[frodeni]

I read through that study (well, I scanned it)...... and I agree with you that it was in general sloppy and had lots of procedural flaws.
It was also specifically intended to identify whether there was a correlation between sample rate and spatial resolution.
(And the results, as credible - or not - as we may consider them, at least suggested that there was no strong correlation to be found there.)

However, check out the section entitled "additional experiment into overall sound quality" (bottom page 13).
In that section, they presented a very limited number of test subjects (4) with samples of music at 48k and 96k.
After being presented with samples at both sample rates, the subjects were presented with unknown samples, and asked to identify what sample rate they were listening to.
This was a somewhat modified ABX sort of test.

The results of that test, and the conclusions based on them, were interesting....
One subject was correct 16 times out of 17 trials.
And two of the subjects were correct 61% and 68% of the time respectively.

In fact, while the presenters of the test concluded that they had failed to demonstrate any difference in perceived spatial positioning accuracy.....
They also concluded that the differences between 96k and 48k were "clearly audible".... to at least some listeners.

From their conclusions:
"While there is little doubt that subject 1 reliably heard a difference between HDDA and 48 kHz reproduction, results of subject 2 and 3 need
closer evaluation. The probability that the results obtained from both subjects were randomly guessed is 6%. It is reasonable to conclude that
even in the 96 kHz to 48 kHz sampling rate comparison there was a perceivable difference."

I would have to say that using that test as "proof" that there is no significance between 48k and 96k in terms of spatial cues,
while ignoring the fact that it also concluded that there were other "clearly audible differences" would be a sort of cherry picking

(Bear in mind that, in order to establish that "humanly audible differences exist", we only have to produce a single test subject for which this is provably true.)

Thanks. I missed that. Sloppy just became fraudulent.

It is funny how the lack of real scientific proof for this supposedly proven knowledge is utterly missing, and that nobody in here seem to be able to point to concrete research supporting their claim. Yet there is a substantial level of screaming about a lot of stuff supposedly being knowledge.

Guys, great if there is real scientific proof, but this fraud, is a fraud. This simply does not stick up to a through review. Not even a quick and simple one. Throwing this kind of "proof" at us, simply prove that you cannot read a scientific paper, as a scientist.

Sure, you might be right, but if one contestant gets 16 out of 17 correct, which is a 94,1% hit-rate, please explain the conclusion. Remember the number of contestants, before you answer.

I was using the term with the casual definition, but if you want to get technical about it, Google is your friend... "difference between hypothesis and theory"

In scientific terms; A hypothesis is either a suggested explanation for an observable phenomenon, or a reasoned prediction of a possible causal correlation among multiple phenomena. In science, a theory is a tested, well-substantiated, unifying explanation for a set of verified, proven factors.

http://www.oakton.edu/user/4/billtong/eas100/scientificmethod.htm
Note number 4

The belief that things that have been tested and determined to be inaudible actually are inaudible is a theory. Making up reasons how you might possibly be able to hear something below that threshold is a hypothesis. Raising that to the level of a theory would require a whole lot of testing that validates it. So far, no tests I know of support that idea- only cherry picking and sales pitch.

Well, who ever this guy is, he has some serious issues with the philosophy of science. The big question is how he supposedly proves anything, and what constitutes a proven theory in science. He would flunk any test at almost any university, presenting this.

Also, if this guy has written ANY paper at all, I cannot find a single accepted work of his, in any scientific database. Please point me to his work. If there is any.

I guess asking for the proof, as in real scientific form, suddenly became more pressing.

Does anyone have any work, that they have actually vetted themselves, that they can point to? To prove this claim that mankind know this high def audio to be all but waste.

I guess claiming that, suddenly got a lot harder, once you got real scientists in here? Doesn't it? What is next? Banning the scientist for being too scientific, in a science forum?

The great irony is, that what is thrown as accusation at writers in this forum, actually plagues the papers that are being presented as proof. The exact same thing. How come people does not see the flaw in work at which they point to as proof? It is not like they can argue that they did not know about it.

 

[bigshot]

Well, who ever this guy is, he has some serious issues with the philosophy of science. The big question is how he supposedly proves anything, and what constitutes a proven theory in science. He would flunk any test at almost any university, presenting this.

Who are you referring to? You’re throwing up a whole bunch of smoke, but I can’t figure out what you’re saying.

Have you checked out the links in my sig file? They might explain things for you. They’re pretty clear and straightforward.

 

[KeithEmo]

It's not that "it doesn't work" - only that the constraints of the theory aren't what many people seem to think.

Assuming I start off with a few points, I can draw a lot of lines that pass through them.
So first I limit my solutions to lines that can represent audio signals - they must move from left to right and never backtrack (the "time arrow" moves from left to right).
There are still an awful lot of lines that can pass through those points since they can zig zag up and down any way I please.
So let's band limit our line - which means that we're requiring it to be smooth (sharp corners represent higher frequencies).
However, we still have a bunch of options.
However, if we limit it to CONTINUOUS SINE WAVES, only one valid option remains - so we have gotten back our original signal.

Essentially, in non-math terms, if we remove the requirement that a continuous sine wave be involved, we don't have enough information to get back the original signal.
Note that it gets a little fuzzy here because, at least in theory, and odd squiggly CAN be described as a sum of sine wave components.

The short answer to your question is that there are all sorts of errors involved.
There are actual numerical errors - where number shave been rounded and so precision has been lost.
There are also various "uncertainty errors" - such as the rule that you CANNOT have a sharp filter that doesn't introduce time errors.
This isn't exactly an error - it's more like a constraint. Any filter that can be used to limit bandwidth MUST introduce time errors.
(You can hope to design filters where the errors cancel each other out - but you cannot avoid the errors themselves.)

Also, to put it bluntly, the errors can at least be minimized, and some programs do a better job of that than others.

[QUOTE="KeithEmo, post: 13825887, member: 403988"

1)
No.
16/44.1 audio can do 5 uS timing differences easily ON CONTINUOUS SINE WAVES.
(and not so well under some other conditions and with some other waveforms.)

I admit I don't understand this. Why does it only work on continuous sine waves? What goes wrong with other signals?

I tested this on Audacity. I created pink noise at 96 kHz. Then I duplicated it and delayed the duplicate 1 sample, 10.4 µs. Then I downsampled the original and duplicated noises to 44.1 kHz. Now, of course the waveform of the delayed noise differs from the original, but that's deceiving and doesn't correspont the analog signal after DAC. Now, I upsampled them back to 96 kHz and the waveforms look identical again, only bandlimited. The delayed one is clearly one sample behind the original as expected. So, I delay the original by one sample and invert it. I then sum the signals to get the difference which is the error signal. There is some quiet noise with most of it's energy on ultrasonic range. I downsample the error signal and the level of it is about -88 dBFS. While very quiet, the error should be zero. I don't know what is going on. What if I have been wrong all this time about digital audio and ALL my 1500 CDs actually sound very bad!! HORRIBLE!!! DO SOMETHING!!! Is even 192 kHz enough??!!?[/QUOTE]

 

[KeithEmo]

If you want to be picky, there are more "interesting things" about that paper.
For example, four of their seven subjects were employees of the company who manufactured the speakers they used (I might guess that they convinced the company they worked for to donate the speakers).
It also seems obvious, after reading a bit more carefully, that the intent was not at all "to study whether there was an audible difference between high-res and regular files".
The purpose was a rather narrow and scholarly experiment about one very specific aspect of the difference..... perceived position vs time resolution.
And they seemed to have proven their hypothesis there by delivering a "no result" (they demonstrated that they were unable to validate their original theory).
Also note that they were unable to pursue several avenues of research due to equipment limitations and time constraints.
(They were unable to follow up on one question because their DAC refused to function reliably at all.)
They were clearly constrained by time, budget, and equipment availability.
(It reads to me like a term paper...... and not like a "major industry study".)

Honestly, from how that last conclusion was added, it seemed to me as if they considered it to be more of a confirmation of an obvious expectation that as something they considered to be a significant result.
I also find it VERY suggestive that a single subject scored so much better than the others; it would be very interesting to find out why.
Intuitively, I am inclined to wonder if there is something to the claim put forth in some other papers that there is a "training aspect" involved....
(By which I mean that people who are trained in terms of what specific differences to look for are much more likely to notice them.)
This is quite common in many other areas..... so I don't find it especially controversial to suggest that it might apply here as well.

I find this sort of experiment addendum amazing by how suspicious it is. to put it there to hang at the end of the paper for the lolz. "oh BTW we could have proved something important, but sorry, research those days only gets funds for stuff where we debunk ourselves, discoveries and positive results are so overrated". ^_^
I don't know if they had the most unfortunate circumstances, or if a second follow up paper was projected but they found some flaw in their testing method or never got funded. but I would have lost my mind if I had been with them at the time.

 

[frodeni]

Who are you referring to? You’re throwing up a whole bunch of smoke, but I can’t figure out what you’re saying.

Have you checked out the links in my sig file? They might explain things for you. They’re pretty clear and straightforward.

This is getting dumb. Who did you quote?

Has he written any paper, that has passed any real scrutiny? Can you please point me to his work?

Did you just Google that or is this someone you actually know and a piece of work you actually vetted?

 

[bigshot]

I quoted Google search. As far as I know he isn't a he.

Is Miriam Webster a person? https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/difference-between-hypothesis-and-theory-usage

Nyquist had a theory. So did Einstein, Galileo and Darwin. We operate on theories every single day of our lives. To quote Miriam (what a lovely name!) quoting Kenneth R. Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University, a theory "doesn’t mean a hunch or a guess. A theory is a system of explanations that ties together a whole bunch of facts. It not only explains those facts, but predicts what you ought to find from other observations and experiments.”

I'm happy I could help you learn something new about science today! You're welcome!

Have you checked out the links in my sig file yet? Great info there.

 

[reginalb]

Thanks. I missed that. Sloppy just became fraudulent.

It is funny how the lack of real scientific proof for this supposedly proven knowledge is utterly missing, and that nobody in here seem to be able to point to concrete research supporting their claim. Yet there is a substantial level of screaming about a lot of stuff supposedly being knowledge.

Guys, great if there is real scientific proof, but this fraud, is a fraud. This simply does not stick up to a through review. Not even a quick and simple one. Throwing this kind of "proof" at us, simply prove that you cannot read a scientific paper, as a scientist.

Sure, you might be right, but if one contestant gets 16 out of 17 correct, which is a 94,1% hit-rate, please explain the conclusion. Remember the number of contestants, before you answer.



Well, who ever this guy is, he has some serious issues with the philosophy of science. The big question is how he supposedly proves anything, and what constitutes a proven theory in science. He would flunk any test at almost any university, presenting this.

Also, if this guy has written ANY paper at all, I cannot find a single accepted work of his, in any scientific database. Please point me to his work. If there is any.

I guess asking for the proof, as in real scientific form, suddenly became more pressing.

Does anyone have any work, that they have actually vetted themselves, that they can point to? To prove this claim that mankind know this high def audio to be all but waste.

I guess claiming that, suddenly got a lot harder, once you got real scientists in here? Doesn't it? What is next? Banning the scientist for being too scientific, in a science forum?

The great irony is, that what is thrown as accusation at writers in this forum, actually plagues the papers that are being presented as proof. The exact same thing. How come people does not see the flaw in work at which they point to as proof? It is not like they can argue that they did not know about it.

Not sure exactly what you're saying. But anyway, you can't prove anything in science. You disprove or fail to disprove.

 

[pinnahertz]

You bring up a very good point.... which is that the relevance of a lot of this depends on the market you're talking about. (And the marketing folks who are working to sell this stuff often try to ignore or cause their customers to ignore these questions.)

First, for many of those people, the difference between standard and high-res files probably isn't going to make any immediate difference.
However, as you alluded to, re-masters often sound better for other reasons, which are audible even on mediocre equipment.

I'd modify that: re-masters often sound different from the original. Better is often in question.

Therefore, we might at least hope than an interest in "high-quality remasters" might encourage better re-masters in general.
(If you want to pursue that point, the majority of listeners probably listen to their music playing from their phone on $20 ear buds.)

Second, many of us actually purchase our music, and keep it in our collection.
Therefore, many of those people who currently own a mediocre sounding AVR may someday own better equipment, on which the difference will be audible.

Careful, now... you're jumping right back into the same kind of issue. "mediocre sounding AVR"? Assuming any cheap AVR sounds different from an expensive one? How about we just not go there. Audible sound quality differences in hardware is a separate thread for sure, and will be chock-full of biased opinions.

I'm sure glad I have 2000 CDs instead of 2000 albums from iTunes..... even if the lossy compression used by iTunes might have sounded OK on the equipment I had twenty years ago.
Therefore it does make sense to avoid investing a lot of money on something that you'll end up having to buy again later... or to buy the better version as "insurance".
(This equation will be very different for people who use a streaming service rather than actually own their music.)

I get what you're saying, but the implications are all wrong. You imply that 20 year old gear sounds so bad you couldn't here lossy codec artifacts, AND that iTunes 256K AAC is not transparent. I have to disagree with both in general, though of course anyone can find specific contrary examples. If the gear was good 20 years ago and still operating in spec, and if the music was done well to begin with...and so on....

We must be at least aware that the results of any of this will never by binary, they'll be at least 3D data cube in which trends can be seen.

Third, you're really asking the difference between "better for everyone" and "better for a few select audiophiles"?
(Of course, from a sales point of view, the sellers would like everyone to assume they'll hear a difference.)

Sort of, but what I'm really asking is for some statistically valid trend that it's repeatably better for any group, and under practically valid conditions, so no anechoic chambers, no DIRAC pulses, square waves, and a test group that follows a good population cross-section. We need to know first "if", then we can work on "why".

 

[bigshot]

I've done a direct A/B switched line level matched comparison between my AVR and my Oppo HA-1 and I couldn't hear a bit of difference. People assume that high end stuff sounds better just because it measures better. They invest themselves and their money into believing that. But it isn't necessarily true. It all goes back to the classic audiophool dodge... if you can't hear a difference then either your ears or your equipment is faulty... Yeah, and that suit of clothes the emperor is wearing sure does look fine.

 

[frodeni]

Not sure exactly what you're saying. But anyway, you can't prove anything in science. You disprove or fail to disprove.

That comes down to epistemology. How can you know that you cannot know anything? We all need to accept that cause and effect has its limits, unless we want to go insane.

As to what I am saying, is that they ignored their true positive data, and ignored following it up. The conclusion is clearly in violation with the data. That raises the biggest flag that can be raised, in any science.

I quoted Google search. As far as I know he isn't a he.

Is Miriam Webster a person? https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/difference-between-hypothesis-and-theory-usage

Nyquist had a theory. So did Einstein, Galileo and Darwin. We operate on theories every single day of our lives. To quote Miriam (what a lovely name!) quoting Kenneth R. Miller, a cell biologist at Brown University, a theory "doesn’t mean a hunch or a guess. A theory is a system of explanations that ties together a whole bunch of facts. It not only explains those facts, but predicts what you ought to find from other observations and experiments.”

I'm happy I could help you learn something new about science today! You're welcome!

Have you checked out the links in my sig file yet? Great info there.

Sure, you quoted one source and cited it to another. Keep up the good work! Looking more carefully into to it, they are even contradicting each other. Great work buddy.

Then you probably googled and found something in the Post. Then you claim to quote Miriam, citing the posts as link. You are just trying to make a point, with absolutely no real understanding about the topic at hand.

I am not schooled in the tradition of theory making, and would not even dare to quote what you just did, as I have no real knowledge of the field of theory building. That is usually only taught at the Phd level, if at all. Throwing quotes you do not comprehend in the slightest, simply does not make you a teacher. What I just learned, is that you just twice used quotes and citations wrong, which would clearly indicate that you have never written any paper at any real university. Let us hope that is the case, for the sake of science. Also, you google to find your info, and by throwing results out of Google, you think highly of yourself as teaching people. Demanding recognition. That is what I just learned.

I also learned not to expect any quote to be cited correctly. If demanding people to provide anything beyond throwing quotes from a google search, I apparently cannot expect people to elaborate on what they quote, or to have vetted the content, as they simply do not comprehend what they boast about at all.

Also, you quoted a news article, citing in all essence other news media, and a lady promoting her book for high school usage. You did not quote any academic paper on the matter. If you had done so, you would find the topic of what constitutes a theory or a hypothesis, or what is the right epistemology or ontology to be quite a contested field in the sciences. For very good reasons.

As for your sig file, I actually checked them links ages ago. They are not helping much either. Particularly as they violates the ethics set by most scientific institutes. There is a ton of others concerns as well, that these guys earns by their behavior. To me, this appear to be the equivalent of alternative science.

As for science and knowledge, this falls inline with a lot of the crowd in this place. It really makes me wonder what we really do know, and what is really the state in the healthy part of science, on the topic at hand. In-fact, by the all the research pointed to, even the phony ones, they all indicate that some people seem to be able to hear differences, not the opposite, as people frequently claim in this very forum.

But let us be fair, this is by no means a slam dunk. Not for all people. We are closing in on the border of what can be heard. And for my part, if I use a crappy USB source, I cannot even tell the difference between 16/44.1 and lossy compression. I just cannot explain why. The more I spend thinking about possible causes, being given papers like lately, I just do not see the due diligence throughout the gear chain. Not to move us forward, providing low cost high performance gear.

 

[71 dB]

It's not that "it doesn't work" - only that the constraints of the theory aren't what many people seem to think.

Assuming I start off with a few points, I can draw a lot of lines that pass through them.
So first I limit my solutions to lines that can represent audio signals - they must move from left to right and never backtrack (the "time arrow" moves from left to right).
There are still an awful lot of lines that can pass through those points since they can zig zag up and down any way I please.
So let's band limit our line - which means that we're requiring it to be smooth (sharp corners represent higher frequencies).
However, we still have a bunch of options.
However, if we limit it to CONTINUOUS SINE WAVES, only one valid option remains - so we have gotten back our original signal.

Essentially, in non-math terms, if we remove the requirement that a continuous sine wave be involved, we don't have enough information to get back the original signal.
Note that it gets a little fuzzy here because, at least in theory, and odd squiggly CAN be described as a sum of sine wave components.

The short answer to your question is that there are all sorts of errors involved.
There are actual numerical errors - where number shave been rounded and so precision has been lost.
There are also various "uncertainty errors" - such as the rule that you CANNOT have a sharp filter that doesn't introduce time errors.
This isn't exactly an error - it's more like a constraint. Any filter that can be used to limit bandwidth MUST introduce time errors.
(You can hope to design filters where the errors cancel each other out - but you cannot avoid the errors themselves.)

Also, to put it bluntly, the errors can at least be minimized, and some programs do a better job of that than others.

I feel sick and tired today, so it's hard to think. The analog signal is a sum of sample-weighted sinc-functions with various delays. I don't get why this works only for sine waves.
Time errors shouldn't be dependent on delay. Why would a filter cause different time error for delayed signal? Doesn't make sense. That would require time-variant filters. Maybe it's all because the sinc -functions are actually windowed versions. In that case we can increase window size and reduce the error, make it as small as we want (need).

 

[Don Hills]

...
Essentially, in non-math terms, if we remove the requirement that a continuous sine wave be involved, we don't have enough information to get back the original signal.
Note that it gets a little fuzzy here because, at least in theory, and odd squiggly CAN be described as a sum of sine wave components.
...

... so Nyquist and Shannon were wrong then?

 

[frodeni]

I've done a direct A/B switched line level matched comparison between my AVR and my Oppo HA-1 and I couldn't hear a bit of difference. People assume that high end stuff sounds better just because it measures better. They invest themselves and their money into believing that. But it isn't necessarily true. It all goes back to the classic audiophool dodge... if you can't hear a difference then either your ears or your equipment is faulty... Yeah, and that suit of clothes the emperor is wearing sure does look fine.

Sure, you did. What do you mean by AVR?

I happen to also use the HA-1. It is not the easiest beast to tame, and given what is needed for it, that probably applies to most DACs. Let's just say that I hear plenty of differences using mine.

What does that mean. Well it means that you claim to hear no difference as compared to some "AVR", while I could tell you about clear and distinct sonic traits that differs clearly, by the type of setup, using mine. I am not dismissing your experience based on mine, but your are dismissing mine, based on your experience.

Which just enforces the impression given as of late.

 

[KeithEmo]

I'm not jumping back into anything.....

Someone specifically asked whether there would be any reason whatsoever for someone to purchase higher quality content "even if they couldn't hear the difference on their current equipment".
My reply is that it still makes sense to purchase it, even if you don't hear any difference on your current equipment, IF you expect that you might later have equipment on which you WILL hear a difference.
(Note that I didn't say anything about price; although I will certainly assert that some AVRs sound noticeably inferior to others.... I wasn't the one who suggested "AVRs" as the example )

I also make no assertion that ALL 20 year old equipment is inferior.... although I would also note that significant advances in ADC and DAC technology have certainly occurred.
While avoiding generalities, I would suggest that it's not unreasonable to suspect that at least some equipment available today is better than ANY available 20 years ago.
I would also assert that many of the tests I see quoted repeatedly were performed on equipment that I consider suspect... and none of them seemed to have thoroughly verified the capabilities of the equipment they used.
When you perform an experiment, one of the first validation steps is to confirm and document that your equipment can in fact deliver the test stimuli it is intended to test.
So, if you want to test whether people can hear 30 kHz, you start by using a test microphone to confirm that you have 30 kHz actually physically present at the test location (and present in your test content).

Errrrr..... I disagree with your final assertion entirely.

If you want to ask "whether high-res audio makes sense for the average consumer" then by all means lets look at statistics cubes.
HOWEVER, if we're talking about a scientific claim about whether "the difference is audible", a SINGLE well documented and repeatable example is enough to establish that it is.
(If a single human can reliably hear a difference, on a single file, on a single combination of equipment, then "it is audible by human beings".)
Then, once that "if" is established, we would want to know both "why" and "how many".

Of course, we absolutely require the best possible cross section of humans.......
(If it turns out that only left handed midget harp players from Burundi can hear it, we wouldn't want to miss that by not including at least one of them.)
From the data so far, it seems quite possible that "audiophiles who are certain they can hear a difference" may NOT be the best possible subjects.
(I might suggest running a few tests using school-age children as test subjects - since younger humans have been documented as generally having better high-frequency hearing than older humans.)

I'd modify that: re-masters often sound different from the original. Better is often in question.
Careful, now... you're jumping right back into the same kind of issue. "mediocre sounding AVR"? Assuming any cheap AVR sounds different from an expensive one? How about we just not go there. Audible sound quality differences in hardware is a separate thread for sure, and will be chock-full of biased opinions.
I get what you're saying, but the implications are all wrong. You imply that 20 year old gear sounds so bad you couldn't here lossy codec artifacts, AND that iTunes 256K AAC is not transparent. I have to disagree with both in general, though of course anyone can find specific contrary examples. If the gear was good 20 years ago and still operating in spec, and if the music was done well to begin with...and so on....

We must be at least aware that the results of any of this will never by binary, they'll be at least 3D data cube in which trends can be seen.

Sort of, but what I'm really asking is for some statistically valid trend that it's repeatably better for any group, and under practically valid conditions, so no anechoic chambers, no DIRAC pulses, square waves, and a test group that follows a good population cross-section. We need to know first "if", then we can work on "why".

 

[KeithEmo]

No. I believe you will find that stated as a condition in their original papers (although I'm not certain there).

... so Nyquist and Shannon were wrong then?