processing or mixing of several channels (as most of those actions would bring up the noise floor), while the listener himself needs to be in an unnaturally quiet room.





P.S.
Sorry for disturbing the tiny but loud mob and its ongoing lynching, with my little bit of informative reply to an actual question. Please get back to explaining how a public forum should only contain the posts you in particular care to read and agree with, while the people you don't like for reasons entirely separate from this thread, should shut up. Very respect, many tolerance, much freedom of speech!

Thank you for your authoritative explanation, made in a calm and humble tone.

 

[REXNFX]

In isolation in an anechoic chamber we can hope for 0dB SPL(even a little less, although there's irony in that as 0dB was initially defined as the minimum noticeable ^_^).
And around 120dB SPL is what we consider a painful level. We can go louder, it's just a terrible idea.
So the maximum dynamic given as 120dB is reasonable in that context. We just have to keep in mind what happens in practice:
We don't tend to listen to music in an anechoic chamber. Rooms are already considered quiet at around 30dB SPL.
We are affected by auditory masking (here is a video I really enjoyed when I first saw it, about some of the basic concepts if you feel curious, ). In a nutshell, a tone can attenuate or mask completely another tone nearby. With musical instruments full of harmonics, there is little hope left to perceive much of the quiet sounds emitted at the same time the loud ones come up. That means our instantaneous dynamic range is nowhere near 120 in practice.
That's made even worse by the acoustic reflex. It can vary from people to people, but I think somewhere around 70 to 90dB SPL is somewhat common for the trigger level. When triggered, we get an attenuation in sensitivity of maybe 15 to 20dB. So in that state when you listen to music at normal to loud level, the 0dB SPL audibility threshold is no more. You'd need a quiet passage long enough for the muscle to relax and the eardrum to get its best sensitivity back.
There is also some masking effect spread in time, instead of over a frequency range(but that's really short).

So with all that mess, in practice for 120dB to remain true, the music has several strict requirements that just aren't all that common. Loud sounds and quiet sounds very well separated in both time and frequency, all recorded in ultra quiet studios with little to no level adjustments to mic levels, little to no processing or mixing of several channels (as most of those actions would bring up the noise floor), while the listener himself needs to be in an unnaturally quiet room.





P.S.
Sorry for disturbing the tiny but loud mob and its ongoing lynching, with my little bit of informative reply to an actual question. Please get back to explaining how a public forum should only contain the posts you in particular care to read and agree with, while the people you don't like for reasons entirely separate from this thread, should shut up. Very respect, many tolerance, much freedom of speech!

Nah you won't get lynched until the science proves you're wrong and are guilty of stifling the development of digital audio.

 

[gregorio]

Still basing your theory on existing science eh?

Digital audio and ADCs and DACs are not based on some sort of magic or science that doesn’t exist yet, they are based on science that has existed for 75 years.

I imagine in Ancient Greek times you would have been insisting the earth was flat.

The ancient Greeks used measurements and math (science) to prove the earth was spherical. There was never any reliable/scientific proof before (or after) the ancient Greeks that the earth was flat, only subjective impressions (it looked flat). So you have this analogy backwards, I would be insisting the earth is spherical (or not insisting anything if there were not yet any reliable evidence/scientific proof on the issue) and you would be insisting it’s flat, because it looked flat and apparently there’s some science that doesn’t exist yet that will prove it’s flat!

G

 

[gregorio]

I don't know if this is intentional or not on your part, but you're often twisting my words to make it seem like I'm contradicting the definitions you're providing …

I’m not twisting your words, I’m quoting your words directly and I’m not providing definitions, I’m quoting dictionaries. You on the other hand are twisting my words, for example: “Our disagreement stems from you believing audiophiles should only be enthusiastic in one particular way” - I do NOT believe that and did not state that, in fact I stated pretty much the opposite! If one were only an audiophile then by definition they would only be enthusiastic about high-fidelity but of course audiophiles are not only audiophiles, they’re commonly also music lovers, enthusiastic about brand names, the visual appearance of their systems and probably enthusiastic about any number of other things not even related to sound/audio.

I believe an audiophile's enthusiasm of high-fidelity sound can involve these measurements as well as their own subjective perceptions, i.e. how their brains are 'measuring' the audio.

Human brains cannot “measure the audio”, they perceive sound. If they could, why would anyone invent audio measuring devices and why would anyone ever buy or use them?

The “fidelity” of an audio device/s is defined by the difference between the input signal and the output signal of that device, if the difference is large it’s “low fidelity” if it’s small it’s “high fidelity”, it has nothing to do with individual subjective opinions. Again though, as above, one can be an audiophile and a music lover and unlike “fidelity” (which is an objective property), music is not an objective property, it is entirely a subjective perception.

It’s disappointing that you did not answer a single question or address any of the points I made and instead focused on “disagreements” based on statements and beliefs you falsely ascribed to me.

G

 

[gregorio]

to your point, more ridiculous wrongness.

i am a professional engineer sometimes and a hobbyist engineer at others. and so is every other recording engineer i've ever known.

“an activity or interest pursued for pleasure or relaxation and not as a main occupation” - dictionary.com
“a pursuit outside one's regular occupation engaged in especially for relaxation” - Merrium Webster

So you’re right and the dictionaries are “ridiculous wrongness”? You seem confused by the notion that a professional engineer can occasionally do gigs for no remuneration and hobbyists can occasionally do gigs for some remuneration but according to the definition of the word, you can’t be both.

On one side we’ve got verifiable facts presented politely and on the other side, throwing around insults based on not knowing/understanding the meaning of simple words? Which is more acceptable to audiophiles and an audiophile forum?

G