[gregorio]

[1] RRod, my interest is to find out what kind of super audible content exists in typical commercially recorded music and how much of it there actually is. I'm not looking for extreme examples designed to favor ultrasonics. I want to experiment to find out for myself what super audible frequencies add to music.
[2] I'm interested is hearing for myself exactly what they are claiming makes such a difference.
[2a] Your technique for pitching the stuff above 20kHz down to be able to hear it is very interesting. I'd like to do that with typical music that contains ultrasonic content and see how important it really is. Specifically, I'm interested in finding out what the relative volume level is to the rest of the signal, and what those frequencies sound like pitched down. I'm looking for some perspective on this.

1. That entirely depends on the genre and how the music was recorded, what mic's were used and how close to the source sound they were placed. With an orchestral recording for example, mic'ed from an audience position, there would be nothing above 20kHz except unwanted noise/interference (in fact there would typically be little/nothing, besides noise, above about 16kHz). However, commercial orchestral recordings are not recorded from only an audience position, much more closely positioned "spot mics" are also employed and these mics can record some ultrasonic content from some orchestral instruments, although much of it is likely to be mechanical or other unwanted sound. How much ultrasonic content is in the final mix will depend on what those spot mic's picked-up and how much of those spot mic inputs have been mixed with the main (more distant) mics. Popular music is mostly recorded with close mic'ing and therefore we're likely to find more ultrasonic content but again, it depends on what mics were used and how those mic inputs have been processed.

2. Besides the fact it's inaudible anyway, you're not even going to be reproducing that ultrasonic content without some sort of super-tweeter setup (as I believe you use speakers predominantly).
2a. Pitch shifting might sound like a good idea, to get around the problem of both reproducing and hearing ultrasonic content but in my experience it's typically ineffective and misleading. Even using relatively expensive, sophisticated commercial pitch shifters, pitch shifting by a few semi-tones is transparent but beyond that, the audible artefacts increase. Pitch shift by 2 or more octaves, which is what's necessary, and you'll end-up with a very significant amount of artefacts. While some of those artefacts will likely sound obvious, others will be harmonically related and you won't be able to hear what's original signal and what's just pitch shifting artefact. In other words, using the pitch shifting approach is going to be at least somewhat misleading and likely, very misleading. The other potential approach is to slow the recording down, for example, play a 96kS/s file as a 48kS/s file (which some audio editors/DAWs will allow), this would effectively shift the pitch down by one octave and then only incur one additional octave of pitch-shifting artefacts instead of two. However, this too can be very misleading as short, almost transient length notes will sound more like sustained notes, a significantly different thing as far as human hearing perception is concerned. In short, there's no reliable way of knowing "what those frequencies sound like".

The HD Tracks charts surprised me because not only was there noise up there, you could clearly see the redbook roll off before the noise starts. That made me wonder if any of my SACDs actually contain any musical super audible frequencies at all.

It's certain that at least some (if not most) early SACDs were effectively just upsampled redbook. However, you also have to be careful with the statement "you could clearly see the redbook roll-off". Are you sure you're clearly seeing a redbook roll-off, are you sure it's not a mic roll-off, a synth or sampler roll-off, an EQ roll-off applied for aesthetic reasons or even the natural roll-off of the instrument/s? Most commercial mixes are a simultaneous combination of all these types of inputs/channels and it can be virtually impossible to tell the difference between this and a rebook roll-off (44.1kS/s anti-alias filter). More than one engineer I know of has fallen foul of this sort of problem and been accused of just upsampling redbook, when in fact that was not the case.

G

 

[gregorio]

[1] As I said before; there it takes about a decade before any new gear/options begin to be actually adopted in "everyday" use;
[2] the second commercially available microphone intended also for music recoerding reaching 100kHz is not even a year old -
[3] and commercially available DSD256 / PCM384 (and above ) "recorders/soundcards/ADC+DAC combos" can still be counted on the fingers of a single hand.

1. If you did say it before, then it was nonsense then too! New professional gear/options is often adopted very quickly, sometimes it's not adopted at all and sometimes it's only adopted for very specific purposes but it's rare that a new technology/gear takes a decade to become adopted.

2. And why do you think that is? If, as you repeatedly claim, vinyl has excellent ultrasonic response why are we only recently starting to see mics with such extended freq responses? Surely there would have been a demand for such mics for decades and being analogue technology, it's been possible to make such mics for many years. The reason is, that no one in the industry has given a damn about ultrasonic freqs, because no one can hear them. However, that's changed recently; high sample rate material has become more available to consumers AND some vocal consumers are spectrally analysing the content and posting it publicly for all to see and therefore there is some demand to demonstrate some visual evidence that it is actually high sample rate material and not just upsampled. It's all essentially a circular argument/marketing, we need high ultrasonic range mics to justify the existence of high sample rates and we need high sample rates to record everything that a high ultrasonic range mic might capture, all because audiophiles can be convinced to pay significantly more for high sample rate material!

3. Again, why do you think that is? The only studios that need DSD256 or PCM384 converters are those which work extensively for the few audiophile labels who specialise (and charge a premium) for such high sample rate material but it's a tiny market and there's absolutely no audible benefit/improvement, so there's only a few models available and a small number of potential customers. Compare this to the change from pro ADCs recording in 16bit to 24bit and within just a couple of years or so all the pro audio manufacturers had moved to 24bit, there were dozens of 24bit models and 16bit ADCs were no longer even available (except to the burgeoning pro-sumer/amateur market). And, just to be clear, although it all looks like the latest technological advancement, that's just marketing! The big, splashy 11.2MHz sampling rate (DSD256) is not even vaguely new, pretty much all of those 24bit pro ADCs which became available at the end of the 1990's were using a 11.2MHz sampling rate! The only sense in which it's new, is in the sense of it being a new marketing gimmick for gullible audiophiles!! In fact, during the early 2000's many/most high-end pro ADC/DACs were actually using an initial sampling rate of 22.4MHz (double). I'm not sure if we'll see this as a consumer format for a while though, they'll probably want to milk the audiophile market for as much as they can get from DSD256 or PCM384 before they try and milk those same audiophiles again with another doubling of the sample rate.

G

 

[bigshot]

I'm only interested in discussing specific examples that we can all listen to and analyze ourselves. I'm not interested in discussing tangents in theory. There's too much of that going on in other threads.

The call is out for samples of commercially recorded music that contains significant ultrasonic content. If anyone has a good example they would like to share, let me know.

 

[Arpiben]

Why don't you start with the ones here:
http://www.2l.no/hires/
If not "enough" ultrasonic, please define better what is for you significant content?

 

[castleofargh]

I'm only interested in discussing specific examples that we can all listen to and analyze ourselves. I'm not interested in discussing tangents in theory. There's too much of that going on in other threads.

The call is out for samples of commercially recorded music that contains significant ultrasonic content. If anyone has a good example they would like to share, let me know.

for this the purists of recording straight to DSD like I'm guessing @analogsurviver might be, could actually come handy. maybe even binaural albums if the mics handle ultrasonic content without rolling off too fast. those are contents less likely to be processed with 3mics per instrument and a different EQ per track that may sometimes give weird final results at frequencies where we can't hear crap.
or even just one instrument, one mic and that's it. then we can try to interpret the pretty shapes more easily I'm guessing.

 

[bigshot]

Why don't you start with the ones here:
http://www.2l.no/hires/
If not "enough" ultrasonic, please define better what is for you significant content?

Most of the 24/96 files I’ve looked at barely have any ultrasonic content. I’m suspecting that classical isn’t the best place to look. I think close miked percussion is the best bet, but I’m open to anything people have checked out and know that it has stuff that can be pitched down and heard.

Castle, when I asked him for binaural tracks, he got up on a soapbox, put on a tour guide hat and proceeded to point me at stuff that wasn’t even binaural. I don’t think he has any clue. He just talks a lot.

 

[gregorio]

[1] for this the purists of recording straight to DSD like I'm guessing @analogsurviver might be, could actually come handy.
[2] maybe even binaural albums if the mics handle ultrasonic content without rolling off too fast.

1. Contrary to our "friend", DSD would actually be a poor choice of format in this regard. Just where our ultrasonic harmonic content is reducing in level, the noise floor of DSD is increasing (due to the large amounts of required noise-shaped dither). Some of what's "up there" in the ultrasonic range is going to get buried in the dither noise-floor. PCM would be a better choice.

2. The point of binaural is to capture the sound from the position of the audience. So, no mic inputs an inch away from a snare drum and hi-hi, no mic inputs a couple of feet from the flutes, a harpsichord or anything else. The mics in a typical binaural setup will be several/many meters away and most/all of the ultrasonics will have been absorbed before they even reach the binaural mics.

G

 

[gregorio]

I’m suspecting that classical isn’t the best place to look. I think close miked percussion is the best bet, but I’m open to anything people have checked out and know that it has stuff that can be pitched down and heard.

Am I on your ignore list bigshot? I've already told you this, pages ago!

G

 

[bigshot]

Not on ignore, but I skim past stuff that doesn't look like what I'm discussing. I'm looking for 24/96 files that contain significant ultrasonic content. I want to play around with them and pitch them down so I can find out how much ultrasonic content there is and what it sounds like. The file with the War of the Worlds ultrasonic sound has piqued my interest for this subject. Now that I've heard what ultrasonic noise sounds like, I want to hear what super audible frequencies in music sounds like.

 

[Arpiben]

Most of the 24/96 files I’ve looked at barely have any ultrasonic content. I’m suspecting that classical isn’t the best place to look. I think close miked percussion is the best bet, but I’m open to anything people have checked out and know that it has stuff that can be pitched down and heard.

Castle, when I asked him for binaural tracks, he got up on a soapbox, put on a tour guide hat and proceeded to point me at stuff that wasn’t even binaural. I don’t think he has any clue. He just talks a lot.

Rather than pitching down did you try sensing ultrasonics by LPF@20kHz?
Then It should be easier to "feel" the presence or lack of them by comparing the LPF filtered file with the original one.

 

[bigshot]

Oh, I'm quite sure I can't sense them. I just want to know what they are. The HD Tracks examples were buzzing noise. I'm interested to hear what kinds of other sounds exist up there. It's like sending a deep sea submarine down into the Mariana Trench to see what weird creatures live there.

Everyone talks and argues and replies and argues again about ultrasonics. I want to hear what we're talking about. Maybe I'm the only one who is interested in practical reality. Everyone else seems content to remain entirely in theory. They may be right, but I'd still like to hear it for myself.

I'm also kind of curious if anyone can actually point to a recording and say, "This one has significant ultrasonic content." There is an element of emperor's new clothes to this too, and I'd like to flush that out and see it in the light of day. I may never get an example offered up. The folks that say that high sampling rates are important may have never bothered to check if those ultra high frequencies exit. But that tells me what I need to know. I never got an example of a current amp that was audibly colored either, and that told me that no one really knew what they were talking about when they swore one existed.

I've put up numerous examples of 24/96 that contains nothing but horrible noise above 20kHz. It's put up or shut up time for someone to prove there's actually something musical up there. I've got no preference. Either way this comes out, I'm going to learn something I didn't know.

 

[castleofargh]

with the entire upper treble range amounting mostly to some vague impression of "air", it would be surprising if ultrasonic content participated at any significant musical level even if it was clearly perceived(which it isn't). we've skinned that cat with 20 different methods and it's still the same dead cat starting to smell real bad. some keep claiming that they saw it move, but those guys only have one thing in common, they're never in a hurry to actually demonstrate that it wasn't just in their head.

 

[Arpiben]

@bigshot
Understood. Not all HD tracks are buzzy noise. You have free powerful tools for sound pattern analysis such as:
https://www.sonicvisualiser.org/
The drawback is that you will need time and some knowledge to properly parameter it.
Now as you know better than me, one thing is having ultrasonic content in a file then what is remaining at your listening position is another story.

 

[gregorio]

[1] Not on ignore, but I skim past stuff that doesn't look like what I'm discussing.
[2] I want to play around with them and pitch them down so I can find out how much ultrasonic content there is and what it sounds like. ... Now that I've heard what ultrasonic noise sounds like ...

1. You're making statements and asking the exact same questions that I've just addressed a few posts earlier. You're apparently skimming past stuff that's exactly what you're discussing!
2. But have you heard what ultrasonic noise sounds like? How much of what you've heard is actual pitch-shifted ultrasonic content and how much is just pitch-shifting artefacts? I covered this in some detail in my response to you in post #91 (specifically, point "2a").

Everyone talks and argues and replies and argues again about ultrasonics. [1] I want to hear what we're talking about. [2] Maybe I'm the only one who is interested in practical reality. Everyone else seems content to remain entirely in theory.
[3] I'm also kind of curious if anyone can actually point to a recording and say, "This one has significant ultrasonic content."

1. Again, as per my post #91, there's no reliable way of doing that. You can't hear ultrasonic content and by pitch-shifting down two or more octaves you're going to end up with a great deal of pitch-shifting artefacts.
2. If you'd read my posts, you wouldn't be making this statement. I am and have been more interested in the "practical reality" than you, because I have to actually work with this stuff and have done for nearly 20 years.
3. I can't post any of the numerous high sample rate recordings I've made but I (and one or two others) have clearly indicated what sort of recordings you need to be looking for.

G

 

[jiiteepee]

Not on ignore, but I skim past stuff that doesn't look like what I'm discussing. I'm looking for 24/96 files that contain significant ultrasonic content. I want to play around with them and pitch them down so I can find out how much ultrasonic content there is and what it sounds like. The file with the War of the Worlds ultrasonic sound has piqued my interest for this subject. Now that I've heard what ultrasonic noise sounds like, I want to hear what super audible frequencies in music sounds like.

If you work with WAV files then you could use this easy method to bring HF content down to human hearable range :

The wav file header specifies the sampling frequency at which to play back the audio. A hex editor should be able to simply change this to a smaller value to lower all of the frequencies. Then a high pass filter could isolate just the frequencies that had been ultrasonic.