I guess we agree that stuff like oversampling and filters(digital or analog) have just as much if not more importance than the method used to go to analog?
that's a very false idea of what's happening. <<snip>>
Not in weapons systems nor in medical imaging. Where we differ is the potential relevance of those differences in audio.
<<snip>> Are we making a big thing of something that really isn't, in the pure audio elite kind of way?
Well, for whatever the phuc I am or not, I can guarantee I am not an elitist. I (usually after looking around) scratch where it itches and have been known to utter occasional disgusting locutions. The elite reside on the upper floors of the show hotels and have the same look of pinched constipation as many of their detractors.
My engineering concentrates on differences. If I were to do what 98% of my competition does which is focus on similarities - I would put out boring data sheet based crap differentiated by gold plated circuit boards, whale oil damped platinum knobs and buttons, rare earth phosphors in the display, etc. I happen to really believe in the superiority of multibit; it is not a religious backdrop for a tooth fairy narrative. After all, $249 is no elite price for multibit. I also make no sonic warranties - enjoy it if you care to. I genuinely do! Or you could spend 150x that money for a model equipped with accuwank.
I apparently look like I'm looking for conflicts, but I'm really not. I'm just your typical skeptic guy. I don't think your work is wrong(at least up to where I stop understanding
), and as said before, better or not, choice is still choice. I see nothing wrong with that. I'm really just curious, and the reasons advanced in favor of each DAC tech systematically fail to be clear to me.
what is used in some military device, well if they have a clear reason to, maybe I could see how this may be interesting in audio. but what is that reason? last time I heard, there were nuclear launching systems booting on floppy discs.
for all I know the medical imaging dudes signed a 20 year contract and never even tried to make use of DS. the information of someone making a choice isn't meaningful if we don't know the reason for the choice was significant for audio.
maybe it has to do with the frequencies used, maybe stuff like noise shaping would be a problem? I can imagine from what I know of picture post treatment that it may be more effective to have a poor RAW data with knowledge of what is wrong so we can deal with it, instead of an already processed data that is superior to RAW, but we have no clue what to compensate for. I'm just guessing here, but that could probably one reason. maybe there is something going on with really strong EMI that all the processing included in DA chips doesn't like? I'd love to know about that too, but even a legitimate reasons may not translate into audio needs where post treatment is nonexistent after the DAC and where EMI are nothing like what we would fear in a medical room or in the military.
some people hear that it's better, that's certainly reason enough to build it for those people if they want it. but again using that as a justification of superiority is... meh. we also have many people who still believe vinyls have better fidelity. believing doesn't make it real outside of the believer's brain.
I'm looking for reasons to want one instead of the other. like probably a great many people on headfi. and I really don't care on which side the scale would lean. personally I'm a cheap person so I'll stay on DS until I figure out a reason to switch. but I do not believe it's a superior tech, I don't have the info to make such judgment. my concerns are about 50% signal fidelity, 50% money, 0% taste. if I decided to involve taste in my DAC decisions, then maybe the paint on the box would be reason enough for my choice. it was for my mother when she bought her last car. but I'm not my mum.
What's clouding the issue at hand is equating audibility with preference. Science can probably establish the former fairly well, but it gets complicated when it's used to tackle the latter.
I for one have serious reservations that science can answer the 'audibility' question in any satisfactory manner. Not with current approaches, anyways.
Contrary to what 'golden ears' comments might suggest, humans hear with their brains (just as they see with their brains, sense with their brains and otherwise perceive all external stimuli with their brains), not with their ears. In this sense the 'ears' merely serve as capture devices, if you will, a (more or less) "passive" conduit of external stimuli---suitably converted---towards internal processing centers. While identification and categorization of incoming sounds is all brain processing, nothing else: perception, interpretation, and experience ALL happen in the brain.
So the "is it audible?!" mantra, as opposed to the human perceptions of that which is audible, is a complete canard: How exactly does one separate whether (1) something is audible from (2) how that which is audible is being perceived by the brain?
Cut off the ear (or the eye, or what have you, and please bear in mind that this is a thought experiment) from the brain, and whichever the ear senses in terms of external stimuli and then converts will ultimately have nowhere to go for further processing and pattern analysis, and it will not be 'audible'. Re-establish connection between the ear and the brain, and the same external stimulus will now be sensed and converted by the ear and transmitted to the brain for processing, so it will be 'audible'
because it has been processed, interpreted, categorized, analyzed and thus perceived by the brain.
In other words, 'audibility' goes hand in hand with 'perception' (and thus categorization according to preferences), and the two cannot reasonably be disentangled. I know some will point to the existence of academic branches like psycho acoustics, which isn't much of an argument in itself, but I just can't see how science could reliably separate 'audibility' from 'perception' (and study one in isolation from the other) in a manner that would stand to scrutiny.
of course science cannot give a perfect answer, if only because the question of audibility isn't only one question. it totally depends on the stimuli and the subject hearing it.
but some of your points are legit, science doesn't offer a 100% reliability, most tests on subjects end as "conclusive for the stuff tested in said conditions", or "inconclusive for the stuff tested in said conditions". with inconclusive meaning exactly that. it's audiophiles who decide to conclude nonsense out of negative results and then call upon said nonsense saying it isn't right. well duh! it's often the case with straw man arguments.
my problem with all that science worrying is that I don't see the same concern for how reliable are our gut feelings. it's legitimate to care about the limitations of any testing, it's actually good practice and I wish I could do it better than I do. but when it's only done as a mean to say in the end "therefore me sitting a chair with my beer listening to my favorite music is the test I can trust the most to answer any audibility questions", that's your giant canard right there, and way too common an opinion not to talk about it.
the number one strength of science(apart for being the only reason we have any of the audio devices we use everyday while spitting on science) is that when proven wrong, it takes in the new data and goes look for a better fitting model. science doesn't go "agree to desagree" and "I know what I heard". I wish people(starting with me) could use the famous open mind to always include the version of the story where they're dead wrong as the main hypothesis and move on from there. it would work way better than our natural instinct to try and play alpha male in any stupid confrontation we can find(like I hope I'm not doing too much right here^_^).
