[amirm]

I'm assuming this is an admission that you did loop the end of the fadeouts and increase the volume.

Not at all. Why don't you see if you can find such loops, fade-outs, etc. and pass the test? After all, your threshold is the same as mine, right?

For now, you amply proved my point that you will not accept the results of any challenges you put forward. Even when I said I did not mess with the volume, here you go with "increased volume."

As I have said before, I plan to create a video on how you can get trained to hear artifacts. You don't have that training so you think it must be impossible. Can't blame your lay intuition. Just know that it is all that: lay intuition.

 

[bigshot]

Could you tell the difference between 16 bit and 24 bit without looping or adjusting the volume beyond a normal listening level? Just play the track through like you are listening to music. That is the test I'd like to see results for.

By the way, the test results you showed me wasn't for discerning artifacts. It was for discerning the noise floor. You claimed that a noise floor beyond 120dB was necessary. I said that a CD's noise floor was more than sufficient for audible transparency.

 

[colonelkernel8]

It is against the terms of AES subscription to provide full copies of AES papers. You are of course welcome to purchase it from AES site itself: https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/conventions/?elib=8354

Wasn’t aware that it was an AES paper. Thanks for the link anyhow.

 

[gregorio]

[1] Not at all. Why don't you see if you can find such loops, fade-outs, etc. and pass the test? After all, your threshold is the same as mine, right?

Why is it that when you get involved in a dispute, you feel the way to win that dispute is to misrepresent pretty much everything; what has been stated by the posters with whom you're in dispute, the evidence presented and and even science itself? And, if that's not bad enough, you then insult those with whom you're in dispute by stating they are ignoring the evidence and the science, which you've either misrepresented or are doing yourself!! It derails the thread, it's hypocrisy, it's mis-information, it serves no purpose and benefits no one except you and your ego and potentially the audiophile myth peddlers, which makes what you are doing contrary to one of the main reasons this sub-forum exists in the first place!

Bigshot has not stated his threshold is the same as yours, that is a complete misrepresentation! He stated that training cannot improve hearing thresholds, a statement with which I agree and why I am defending him. He did NOT state that his threshold is the same as yours and if he did, I would not be defending him. Here's another example:

[1] When we want to declare something to be transparent, then it needs to be so for all content and all people. In any listening tests, we hugely shrink that to a few tracks and a few people. Of course we still like to the results to apply to all people and all content. So what we do is that we give every chance to artifacts to be audible. That way, we have a better chance of testing other people with or without training having higher acuity than our sample listeners. And to allow other content to be revealing. ... This is not theory.
[2] Then one day we had one of our partner companies ...

1. This assertion is self contradictory and yes, absolutely it IS theory!
We do indeed typically "give every chance to artefacts to be audible". We rig the test; we use very high quality equipment, in laboratory conditions with exceptionally low noise floors, using subjects with trained hearing or hearing trained specifically for the artefact being investigated, who are focused exclusively on detecting that specific artefact, at higher or much higher than normal levels and we use test signals specifically designed and/or manipulated to maximise the effect of that artefact. As we can't test every single human being, creating the most favourable conditions for the humans we can test is the most logical/practical method of discovering a limit of human ability which we can be confident will not be exceeded by any other humans we haven't tested, under normal conditions. It's useful to know such limits, when designing equipment and products for example, but these limits are of course JUST THEORY! We cannot know whether we've rigged the test so favourably that the limit demonstrated by the test in fact exceeds the ability of EVERY human being under ANY reasonable definition of "normal conditions"! In fact, there is a considerable amount of well accepted, reliable evidence which indicates that indeed, this is extremely likely to be the case in a number of controlled audio tests. In other words, some/many of the limits demonstrated during scientific testing should be viewed as limits which under normal conditions will probably never even be approached by anyone and all but possibly a miniscule fraction of outliers will never get anywhere even vaguely in the same ball park as such a limit!

2. Yes, anyone who's been involved in the industry in some capacity has some surprising experiences and anecdotes to tell. I have many, but then there are two sides to this coin. For example, in this thread we've discussed tests which demonstrated that the generally accepted 20kHz upper limit of human hearing is insufficient, that some individuals, under some extreme test conditions have detected 23kHz or 24kHz signals. On the other side of the coin though: In about 1973 (I believe), a BBC engineer, during a system test, discovered that the BBC had inadvertently been broadcasting a reasonably high level 19kHz signal over their programmes for a period of about 4 years, without anyone noticing! Baring in mind that at the time, apart from the BBC there was only one other available TV channel in the UK, so everyone who watched TV in the UK over those 4 years invariably watched the BBC at least some of the time and, that the BBC has an unmatched history of encouraging (and actually receiving) consumer feedback/comments. Obviously, we're still not talking about every single person on the planet but a sample size of about 50-60 million people, in effect tested continuously for about 4 years, is significant! It's significant enough to state with some confidence that the accepted 20kHz limit is more than enough, although it doesn't completely exclude the possibility that there might (or might not!) be an individual or possibly even several individuals in the world for whom that limit might not be quite enough. This brings us to those of us who actually create the commercial content to which everyone is listening. We have a finite amount of time to complete our part of the commercial creative process, should we divert some of that limited time away from the frequency range which is audible by all, to a frequency range which is probably not audible to even a single person on the planet? Unfortunately, sometimes we have to do exactly that, to the potential detriment of the product, because there are people who visually check the >20kHz content of high sample rate material.

BTW, these last two points are for the benefit of others! Despite the fact that the above basics facts should be known, accepted and self-evident to anyone with professional experience (and even to some/many without professional experience), as it would appear to conflict with his personal agenda I'm sure amirm will either just ignore, misrepresent or find some excuse to dismiss it.

G

 

[ev13wt]

I read your review on the DAC-X6. I bought it anyway. Expectation bias made it sound reaaally bad, because of your measurements.

Thing is, after a couple of days I realized: its still much better than onboard here in the office, and it actually does drive my 600 Ohm Beyers pretty much perfectly.

Now, it sounds really good!

 

[SilverEars]

Something interesting I'd like to share regarding expectation bias regarding our senses.

Anybody familiar with ASMR? If not, look it up on Youtube, and you will eventually figure out what it is. It's basically recordings that you hear prickly sounds and whispers from different sounds being produced, and supposedly helps you fall asleep(or relaxation I guess).

I had an interesting experience with these types of recordings. When they breath heavily during the whisper, I can feel actual breath of the whisper. I feel this moving air.

I know that this is all sound, and it seems my brain is tricking me that I'm actually feeling the breath just with sound. This is an interesting case of one sense effecting the other as an example of expectation bias. It's interesting how the brain wants you to feel something if all the triggers are there. It's almost like Pavlov's dog, the ring triggers auto-response. This breath I was feeling seemed so real...

In the same sense, why wouldn't the eyes effect your ears? Your mood, body conditions, and surroundings effect your hearing perception?

 

[SilverEars]

Something interesting I'd like to share regarding expectation bias regarding our senses.

Anybody familiar with ASMR? If not, look it up on Youtube, and you will eventually figure out what it is. It's basically recordings that you hear prickly sounds and whispers from different sounds being produced, and supposedly helps you fall asleep(or relaxation I guess).

I had an interesting experience with these types of recordings. When they breath heavily during the whisper, I can feel actual breath of the whisper. I feel this moving air.

I know that this is all sound, and it seems my brain is tricking me that I'm actually feeling the breath just with sound. This is an interesting case of one sense effecting the other as an example of expectation bias. It's interesting how the brain wants you to feel something if all the triggers are there. It's almost like Pavlov's dog, the ring triggers auto-response. This breath I was feeling seemed so real...

In the same sense, why wouldn't the eyes effect your ears? Your mood, body conditions, and surroundings effect your hearing perception?

It's interesting how certain breathing sounds(I guess depends on what specific low frequencies involved in the sound) differs, can trigger a feel of temperature in the brain. Like feeling of warmth due to particular breathing sounds. This provides some understanding of association of sounds to other senses, like when people refer to sound as warm, etc..

 

[bigshot]

It's associations. It's the same as synesthesia or associating smell with memory. It's basically expectation bias related to strong and very specific unrelated stimuli.

 

[colonelkernel8]

I actually stumbled upon this blog post today which is relevant: http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2009/04/dishonesty-of-sighted-audio-product.html?m=1

The AES paper this essentially summarizes is in the reference section of the post.

 

[SoundAndMotion]

Wow, I had to blow off the dust from this old post… but I wanted to answer your response.

2. Yes, I was talking about notes in practice, notes played by musicians performing musical instruments. Even the extreme case of a pipe organ going to 7kHz is still more than 3 octaves below 23kHz. Also, almost all western music, with the exception of some experimental sub-genres (such as Serialism for example), is tonal and therefore based on scales. Scales contain 8 notes, including the repeated octave, and all of them contain at least one black key (with the exception of C Major). So bigshot's interpretation was entirely normal and valid.

3. I agree, I am absolutely not advocating censoring facts, quite the opposite, but I am advocating being clearer about context and scale, considering the audience/membership here. A 5 times improvement might justifiably be called "immense" in certain contexts but is actually "minscule" to the point of ridiculous when compared to the roughly 1,000,000 times improvement required to hear jitter in music at say the 100 femto sec range. If scale/context were better appreciated, much audiophile myth, nonsense and snake oil would disappear!

2. I don’t plan to argue back and forth, so I’ll just say with all due respect to your background and experience, we need to agree to disagree about notes, for 3 reasons: 1-When I look in my 2 books on the physics of music or Google {frequencies of musical notes}, there is no limit of 4kHz or 7kHz and they list 12 “notes” per octave.There is a nice relationship between all “notes”: the frequency ratio is a nice 2^(1/12), so you get 12 notes within a frequency doubling (octave). I find tables such as this:

[hmm... can't paste image]

I find no search results that agree with you. That is not proof, by itself, but do you have a reference that agrees with you? Plus… 2-Just my colloquial, non-musician, lay person common sense says each key on a piano makes a “note”. I don’t accept the idea that 8 of the 12 keys per octave on the piano are notes, while the other 4 just make a sound that is not a “note”. 3- bigshot was clearly talking about notes between 20kHz and 23kHz, not saying that was too high a frequency range to call them notes. There are 2: the notes are E and F, which are scale notes. Even Maria from “Sound of Music” calls these notes“mi” and “fa”.
In my view, bigshot’s interpretation is neither normal nor valid. But your defense of him brings up the next point…

3. We seem to agree about the need for care in the language we use. We agree that “immense” or “immensely” is unnecessarily and inappropriately hyperbolic. Unfortunately, twice now you have mischaracterized what Amir said. He did not use “immense” to describe the amount of improvement, rather the ability of training to help produce “an” improvement. If you do a t-test and find that, say for example, an improvement between average abilities of 25% is significant for trained vs. untrained, then training provides a “significant” help, but perhaps not “immense”. Here your defense of bigshot is notable, since not only does he make so many errors (makes stuff up? poor recall?), but he also hides behind his unapologetic use of very sloppy language.

EDIT: just noticed, and want to point out that 23kHz is less than 2 octaves above 7kHz, NOT more than 3 octaves.

 

[bigshot]

Why are you talking about the number of notes in a musical scale? My point was that the difference that was being discussed was a tiny fraction of the range of human hearing. We can hear about nine octaves. (Oh no! Another number to quibble over!) A note or two above 20kHz doesn’t add up to a hill of beans.

By the way. Whose sock puppet account are you? You barely ever post here and you come in already attacking me. The same person in multiple accounts doesn’t make a consensus.

 

[SoundAndMotion]

You brought up the number of notes between 20kHz and 23kHz, which initiated an exchange between gregorio and me. If your point was only "the difference that was being discussed was a tiny fraction of the range of human hearing", I wouldn't have commented, but that was one of several specific mistakes that you combined in one post. I have no problem with "We can hear about nine octaves", since it is appropriately vague. It is when you state as fact certain specific incorrect "facts" that I notice. You do that often, but act as though you have knowledge you don't.
Sorry, I'm not a sock puppet. That would have been a nice way for you to dismiss the unpleasant criticisms, right? Didn't mean to attack you, but rather your posts. What other account do you think I have?

 

[gregorio]

2. I don’t plan to argue back and forth, so I’ll just say with all due respect to your background and experience, we need to agree to disagree about notes, for 3 reasons: 1-When I look in my 2 books on the physics of music or Google {frequencies of musical notes}, there is no limit of 4kHz or 7kHz and they list 12 “notes” per octave.There is a nice relationship between all “notes”: the frequency ratio is a nice 2^(1/12), so you get 12 notes within a frequency doubling (octave).
I find no search results that agree with you. That is not proof, by itself, but do you have a reference that agrees with you?
3. We seem to agree about the need for care in the language we use. We agree that “immense” or “immensely” is unnecessarily and inappropriately hyperbolic. Unfortunately, twice now you have mischaracterized what Amir said. He did not use “immense” to describe the amount of improvement, rather the ability of training to help produce “an” improvement.

EDIT: just noticed, and want to point out that 23kHz is less than 2 octaves above 7kHz, NOT more than 3 octaves.

2. It's not really a case of agreeing to disagree, in a sense you are correct but the reason you cannot find search results which agree with me is that you are searching for the wrong thing! You are searching for the physics of music and you need to be searching for the rules of composition. Western music is based on scales, most commonly the major and minor scales each of which comprise of seven notes (eight if you include the octave). Have you never heard of the major scales (Do, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Te, Do)? The notes for the major scale are always arranged with intervals of: Tone, Tone, Semi-Tone, Tone, Tone, Tone, Semi-Tone. There is a different order for all minor scales and that is what defines a major scale from a minor scale. Western harmony is based on these scales. The only scales where all the notes are all white keys are C Major and A minor, all the other 22 major and minor scales require the use of at least one black key.There is such a thing as a chromatic scale, which contains all the 12 semi-tones of the octave, but it's use is very rare and subject to special case rules which unless followed will break the harmony. I can't, off the top of my head, think of any pop/rock music which ever employs the chromatic scale (although there probably are some), virtually all pop/rock uses the major scales and sometimes the minor scales. By all means look up basic music theory but be warned, there's been 600 odd years of it and it can get quite complex.

3. Yes, without doubt hearing can very significantly be improved with training although quoting figures is rather abstract. Nevertheless 25% would be a significant improvement, 50% a very a significant improvement 100% could be described as an "immense" improvement but then what would you call the amount of improvement needed to hear the jitter of most modern devices which would require an improvement of 100,000% or more?

I was referring to more than 2 octaves above 4kHz, not 7kHz. You might find this instrument chart useful as it includes frequency.

Note that except for some grand cathedral organs, all other acoustic instruments are done by just over 4kHz. Also, please notice the notation, it would be un-readable at 23kHz, even just the notes presented in the cart are already unreadable. Music notation just isn't designed to deal with such high notes, because they are never written in music! Sure, you could notate such notes in theory but no one ever does in practise. I've been reading music as second nature since I was a teenager and even I'd have to sit and work the notation (all the ledger lines) of C8. You simply never come across notation higher than that and very rarely even that high.

G

 

[bigshot]

Sorry, I'm not a sock puppet.

People don't generally drop into a thread and forum out of thin air using a rarely used account and immediately start attacking regular posters. And if they were a newbie and disagreed with something, they wouldn't immediately attack, they would try offering evidence to show something is wrong. I don't walk into the house of someone I barely know and immediately start calling their wife and kids ugly. If someone does that, there is some history behind it. I've recently put some trolls on ignore. It wouldn't be surprising to me if they would create a sock to get around my ignore. That is my line of thinking.

Maybe I'm incorrect. Maybe you are just naturally rude and you're rude to everyone you encounter, even if you don't even know them. If that's the case, fine. I don't have to engage with you and you don't have to engage with me. That's fair isn't it?

Gregorio, do you happen to know the point where human ears stop perceiving sound as musical pitch and start perceiving it simply as high frequency sound pressure? I tried to look that up once and couldn't find anything on it. I would bet it's somewhere around 6-8kHz, but that is just a guess.

 

[SoundAndMotion]

People don't generally drop into a thread and forum out of thin air using a rarely used account and immediately start attacking regular posters. And if they were a newbie and disagreed with something, they wouldn't immediately attack, they would try offering evidence to show something is wrong. I don't walk into the house of someone I barely know and immediately start calling their wife and kids ugly. If someone does that, there is some history behind it. I've recently put some trolls on ignore. It wouldn't be surprising to me if they would create a sock to get around my ignore. That is my line of thinking.

Bigshot,

You have confused the real world with the forum world. For your analogy to hold, you have to stipulate that your “house” has see-through walls and enough windows in every wall for anyone to hear everything you say. I haven’t and wouldn’t call your family ugly. But when you state that your family is so beautiful (no problem for me) because they have won so many beauty pageants, and I point out that they were enrolled in many pageants, but haven’t won any of them, you think I have called your beautiful family ugly. Not cool. And not fair. It might not bother me (don’t know), except you use that fake “fact” to browbeat others with whom you disagree. I don’t know you personally in the real world, but I do know your online persona, Bigshot, in the forum world.
I see you live in the LA area, where I lived for 40 years. From my experience, I can say that it “wouldn’t be surprising to me” if you are a criminal, but without any single shred of evidence, it would be quite unreasonable and unfair. Ignore list? Puh-lease! That is not important to me. Your thinking is wrong.

Maybe I'm incorrect. Maybe you are just naturally rude and you're rude to everyone you encounter, even if you don't even know them. If that's the case, fine. I don't have to engage with you and you don't have to engage with me. That's fair isn't it?

No. I will feel free to engage your posts, when a positive or negative aspect provokes me to do so. I’m not “naturally rude” with anyone. In fact, I go out of my way to avoid it. But I don’t consider holding up a mirror, and pointing out falsehoods to be rude. I consider your browbeating others in your posts rude. I will agree to try very hard to confront your posts and not you personally. That’s fair, right?

Gregorio, do you happen to know the point where human ears stop perceiving sound as musical pitch and start perceiving it simply as high frequency sound pressure? I tried to look that up once and couldn't find anything on it. I would bet it's somewhere around 6-8kHz, but that is just a guess.

No need to guess, try it yourself. Do you have Audacity? It’s a free download. Create a chirp from, say, 5kHz to whatever you want. I first tried 10kHz to 18khz, 10k-15k, then 10k-12k and figured out: Either I’m old (true) and I can’t hear 18kHz, or my quick-and-dirty playback setup is lacking. I noticed 3 ranges: from 10k-12k, I hear pitch; from 12k-ca.15k, I hear something, wouldn’t call it “pressure”, but don’t have a better word, so it’s fine; 15k-18k, can’t hear anything.