[castleofargh]

A 'normal listening situation' varies a rather lot. For me it's a CIEM that sits a few mm away from my ear drum. As the paper points out, broader firing speakers smear the timing far more than the audible limit... that's not a limit of the human ear, it's a limit of your rig!

I included that link as it shows some pretty crazy time audibility and speculated that might come into play in explaining the EEG results so consistently... Far more substance than the rebuttals so far! If you take the time to read the post this is pretty clear. Now, what exactly have I misunderstood?

And no, I don't really care about allowable phase variance on a 20k sinusoid, it doesn't relate to max audibility in humans, nor does it somehow circumvent Shanon's law. If you want to talk about 'misuse' that one is WAY further off topic lol.

Sure, listening situations vary a lot, but if it ever looks like 2 out of phase side by side frontal sound sources outputting the same square wave signal, call me.
There is no point in introducing yet another situation that isn't remotely realistic, to use data from that as an argument for everything else. It's just not good practice and is probably not at all conclusive in the way you implied it to be.
The more important point or as important IMO is that you shouldn't just casually associate numbers cherry-picked wherever from whatever experiment, on the basis that they show the same unit. Otherwise, I could show that when light particles hit me at nearly 300000 km/s, I remain mostly fine with that, therefore I have no reason to worry about a truck hitting me at a mere 50km/h.
What you did with that paper is not as dramatic, but it's similarly grounded in bad logic. We happen to have another very similar false case for this, which is MQA using a paper about interaural just noticeable delays(a test made to get the very best possible result out of it, instead of realistic music listening, but still factual for that particular testing). They took that time value and, like you, misused it to argue a need for more than CD's sample rate. Which was wrong because outside interaural discrimination (which is used to determine the horizontal provenance of a sound), humans aren't nearly as discerning and the JND phase then goes way up. But it also was wrong because it was used like you with a formula that does not in fact define the time resolution of a 16/44.1kHz file or any PCM resolutions.
Again, just picking numbers and giving them a new life because they happen to share a common unit is not serious work. Can I notice 7Hz on my headphone? Not at my typical listening level, at least. Can I notice the ground shaking at 7Hz and moving everything by half a meter or more? Yeah, I sure can. Let's try to do better.

Your presentation of the human ear is IMO a case for demonstrating that the ultrasonic content, if of influence, is unlikely to be of hearing influence. The audible high frequency range is already quite packed at the entrance, having to share a more limited number of hair cells(maybe why our sensitivity at high freqs is lower from the get go? I'm not entirely sure). They're also the hair cells that get damaged the most as we age or experience damaging levels of sounds (being at the entrance, and being for similar amplitude, resonating with higher energy, bad engineering if you ask me^_^, for what some think to be quite important).

I couldn't find pure tone audiograms by age going above 8kHz. Standard medical tests are logically more concerned about speech than anything else, and it doesn't require an expensive rig. But nowadays, I know it exists and is being used in some research. I think we nonetheless can confidently infer that it's not going well for high and ultrasonic frequencies as we age. Which again is completely in line with the physical model of an ear and hearing sensitivity in general.
There are other papers testing ultrasounds for skin sensation and one for eye wobbling and probably more. One of those might be a better cause for brain trigger due to sensory inputs. Because the ear has to start with some serious handicaps in that area, then age comes to close the coffin on that hypothesis.


The paper, about unconscious blablah, might be correct about the Alpha wave readings and it being caused by the difference in ultrasonic frequencies. But pretty much anything after that is opportunistic guessing turned into a narrative in favor of ultrasounds. I don't remember the details, but when this came out and was discussed at length here, I did go and read the reference papers and then some more on brain waves and interpretations(some stuff is near incredible BTW). About linking some emotions or focus levels with alpha waves in the brain, my takeaway was that it's way more complicated than the ultrasound paper even vaguely and cautiously made it to be. Caution, you didn't exactly keep when saying something like:

There exists objective data that not only humans not only hear the difference in music sampled above 44 kHz, and that we enjoy it more too!

We enjoy it so much more that no conscious testing manages to validate that we do in the very same research. So much joy and relaxation that it does not manifest in any testable way... It's the NFT of relaxation, worthless. Tentative correlation is the most the paper does with that.


I have to be fair and admit that I'm picking on some of the things that trouble me most, but in your long post, I agree with and find reasonable a lot of what you wrote. I don't try to mean that you're only talking total nonsense, but you do take liberties with the data that you probably shouldn't. As mentioned, there are a bunch of other papers that aren't nearly as optimistic or opportunistic(gotta please the funding overlords and get results no matter what). I could take similar liberties as you do, go pick up that old research between SACD, CD and MP3 where MP3 was slightly preferred in blind testing (not statistically important of course), and make up a story to support the benefits of MP3. The moment we let our own desire influence our interpretation of data, we're no longer doing science. Seeking confirmation and finding it in the vast population of research isn't that hard. But are we ever correct with such an approach?

TBH, I never got convinced by any of the rationals around higher frequency content for better timing. The minimum delays we pick up are, in accepted hearing models, not based on actual discrimination at those speeds, but on analysis of events that allow inference of such timings by the brain.
For example, our hair cells aren't able to trigger as fast as the highest frequencies we can hear. For lower frequencies there is a direct relation between triggering and frequency, on top of tonotopic activation of cells validating a specific area of resonance that itself meant a certain frequency for the signal. But for higher freqs, it's only the location that resonates most with a signal that ends up interpreted as a higher tone the actual signal isn't sent to neurons in any way other than magnitude of stimulation in a given area.
Another example would be the interaural delay discrimination, we again rapidly run out of recycling speed for the cells and neurons and the tiny delays we notice are more likely about getting a certain signal pattern that the brain can somehow analyze to figure out from peak amplitude, etc, that each ear is getting a somewhat similar signal with a delay. It has no relation AFAIK, with higher frequency content allowing a smaller timing.
For ultrasounds and ideas of transient stuff, at best I can agree that at a given time it would provide higher total energy to also have ultrasounds. I agree because that's physics, not opinions or hearing. But is that energy detected? Apparently not, given how blind tests don't validate such an idea. Could it still be enough of a difference for some more neurons to get triggered? IDK. There is a lot going on that ends up nowhere. The brain, again as far as I know based on modern models, receives way more data than it is capable of handling, and the accepted idea is that the brain effectively uses a bunch of tricks to discard most data and focus on dealing with what it deems relevant. There is a thread out there in the section about some possible local cleverness for neurons where some signal supposed to make it trigger its own impulse, doesn't, based on some rules theorized to be linked to number of occurrences and what not(super deep stuff). I don't know how much of such activity reaches the brain to still end up dead in the water on its way to some final area or conscience or automated reactions, or whatever subconscious concept we use (not very popular in the last decade apparently). But I wonder if maybe that kind of ultimately rejected data might also create visible readings on brain wave patterns? If that's possible, then it's even more work to try and make actual sense of what's measured. I've seen 2 rather long videos on youtube(World Science Festival probably, at least for one of them), on various people involved with decrypting the brain(one has a fairly solid system to help paralyzed people talk, the vocabulary isn't amazeballz, but it's something). Anyway, that's a domain of study where a year does make a difference, so while I seem to spit on the paper you linked, I'm actually very curious and optimistic about similar lines of work(hopefully for something a little more important than "why should we care about ultrasounds in music?").

I think there is enough research to agree that ultrasounds can be detected in some ways, but arguing that it has a positive impact on music is more heavily reliant on wishful thinking than it is on actual research, and we kind of all know why if we're honest about it. Marketing+audiophile philosophy+personal desire to be special and notice stuff that most don't+non-test that audiophile call critical listening tests. Those I think are more than enough to explain why people grasp at any paper straw if it means hires is bettererer in any, and I mean any, way. The monetary incentive on research is about 100% skewed toward trying to find a difference, and a beneficial one at that, because a giant industry is behind it, while 3 guys with a beer belly are behind saying that as far as we know, 44 or 48kHz handles everything it needs to handle.
And yet, we have so little to show in favor of hires. That alone is almost enough to convince me that it's all BS if I'm being honest.
It's a weird thing really where being able to do something becomes a need to do it for reasons TBD. We don't have giant hobbyist groups pushing for TVs with the spectrum for birds or mantis shrimps, we'd like even better dynamic range and some color accuracy because we basically all clearly and demonstrably notice when it's improved, but there is no push for UV wide TVs. That would be stupid and dangerous, but you get the idea, better timing of the picture, better whatever phase discrimination for important stuff we'll invent as the marketing guys get creative with it.

 

[bigshot]

The only time that HD audio is preferred is in sighted tests. I'm sorry to say this but... Blind or it doesn't count. Subjective "likes" based on sighted comparisons only apply to one person's subconscious preferences. They don't apply to anyone else who might have different biases, and the differences they're reporting have nothing to do with the sound itself. Square waves have even less to do with subjective likes.

No need for charts and diagrams. Cut to the chase. Take your favorite music in HD. Correctly bump it down to 16/44.1. Level match. Listen to both BLIND on your home audio system however you normally listen to music... long samples, short samples... it doesn't matter. All that matters is you not know which is which. Then do fifty comparisons and chart which one you preferred. If you are able to score better than random chance, then I'll talk with you about it. But I don't see any point wasting time reading and blathering and reading blather about alpha waves and square waves and brain waves and stuff that has nothing to do with listening to recorded music in the home.

Psychological theorizing is a rabbit hole for pointless, endless discussions. Fidelity is a matter of physics not psychology. And the easiest way to discern which sound is better than another sound is to do a blind test. Not thinking up crackpot theories to explain phenomenon that hasn't even been established yet.

 

[bigshot]

Either way, what's your explanation for the consistent, measurable differences in brain activity shown in the half dozen studies linked? Coincidence?

Irritation? If you jab a steak knife into your foot, I bet your brain lights up like a Christmas tree! But the brain activity from jabbing a knife in your foot doesn't mean that you really enjoyed your steak.

 

[Bret Halford]

Sure, listening situations vary a lot, but if it ever looks like 2 out of phase side by side frontal sound sources outputting the same square wave signal, call me.

There is no point in introducing yet another situation that isn't remotely realistic, to use data from that as an argument for everything else. It's just not good practice and is probably not at all conclusive in the way you implied it to be.

The more important point or as important IMO is that you shouldn't just casually associate numbers cherry-picked wherever from whatever experiment, on the basis that they show the same unit. Otherwise, I could show that when light particles hit me at nearly 300000 km/s, I remain mostly fine with that, therefore I have no reason to worry about a truck hitting me at a mere 50km/h.

What you did with that paper is not as dramatic, but it's similarly grounded in bad logic. We happen to have another very similar false case for this, which is MQA using a paper about interaural just noticeable delays(a test made to get the very best possible result out of it, instead of realistic music listening, but still factual for that particular testing). They took that time value and, like you, misused it to argue a need for more than CD's sample rate. Which was wrong because outside interaural discrimination (which is used to determine the horizontal provenance of a sound), humans aren't nearly as discerning and the JND phase then goes way up. But it also was wrong because it was used like you with a formula that does not in fact define the time resolution of a 16/44.1kHz file or any PCM resolutions.

Again, just picking numbers and giving them a new life because they happen to share a common unit is not serious work. Can I notice 7Hz on my headphone? Not at my typical listening level, at least. Can I notice the ground shaking at 7Hz and moving everything by half a meter or more? Yeah, I sure can. Let's try to do better.

You’re on a site called Head Fi that specializes in people putting speakers right next to or even inside of their ears. Just because your boomer 2 channel doesn’t cut it, doesn’t mean it’s not useful to gauge timing detection for humans in idealized conditions. Accordingly I think to call your first argument here a ‘stretch’ would be generous!

The link that quantifies time errors for a 20 kHz sinusoid is derived for (and only valid for) a 20 kHz sinusoid. Higher frequencies will of course have steeper crossover slopes and need more resolution to qualify. The authors note that for Redbook this is indeed the worst case scenario as any higher frequencies will be filtered out. As far as allowable phase error and its relation to bit depth. It’s just reinforcing that for an adequately sampled signal (2*fs) you get complete info, it’s not claiming that you can replicate a transient signal, waveform or (even worse) spike that has timing periods of that same duration. Shannon’s theorem is absolutely applicable here and anywhere you want to extract information from a signal.

Indeed, the folks over at ‘Audio-Troll’ clearly identify the assumption of max 20 kHz audibility as a premise. As such, when fielded in rebuttal to observed ultrasonics, this is a textbook example of assuming the premise in your argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question). That is an actual example of ‘bad logic’ which you assert but don’t substantiate. Does the lady protest too much?

More generally, when you find yourself citing something that claims time resolution is independent of the sampling frequency and this disqualifies any general discussion of signals, well your appeal to cherry picking seems an awful lot like projection to me

JFC, did you just make me defend MQA by proxy lol? Shame on you!

Your presentation of the human ear is IMO a case for demonstrating that the ultrasonic content, if of influence, is unlikely to be of hearing influence. The audible high frequency range is already quite packed at the entrance, having to share a more limited number of hair cells(maybe why our sensitivity at high freqs is lower from the get go? I'm not entirely sure). They're also the hair cells that get damaged the most as we age or experience damaging levels of sounds (being at the entrance, and being for similar amplitude, resonating with higher energy, bad engineering if you ask me^_^, for what some think to be quite important).



I couldn't find pure tone audiograms by age going above 8kHz. Standard medical tests are logically more concerned about speech than anything else, and it doesn't require an expensive rig. But nowadays, I know it exists and is being used in some research. I think we nonetheless can confidently infer that it's not going well for high and ultrasonic frequencies as we age. Which again is completely in line with the physical model of an ear and hearing sensitivity in general.

There are other papers testing ultrasounds for skin sensation and one for eye wobbling and probably more. One of those might be a better cause for brain trigger due to sensory inputs. Because the ear has to start with some serious handicaps in that area, then age comes to close the coffin on that hypothesis.

These are conscious tests (subject is isolated and reports test tone when audible), so they don’t speak to the EEG data whatsoever. If you’re still fixating on the timing paper, age certainly a factor, but as noted in the timing paper published/reviewed by Boson even subjects well into their 40s showed intense ability for time discrimination… even a ‘cherry picked’ data point is certainly better than nothing like you’ve contributed here.

For your education, the reason most such tests end around 8kHz is not only because it’s not terribly useful for speech, it’s very, very difficult to generate pure tone signals above that as the probe location will begin to produce canal resonance in very similar ways to IEM measurement couplers for instance (by total coincidence, 8k is effectively the standard ‘resonance’ frequency for placement).

The paper, about unconscious blablah, might be correct about the Alpha wave readings and it being caused by the difference in ultrasonic frequencies. But pretty much anything after that is opportunistic guessing turned into a narrative in favor of ultrasounds. I don't remember the details, but when this came out and was discussed at length here, I did go and read the reference papers and then some more on brain waves and interpretations(some stuff is near incredible BTW). About linking some emotions or focus levels with alpha waves in the brain, my takeaway was that it's way more complicated than the ultrasound paper even vaguely and cautiously made it to be. Caution, you didn't exactly keep when saying something like:

We enjoy it so much more that no conscious testing manages to validate that we do in the very same research. So much joy and relaxation that it does not manifest in any testable way... It's the NFT of relaxation, worthless. Tentative correlation is the most the paper does with that.

I have to be fair and admit that I'm picking on some of the things that trouble me most, but in your long post, I agree with and find reasonable a lot of what you wrote. I don't try to mean that you're only talking total nonsense, but you do take liberties with the data that you probably shouldn't. As mentioned, there are a bunch of other papers that aren't nearly as optimistic or opportunistic(gotta please the funding overlords and get results no matter what). I could take similar liberties as you do, go pick up that old research between SACD, CD and MP3 where MP3 was slightly preferred in blind testing (not statistically important of course), and make up a story to support the benefits of MP3. The moment we let our own desire influence our interpretation of data, we're no longer doing science. Seeking confirmation and finding it in the vast population of research isn't that hard. But are we ever correct with such an approach?

I’m sure you and your strawman are very happy together! I suppose when you can’t quote my actual post, you’ll just make up nonsense like this huh? Very scientific…

I chose to writeup and share the OP with you folks precisely because blind testing discussion has been done to absolute death here. You concede yourself the coupling is likely, having such an obviously emotional response about the mechanism makes you look very silly, particularly when demanding peer review levels of editorial caution in my posting!

But certainly, if you happen to remember any actual arguments or data points to the contrary, please do share them!

TBH, I never got convinced by any of the rationals around higher frequency content for better timing. The minimum delays we pick up are, in accepted hearing models, not based on actual discrimination at those speeds, but on analysis of events that allow inference of such timings by the brain.

For example, our hair cells aren't able to trigger as fast as the highest frequencies we can hear. For lower frequencies there is a direct relation between triggering and frequency, on top of tonotopic activation of cells validating a specific area of resonance that itself meant a certain frequency for the signal. But for higher freqs, it's only the location that resonates most with a signal that ends up interpreted as a higher tone the actual signal isn't sent to neurons in any way other than magnitude of stimulation in a given area.

Another example would be the interaural delay discrimination, we again rapidly run out of recycling speed for the cells and neurons and the tiny delays we notice are more likely about getting a certain signal pattern that the brain can somehow analyze to figure out from peak amplitude, etc, that each ear is getting a somewhat similar signal with a delay. It has no relation AFAIK, with higher frequency content allowing a smaller timing.

For ultrasounds and ideas of transient stuff, at best I can agree that at a given time it would provide higher total energy to also have ultrasounds. I agree because that's physics, not opinions or hearing. But is that energy detected? Apparently not, given how blind tests don't validate such an idea. Could it still be enough of a difference for some more neurons to get triggered? IDK. There is a lot going on that ends up nowhere. The brain, again as far as I know based on modern models, receives way more data than it is capable of handling, and the accepted idea is that the brain effectively uses a bunch of tricks to discard most data and focus on dealing with what it deems relevant. There is a thread out there in the section about some possible local cleverness for neurons where some signal supposed to make it trigger its own impulse, doesn't, based on some rules theorized to be linked to number of occurrences and what not(super deep stuff). I don't know how much of such activity reaches the brain to still end up dead in the water on its way to some final area or conscience or automated reactions, or whatever subconscious concept we use (not very popular in the last decade apparently). But I wonder if maybe that kind of ultimately rejected data might also create visible readings on brain wave patterns? If that's possible, then it's even more work to try and make actual sense of what's measured. I've seen 2 rather long videos on youtube(World Science Festival probably, at least for one of them), on various people involved with decrypting the brain(one has a fairly solid system to help paralyzed people talk, the vocabulary isn't amazeballz, but it's something). Anyway, that's a domain of study where a year does make a difference, so while I seem to spit on the paper you linked, I'm actually very curious and optimistic about similar lines of work(hopefully for something a little more important than "why should we care about ultrasounds in music?").

I think there is enough research to agree that ultrasounds can be detected in some ways, but arguing that it has a positive impact on music is more heavily reliant on wishful thinking than it is on actual research, and we kind of all know why if we're honest about it. Marketing+audiophile philosophy+personal desire to be special and notice stuff that most don't+non-test that audiophile call critical listening tests. Those I think are more than enough to explain why people grasp at any paper straw if it means hires is bettererer in any, and I mean any, way. The monetary incentive on research is about 100% skewed toward trying to find a difference, and a beneficial one at that, because a giant industry is behind it, while 3 guys with a beer belly are behind saying that as far as we know, 44 or 48kHz handles everything it needs to handle.

And yet, we have so little to show in favor of hires. That alone is almost enough to convince me that it's all BS if I'm being honest.

It's a weird thing really where being able to do something becomes a need to do it for reasons TBD. We don't have giant hobbyist groups pushing for TVs with the spectrum for birds or mantis shrimps, we'd like even better dynamic range and some color accuracy because we basically all clearly and demonstrably notice when it's improved, but there is no push for UV wide TVs. That would be stupid and dangerous, but you get the idea, better timing of the picture, better whatever phase discrimination for important stuff we'll invent as the marketing guys get creative with it.

We’re not talking about several neurons… again your language here is laced with emotion and hyperbole and it really muddles the point I think you’re trying to make.

Certainly you can doubt my speculation on the coupling mechanisms (and I certainly never presented them as anything beyond speculative). But you're vacillating back and forth on whether you acknowledge it occurs at all which seems deliberately obtuse, given the multiple peer reviewed citations provided (not to mention the ‘I can’t remember’ hand waving in response lol!).

I am deeply skeptical that any other sense could detect such high frequencies except sight. Is that what you bitter ‘scientists’ in the cricket sub mean by visual detection lol? As far as I can tell, touch isn’t even close, we top out at about 150 Hz there (3 orders of magnitude too low!), but who knows maybe there's a totally different coupling mechanisms at ultrasonic frequencies. I must admit even Google couldn’t help me with the max frequency response of scent and taste LMAO.

The whole conversation strikes me as eerily similar to reading old print arguments about sub bass. Certainly bone conduction kicks in somewhere below 50Hz and we don’t truly ‘hear’ much down there in the same sense I think you are claiming for ultrasonics. Yet the boomers that claimed that headphones shouldn’t extend down to 20 Hz aren’t posting much anymore… given you agree there’s an observation evident in the brain and elsewhere, I’m really unsure why the sense used is the hill you want to die on, but it’s your call.

The lack of conscious detection doesn’t belittle the importance of the information. Indeed, as noted already, survival data like threat location is passed through the lower, subconscious brain first for a reason. The lack of conscious awareness as to why you are running precisely away from that Tiger you didn’t even realize was a Tiger yet is unimportant compared to your continued survival.

As for so little in favor… Qobuz ‘Studio’ is like an extra 3 USD per month vs. Spotify and modern downloads are almost all available in HD at no extra charge when such a master/remaster is. It’s basically impossible to find a dongle/dac/cell phone that can’t output at least 192 kHz. I guess maybe that engineer's pay is better than I give it credit for, but that cost (sunk or other) is so minimal and the barrier to entry otherwise is non-existent that it feels like an absolute no-brainer (no EEG required!).

By all means if it gives you joy, keep listening to your CDs, Laserdiscs, Cassettes, 8 tracks or Records (definitely no SACD though!), but I find this type of research fascinating… if you don’t, nobody’s forcing you to read my posts <shrug>

 

[bigshot]

Can you get the idea across in fewer words. All those paragraphs are daunting. If the first few had info that drew me in, I’d read that much, but all that theoretical stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with listening to commercial music in the home makes my eyes glaze. I’m interested in home audio, not theoretical science. There may be others who enjoy “what ifs” but I have other things I can be doing. Just letting you know before I give up.

 

[Bret Halford]

Can you get the idea across in fewer words. All those paragraphs are daunting. If the first few had info that drew me in, I’d read that much, but all that theoretical stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with listening to commercial music in the home makes my eyes glaze. I’m interested in home audio, not theoretical science. There may be others who enjoy “what ifs” but I have other things I can be doing. Just letting you know before I give up.

Don't let the door hit you on the way out

 

[bigshot]

Don’t fall too much in love with your own voice.

 

[WoodyLuvr]

@Bret Halford - How does such schoolboy-like antics support your position(s) and counterargument(s)? How is such mockery and foolery conducive to/for this conversation?

It will be very hard to take you seriously now as you have presented yourself rather poorly in showing a lack of maturity required to partake in adult discussions. Too bad as you had some interesting thoughts worth discussing in a friendly, scientific manner.

The only strawman we see here is you good sir... all the while as you tilt at windmills too! You yourself are creating and inciting hostility, why? Is it because we are all not immediately fully agreeing with you nor fully embracing your presentation? @castleofargh politely indulged your thread and long-winded posts by respectively reading and thoughtfully responding to them without resorting to making any personal attacks or being impolite. Don't see the reason for you to be disrespectful to him simply because he disagrees with some parts of your arguments/statements. It seems that once logically challenged you resorted to being flippant, rude, and cocky and then proceeded to bury us in more unneeded subject matter and confusing jabberwocky which completely clouds the subject at hand. What a drag. There was no reason why you couldn't have been more brief and concise in retorting. Many of us don't have the appetite, nor patience, for dealing with such antics.

Well yet another member that most likely will be put on "ignored"; sad.

 

[Bret Halford]

@Bret Halford - How does such schoolboy-like antics support your position(s) and counterargument(s)? How is such mockery and foolery conducive to/for this conversation?

It will be very hard to take you seriously now as you have presented yourself rather poorly in showing a lack of maturity required to partake in adult discussions. Too bad as you had some interesting thoughts worth discussing in a friendly, scientific manner.

The only strawman we see here is you good sir... all the while as you tilt at windmills too! You yourself are creating and inciting hostility, why? Is it because we are all not immediately fully agreeing with you nor fully embracing your presentation? @castleofargh politely indulged your thread and long-winded posts by respectively reading and thoughtfully responding to them without resorting to making any personal attacks or being impolite. Don't see the reason for you to be disrespectful to him simply because he disagrees with some parts of your arguments/statements. It seems that once logically challenged you resorted to being flippant, rude, and cocky and then proceeded to bury us in more unneeded subject matter and confusing jabberwocky which completely clouds the subject at hand. What a drag. There was no reason why you couldn't have been more brief and concise in retorting. Many of us don't have the appetite, nor patience, for dealing with such antics.

Well yet another member that most likely will be put on "ignored"; sad.

Don’t fall too much in love with your own voice.

And we're back to ad hominems... so much science happening here, you'll forgive me for sneaking in some levity.

Or don't, I don't care, Head Fi has a great ignore feature.

 

[tjzurlaaa]

Capturing 6.7 µs period signal is unrelated to capturing 6.7 µs delay. The standard 16/44 format is perfectly adequate to capture not only µs delay but also ns and even ps. From https://troll-audio.com/articles/time-resolution-of-digital-audio/


For some actual example:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/why...t-bad-for-music.716822/page-187#post-16783791

Super interesting

 

[WoodyLuvr]

And we're back to ad hominems... so much science happening here, you'll forgive me for sneaking in some levity.

Or don't, I don't care, Head Fi has a great ignore feature.

Crying foul?! There couldn't be a clearer case of the pot calling the kettle black than this...

You yourself resorted to ad hominem antics from your very first post opening the thread. And don't play innocent, you were picking a fight from the get-go. You sailed into port under false flags (façade of a curious scientific exploration) and then fired a nasty broadside. Your clever tongue and cheek remarks weren't meant, nor received, in levity. They were never given in good humor but rather as condescending personal insults from the very beginning.

Here are just but a few examples:

Hello brave Head Fi Scientists! I would like to acknowledge the consistent efforts from the core group in this particular sub forum in pushing for objective standards here and particularly excellent discussion on the virtue of double blind tests for audio.

You’re on a site called Head Fi that specializes in people putting speakers right next to or even inside of their ears. Just because your boomer 2 channel doesn’t cut it, doesn’t mean it’s not useful to gauge timing detection for humans in idealized conditions. Accordingly I think to call your first argument here a ‘stretch’ would be generous!

I’m sure you and your strawman are very happy together! I suppose when you can’t quote my actual post, you’ll just make up nonsense like this huh? Very scientific…

Is that what you bitter ‘scientists’ in the cricket sub mean by visual detection lol?

I chose to writeup and share the OP with you folks precisely because blind testing discussion has been done to absolute death here. You concede yourself the coupling is likely, having such an obviously emotional response about the mechanism makes you look very silly, particularly when demanding peer review levels of editorial caution in my posting!

You sir are the one coming off as being overly dramatic, emotional, and resorting to personal attacks... making you the only one looking silly in this thread. Which is a real shame as the subject was very interesting and it could have been a nice conversation if your approach and response would have only been different and more conducive to healthy discourse.

Engage like an adult or be ignored. Fair warning.

 

[Elegiac]

I pulled all my ear hair out yesterday. Bit gross how it starts growing there as you get older. It doesn't make an audible difference; I think I'd need big bushy ear hair that joined up with a moustache. Like some 1800's gentleman. I've been going above and beyond on my ear hygiene since I got heavy into headphones though. My hearing's always at peak physical optimisation.

 

[Bret Halford]

Crying foul?! There couldn't be a clearer case of the pot calling the kettle black than this...

You yourself resorted to ad hominem antics from your very first post opening the thread. And don't play innocent, you were picking a fight from the get-go. You sailed into port under false flags (façade of a curious scientific exploration) and then fired a nasty broadside. Your clever tongue and cheek remarks weren't meant, nor received, in levity. They were never given in good humor but rather as condescending personal insults from the very beginning.

Here are just but a few examples:










You sir are the one coming off as being overly dramatic, emotional, and resorting to personal attacks... making you the only one looking silly in this thread. Which is a real shame as the subject was very interesting and it could have been a nice conversation if your approach and response would have only been different and more conducive to healthy discourse.

Engage like an adult or be ignored. Fair warning.

Look at that first quote. Do you think I'm being sarcastic? I went to exceptional lengths to allow for the inevitable emotional knee jerk reaction.

The rest of your quotes are after 2 pages of ad hominems, attacks on the source, and begging the question (and this under constant accusation of me being the one using bad logic). Literally the first responder retconned his response it was so obviously prejudiced.

Context matters. And I don't see you complaining about it anywhere else... who knows, maybe they're all already on your impressive ignore list you keep threatening. Please feel free to ignore me if it'll help you feel better lol.

 

[castleofargh]

You’re on a site called Head Fi that specializes in people putting speakers right next to or even inside of their ears. Just because your boomer 2 channel doesn’t cut it, doesn’t mean it’s not useful to gauge timing detection for humans in idealized conditions. Accordingly I think to call your first argument here a ‘stretch’ would be generous!

The link that quantifies time errors for a 20 kHz sinusoid is derived for (and only valid for) a 20 kHz sinusoid. Higher frequencies will of course have steeper crossover slopes and need more resolution to qualify. The authors note that for Redbook this is indeed the worst case scenario as any higher frequencies will be filtered out. As far as allowable phase error and its relation to bit depth. It’s just reinforcing that for an adequately sampled signal (2*fs) you get complete info, it’s not claiming that you can replicate a transient signal, waveform or (even worse) spike that has timing periods of that same duration. Shannon’s theorem is absolutely applicable here and anywhere you want to extract information from a signal.

Indeed, the folks over at ‘Audio-Troll’ clearly identify the assumption of max 20 kHz audibility as a premise. As such, when fielded in rebuttal to observed ultrasonics, this is a textbook example of assuming the premise in your argument (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question). That is an actual example of ‘bad logic’ which you assert but don’t substantiate. Does the lady protest too much?

More generally, when you find yourself citing something that claims time resolution is independent of the sampling frequency and this disqualifies any general discussion of signals, well your appeal to cherry picking seems an awful lot like projection to me

JFC, did you just make me defend MQA by proxy lol? Shame on you!





These are conscious tests (subject is isolated and reports test tone when audible), so they don’t speak to the EEG data whatsoever. If you’re still fixating on the timing paper, age certainly a factor, but as noted in the timing paper published/reviewed by Boson even subjects well into their 40s showed intense ability for time discrimination… even a ‘cherry picked’ data point is certainly better than nothing like you’ve contributed here.

For your education, the reason most such tests end around 8kHz is not only because it’s not terribly useful for speech, it’s very, very difficult to generate pure tone signals above that as the probe location will begin to produce canal resonance in very similar ways to IEM measurement couplers for instance (by total coincidence, 8k is effectively the standard ‘resonance’ frequency for placement).



I’m sure you and your strawman are very happy together! I suppose when you can’t quote my actual post, you’ll just make up nonsense like this huh? Very scientific…

I chose to writeup and share the OP with you folks precisely because blind testing discussion has been done to absolute death here. You concede yourself the coupling is likely, having such an obviously emotional response about the mechanism makes you look very silly, particularly when demanding peer review levels of editorial caution in my posting!

But certainly, if you happen to remember any actual arguments or data points to the contrary, please do share them!




We’re not talking about several neurons… again your language here is laced with emotion and hyperbole and it really muddles the point I think you’re trying to make.

Certainly you can doubt my speculation on the coupling mechanisms (and I certainly never presented them as anything beyond speculative). But you're vacillating back and forth on whether you acknowledge it occurs at all which seems deliberately obtuse, given the multiple peer reviewed citations provided (not to mention the ‘I can’t remember’ hand waving in response lol!).

I am deeply skeptical that any other sense could detect such high frequencies except sight. Is that what you bitter ‘scientists’ in the cricket sub mean by visual detection lol? As far as I can tell, touch isn’t even close, we top out at about 150 Hz there (3 orders of magnitude too low!), but who knows maybe there's a totally different coupling mechanisms at ultrasonic frequencies. I must admit even Google couldn’t help me with the max frequency response of scent and taste LMAO.

The whole conversation strikes me as eerily similar to reading old print arguments about sub bass. Certainly bone conduction kicks in somewhere below 50Hz and we don’t truly ‘hear’ much down there in the same sense I think you are claiming for ultrasonics. Yet the boomers that claimed that headphones shouldn’t extend down to 20 Hz aren’t posting much anymore… given you agree there’s an observation evident in the brain and elsewhere, I’m really unsure why the sense used is the hill you want to die on, but it’s your call.

The lack of conscious detection doesn’t belittle the importance of the information. Indeed, as noted already, survival data like threat location is passed through the lower, subconscious brain first for a reason. The lack of conscious awareness as to why you are running precisely away from that Tiger you didn’t even realize was a Tiger yet is unimportant compared to your continued survival.

As for so little in favor… Qobuz ‘Studio’ is like an extra 3 USD per month vs. Spotify and modern downloads are almost all available in HD at no extra charge when such a master/remaster is. It’s basically impossible to find a dongle/dac/cell phone that can’t output at least 192 kHz. I guess maybe that engineer's pay is better than I give it credit for, but that cost (sunk or other) is so minimal and the barrier to entry otherwise is non-existent that it feels like an absolute no-brainer (no EEG required!).

By all means if it gives you joy, keep listening to your CDs, Laserdiscs, Cassettes, 8 tracks or Records (definitely no SACD though!), but I find this type of research fascinating… if you don’t, nobody’s forcing you to read my posts <shrug>

I did hold you to high standards because you looked like you could do it (although, you're much, much better at critical thinking when data goes against what you want it to be. But hey, I'm like that too).

I insist on the paper about phase having no place here. I didn't develop because I thought it was quite obvious why, but here we go:
It's an ultra specific experiment, the conclusions as such are just as specific. Sometimes it's easy to see why we can extend some conclusions to wider ranges of conditions, but often you can't and would have to demonstrate that they apply to your conditions. That experiment is very clearly about signal interference between the 2 transducers. What's perceived is not a delay, but the mess in the signal caused by that phase shift. Claiming that's direct delay perception is a stretch.
Let me imagine a new experiment to make my point clearer. Let's do the same with 2 times one tone, and when we notice the amplitude change through interference or maybe some modulation of sort (would that happen if it's the same tone?... anyway). I then declare that the phase delay for what we first notice relates to the highest frequency a human can detect. You readily find that rational absurd, right? But You're using the same logical fallacy when presenting that paper:

Indeed, we can similarly find objective evidence of human hearing WAY above 20 kHz by focusing on timing differences rather than music or other 'informational' signals.

Do you see it, or is it just that much harder to be a critic of your own ideas?

If you want stuff in the μs, we have plenty of work on ITD. Most showed a minimum in the 10μs delay between ears being perceived(I guess it proves we can hear 100kHz, according to your logical fallacy of fluid permutations between any time and heard frequencies).
That's achieved when simply using test tones. Some tests went lower with tailored signals. But that too is a specific research that does not align or validate your beliefs in any way shape or form. In fact, those experiments clearly show that discrimination for ITDs sucks pond water when using high frequency and people achieve the lowest time with a signal around 1kHz. I'm obviously taking this example to oppose your logic, I'm not trying to claim anything beyond that about the need for high frequency or what can or cannot be heard in general.

The lack of conscious detection doesn’t belittle the importance of the information.

Something can obviously have no perceivable immediate impact while causing some more or less long term impact of sort (like uncle Putin's special tea, or UV on our skin). I agree, of course, there can be more than near immediate conscious impact. But if there is no clearly conscious impact even long term that can be demonstrated to actually do something, then how do we tell if it's good, bad, or a thing at all?
The brain wave paper is a minuscule step toward that, but let's not kid ourselves with the conclusions you decided to draw from it in your first post. It's allegedly tied to ultrasounds, but ultrasounds alone do nothing. The impact (whatever that is) occurs after a known time, but listening tests including that delay are inconclusive. Is there a lasting effect? Who knows?
All the paper suggests is that if you listen to hires while wearing a silly hairnet with sensors, a screen with your alpha wave reading will show more red somewhere, and that's all you get.

IMO, open a window, hold a pet, get your legs up, those have real demonstrated positive impact on your music listening experience and general health.

 

[VNandor]

Interesting distinction, but seems like a semantic plea. Do you honestly think that the human brain can detect timing to that level but is totally oblivious as soon as it becomes periodic?

It is not just semantic, a transient by itself is going to have a different different spectrum than a periodic signal that repeats the same transient over and over. You could hear a "transient" by itself if it's played once but you likely won't hear that very same transient if it was played hundreds of thousands of times a second over and over because one signal will contain frequencies that the ear is sensitive to while the other will not. Yes, the brain (or rather, the ears) will be totally oblivious to periodic transients if that signal doesn't contain anything in the audible frequency range.

The time resolution of digital audio is limited by the bit depth, not the sampling rate. Sampling a signal at higher sampling rates allow for higher bandwidth, not higher timing resolution. Sampling a signal more often than twice the highest sampling rate won't net a higher time resolution, however, increasing the bit depth does. I know a site called "troll-audio" does not exactly inspire confidence, especially if you have no way to verify if the math is correct. Here's an other site with a better name that delves into the intricacies of the time resolution of digital audio.

Either way, what's your explanation for the consistent, measurable differences in brain activity shown in the half dozen studies linked? Coincidence?

Unfortunately, while I understand how digital audio and sound works, I don't know anything about brain waves. Something I know is that ultrasonic sound can indeed affect us, we just can't hear them. My theory is it probably has to do something with that. On that note, do you honestly think of differences in brain waves as some proof that "hi-res" is audibly better than CD quality?

That paper has absolutely no business being in this thread, as that delay cannot be linked to anything in a normal music listening situation. OP misunderstood it big time before misusing the value as you mentioned. Not that I'm a giant fan of the other papers and the interpretations made of them, but at least they are related to the thread's title.

If I understand the paper correctly, it also does not account for the comb filtering effect that's caused by emitting the same sound from slightly displaced sources (when d is not zero) which is a very likely cause for the audible differences.
Whoops, the paper actually discusses this and the attenuation is measured to be somewhere between 0.2~0.5dB which could be heard.