Reconstruction Filters made audible?

[FunkyBassMan]

Square waves are irrelevant to commercial music.

More fat BS.

1. The Who – "Baba O’Riley" (1971)
The iconic synth intro uses a repeating square wave arpeggio played on a Lowrey organ. This sound is generated using pulse waves (a variation of square waves).
2. Kraftwerk – "The Robots" (1978)
Kraftwerk made extensive use of square waves in their synthesized sounds. The robotic, electronic melodies in "The Robots" rely heavily on square wave synthesis.
3. Gary Numan – "Cars" (1979)
The lead synth in "Cars" has a famous square wave, creating its signature electronic sound.
4. Van Halen – "Jump" (1983)
The legendary synth riff that opens the song was played on an Oberheim OB-Xa, using a patch that heavily features square waves.
5. Video Game Music (8-bit & Chiptune)
Classic Nintendo (NES) and Game Boy music is almost entirely built from square waves, triangle waves, and noise generators.
Super Mario Bros. Theme (1985) – Koji Kondo
The Legend of Zelda Theme (1986) – Koji Kondo
Mega Man 2 Theme (1988) – Takashi Tateishi
6. Daft Punk – "Digital Love" (2001)
The solo synth lead in this track is a heavily processed square wave-based track.
7. Deadmau5 – "Strobe" (2009)
The intro and breakdown sections use lush, modulated square wave pads to create an atmospheric sound.

 

[bigshot]

If the recording medium can't reproduce it, and was never intended to reproduce it, how can it be a part of recorded music? It's either a square wave or it isn't. And in commercially recorded music, it isn't.

 

[Ghoostknight]

If the recording medium can't reproduce it, and was never intended to reproduce it, how can it be a part of recorded music? It's either a square wave or it isn't. And in commercially recorded music, it isn't.

but my guess is it can be very close to a perfect square wave, where harmonics that make up the squarewave are close to 22,05khz and therefore affected by the anti-image filter

 

[bigshot]

Anything up at 22kHz is going to be inaudible by definition.

 

[2leftears]

A red herring being discussed at cross-purposes. What's new?

 

[BS5711]

Anything up at 22kHz is going to be inaudible by definition.

I think our man would suggest that "by definition" is not an absolute that includes him.

How else does he explain that he hears all those things ?

 

[gregorio]

Main point im talking about, no matter how it works in detail still is that the "upsamling interpolation filter" is close to the human range of hearing and that might lead to some slight degredation (which can be heared amplified in the video in the first post), which probably is audible to some but not all …

And there we go, right back to where you started with the same false assertion and as it was fully explained back on the first page, just repeating your false assertion can only be considered either a deliberate lie or just a complete inability to understand even simple facts! There was NO amplification in the video, it did NOT demonstrate degradation caused by the anti-image (“upsampling interpolation”) filter and how could it “probably be audible to some but not all” if it does not even exist as sound??

the thing is if i hear i can correlate some things i hear to the measurements i see

Great, so as your assertion is predicated on “IF” you hear, then all you have to do is demonstrate that you are actually hearing a difference, otherwise you are just making-up a completely FALSE correlation!

since there is some objective degredation going on, we only can argue whether its audible

Hang on, you’re even contradicting yourself now! You just asserted above that the anti-image filter “might lead to some degradation” and now in this sentence you’re asserting “there is some objective degradation going on”, so you can’t even agree with your own assertions, let alone the actual facts. And, we cannot rationally argue whether it’s audible when you haven’t even ascertained if it even exists!

and imo one should be careful with such claims (on either side) as its a matter of when, how, why, how loud, which signal, which speakers(nearfield, farfield, headphones), which dac, hearing/senstivity/expierence of the testers etc

Then why aren’t you “careful with such claims” (of audibility), why can’t you even take your own advice? We on the other hand don’t need to be careful of such claims because: There’s no reliable evidence that it is audible, plus we do have reliable evidence that nothing even registers in the auditory cortex, plus the measurements indicate your so called “degradation” is so tiny it cannot even exist as sound, let alone be audible and your own cited video demonstrates audible artefacts only after being successively passed through ADC/DAC filters 800 - 1600 times! And, how can it possibly be a matter of when, how, which speakers and hearing sensitivity/exerience, etc., if your so called “degradation” cannot even exist as sound? You think maybe some speakers/HPs and listening experience can break the laws of physics do you?

Really cant say more than my opinion here, as i simply trust my gut more than what science tries to tell me
And as i cant support my view in scientific terms, the only thing i can do is point at possbilities and what works for me ("the best")

Again, just pure BS! Firstly, Science is not trying to tell you anything, science is just a logical, testable body of knowledge. If your gut is telling you something different and you trust your gut more than the tested knowledge then you’re irrational/delusional and absolutely in the wrong forum! Secondly, you are NOT “pointing at possibilities”, just making-up complete BS is NOT “pointing at possibilities”, it’s just complete BS, unless you have reliable evidence it is actually a possibility!

Do you have anything other than repeating the BS your gut tells you?

More fat BS.
1. The Who – "Baba O’Riley" (1971)
The iconic synth intro uses a repeating square wave arpeggio played on a Lowrey organ. This sound is generated using pulse waves (a variation of square waves) …..

Oh good, you’ve listed the pieces and therefore you can actually show us all these square waves in the waveform of the distributed masters/copies and prove your claim of “more fat BS”. So the path is clear, either you’ll provide that evidence or you’ll simply deflect or ignore it and thereby prove the only “fat BS” here is yours. What’s it to be?

G

 

[71 dB]

More fat BS.

1. The Who – "Baba O’Riley" (1971)
The iconic synth intro uses a repeating square wave arpeggio played on a Lowrey organ. This sound is generated using pulse waves (a variation of square waves).
2. Kraftwerk – "The Robots" (1978)
Kraftwerk made extensive use of square waves in their synthesized sounds. The robotic, electronic melodies in "The Robots" rely heavily on square wave synthesis.
3. Gary Numan – "Cars" (1979)
The lead synth in "Cars" has a famous square wave, creating its signature electronic sound.
4. Van Halen – "Jump" (1983)
The legendary synth riff that opens the song was played on an Oberheim OB-Xa, using a patch that heavily features square waves.
5. Video Game Music (8-bit & Chiptune)
Classic Nintendo (NES) and Game Boy music is almost entirely built from square waves, triangle waves, and noise generators.
Super Mario Bros. Theme (1985) – Koji Kondo
The Legend of Zelda Theme (1986) – Koji Kondo
Mega Man 2 Theme (1988) – Takashi Tateishi
6. Daft Punk – "Digital Love" (2001)
The solo synth lead in this track is a heavily processed square wave-based track.
7. Deadmau5 – "Strobe" (2009)
The intro and breakdown sections use lush, modulated square wave pads to create an atmospheric sound.

The problem here is how we define square waves. Bigshot talks about perfect square waves, but the square waves used in music are NOT perfect squarewaves. They are approximations. Do you really think the square waves Kraftwerk used had infinite bandwidth or were even very accurate band-limited square waves? Of course not.

Does music use approximations of square waves? YES! Quite a lot actually!
Does music use perfect square waves? Of course not. That's practically impossible.

Also, often in (electronic) music, square waves (or approximations of them) are the starting point of creating sounds. Those square waves often are processed heavily to end up with something much more pleasant sounding than square waves and we can't even talk about square waves anymore.

I think our man would suggest that "by definition" is not an absolute that includes him.

How else does he explain that he hears all those things ?

He sees things and draws connection to what he hears. In other words his vision controls the placebo effect he experiences. This is very normal for people who have not understood how important it is to remove the influences of placebo effect, comfimation bias etc. when conducting listening tests concerning very tiny, possibly inaudible differences.

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I was able to add this second quote by using +Quote button and editing my response in the response editor. Then Toggle BB code and copy paste it all to my first post. VERY CLUMSY way of doing things, but that's what the World is today. Instead of things becoming easier and more clever, they become more difficult and dumber.

 

[2leftears]

The problem here is how we define square waves. Bigshot talks about perfect square waves, but the square waves used in music are NOT perfect squarewaves. They are approximations. Do you really think the square waves Kraftwerk used had infinite bandwidth or were even accurate band-limited square waves? Of course not.

Does music use approximations of square waves? YES! Quite a lot actually!
Does music use perfect square waves? Of course not. That's practically impossible.

Also, often in (electronic) music, square waves (or approximations of them) are the starting point of creating sounds. Those square waves often are processed heavily to end up with something much more pleasant sounding than square waves and we can't even talk about square waves anymore.

That was my point exactly about red herrings and talking cross purposes.

"Square wave" is a misnomer in any case. On the theoretical side we have piecewise constant functions; that's how these "square waves" originate, as a mathematical concept. But on the practical side with "waves" (electromagnetic, acoustic), we are talking about the phenomenon as a propagating dynamic disturbance. Bandwidth limitations as well as non-linearity and associated dispersion make "square waves" an impossibility as a real-world propagating dynamic disturbance; the real world doesn't do infinite derivatives.

But it is all a red herring anyway. As far as audibility (and filtering) is concerned, there is nothing 'special' about a "square wave" compared to other audio material; it is just another bunch of superimposed harmonic waves. The only 'special' thing about square waves is that it gives some interesting filtering aspects to look at on-screen that are harder to spot visually on other wave forms. But that's looking at the wave(s), and little do do with what our rather bandwidth-limited hearing can detect.

 

[VNandor]

Do you really think the square waves Kraftwerk used had infinite bandwidth or were even very accurate band-limited square waves? Of course not.

The melodic elements of The Robots by Kraftwerk also unmistakenly uses saw waves, not squares, which could be confirmed by either listening to the song or just by looking at it in the time domain or the frequency domain... Here's one of the plucks singled out:

As a general rule, if something sounds like a saw wave and looks like a saw wave, it is very likely a saw wave.

It's pointless to bother with going through the rest of the list checking if he might accidentally listed something that did use square waves because the amount of processing applied to the tracks completely changes the waveform anyways. The only exception from that is the NES music. I would be surprised to find out it didn't rely on dry square waves as one of the instruments to create the sound tracks.

This is from one of my favourite OST from megaman xtreme released on gameboy color. It's from the first sigma stage:

This indeed looks and sounds like a square wave with the mentioned noise generator on top of it.

 

[bigshot]

Does music use approximations of square waves? YES! Quite a lot actually!
Does music use perfect square waves? Of course not. That's practically impossible.

There is no point complaining that digital audio doesn't reproduce perfect square waves because that is practically impossible, and it's a situation that the format was never intended to deal with. Digital audio can and does deal with approximations of square waves better than we can hear. If the intent is to argue that CD quality digital audio does not produce sound that is audibly perfect to human ears, citing square waves or approximations of square waves is not a valid argument. The whole point is moot and can be dismissed completely.

 

[eq1849]

There is no point complaining that digital audio doesn't reproduce perfect square waves because that is practically impossible, and it's a situation that the format was never intended to deal with. Digital audio can and does deal with approximations of square waves better than we can hear. If the intent is to argue that CD quality digital audio does not produce sound that is audibly perfect to human ears, citing square waves or approximations of square waves is not a valid argument. The whole point is moot and can be dismissed completely.

Audibly perfect means big shot failed another test?

 

[bigshot]

It means that the ability of human ears to hear is finite.