[MacacoDoSom]

For all of you people that has doubts about bit depth and dither (and what's audible or not) I suggest you download the evaluation of the VST plugin from Stillwell "Psycho Dither", you can select from 6 bit to 32 bit with or without noise shaping (12 degrees of it), the red dithering is 'auto-black', (if there is absolute silence there is no dithering).
It's a nice tool to check the audibility of dither.....

 

[castleofargh]

  For all of you people that has doubts about bit depth and dither (and what's audible or not) I suggest you download the evaluation of the VST plugin from Stillwell "Psycho Dither", you can select from 6 bit to 32 bit with or without noise shaping (12 degrees of it), the red dithering is 'auto-black', (if there is absolute silence there is no dithering).
It's a nice tool to check the audibility of dither.....

can we go below 8bit?(guess I'll try anyway, but am at a point in foobar where I need to remove stuff to add new components and the component folder is just a graveyard of all the crap I tried once and don't even remember what it is

). 
I have http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-dither/ on foobar and it's as intuitive as it gets, but I can only "ruin" my sound down to 8bit and then use an idiotic noise shaping to bring up the noise where it's clearly audible.  still its the one plugin that gave me the most obvious "in practice" idea behind the concept of noise shaping.

 

[MacacoDoSom]

Yes

 

  For all of you people that has doubts about bit depth and dither (and what's audible or not) I suggest you download the evaluation of the VST plugin from Stillwell "Psycho Dither", you can select from 6 bit to 32 bit with or without noise shaping (12 degrees of it), the red dithering is 'auto-black', (if there is absolute silence there is no dithering).
It's a nice tool to check the audibility of dither.....

can we go below 8bit?(guess I'll try anyway, but am at a point in foobar where I need to remove stuff to add new components and the component folder is just a graveyard of all the crap I tried once and don't even remember what it is

). 
I have http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-dither/ on foobar and it's as intuitive as it gets, but I can only "ruin" my sound down to 8bit and then use an idiotic noise shaping to bring up the noise where it's clearly audible.  still its the one plugin that gave me the most obvious "in practice" idea behind the concept of noise shaping.

Yes it is very good, lots of noise shaping options, the stillwell goes down to 6 bit, thought... but tells you nothing about the noise shaping used...just a graph...

 

[icebear]

   
Thanks! Wendy Carlos created the original TRON soundtrack from the 1980's. Whether you'll like it or not, you never know until you try. 

 (I have my guess, but I would not want to implant a bias!)

 OK, gave it a listen (short only), sorry but I wouldn't listen to this type of music even if I got paid

.
Just the total opposite of my preference.

 

[RRod]

 
can we go below 8bit?(guess I'll try anyway, but am at a point in foobar where I need to remove stuff to add new components and the component folder is just a graveyard of all the crap I tried once and don't even remember what it is

). 
I have http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-dither/ on foobar and it's as intuitive as it gets, but I can only "ruin" my sound down to 8bit and then use an idiotic noise shaping to bring up the noise where it's clearly audible.  still its the one plugin that gave me the most obvious "in practice" idea behind the concept of noise shaping.

 
Another thing is to realize that you can "shape" truncation distortion as well; that is, if you truncate down to 8-bit, you can then move those distortion products around using various shaping algorithms/parameters. Of course you typically want to use dither to de-correlate errors from the signal, but it can be helpful to consider shaping as its own phenomenon, independent of dither.

 

[KeithEmo]

   
That is easy.  For me, 10 songs at $10 is a bargain compared to 10 songs at $18.

 
I agree - but that is always going to be a personal "value judgement". Sometimes I want "the best deal" and sometimes I want "the best - period" as long as I can afford it.
 
A good $9 half-pound hamburger is also almost undoubtedly a much better buy than a $45 eight-ounce filet mignon (they are both eight ounces of USDA approved beef) and, while I sometimes spring for the filet, I usually settle for the hamburger. I would have to say that the same goes for music, although with me it tends to be related to the content itself. For many songs or albums, which I listen to "casually", I don't mind HD-FW, or iTunes quality. However, for the albums and groups that I really like, I want the best sounding version I can get... so I opt for the CD or the HD version. (Some people pay a fortune for signed items and autographs, which I won't; others will pay $120k for a Mercedes, when it won't get them to work any faster than my Nissan; so I guess we all have our personal quirks.)
 
(To tell you the truth, if you want the best deal, it seems to me that a streaming service like Tidal, where you get zillions of songs, at CD quality, for about $20 a month is probably THE best deal right now.... although I personally like to "own, have a copy of, and hold" any music I pay for. )

 

[KeithEmo]

   
In other words, you have more or less the same expectations and biases that most of us have (err, more or less) which is why the marketing guys have such ranges, with different price points, available.
 
I'm not accusing you of being a marketing man, or anything really rude like that ( ), but you manufacture/sell stuff, right? You must be aware of at least some of the psychology of buying and selling stuff?
 
I try, as a buyer, to be aware, but that still, often, does not change my behaviour. I want to buy a more expensive model when I go shopping. I can even get really pissed off if the salesman is an honest guy listing all the reasons why the cheaper one is just fine for me!

 
Quite true. (And, in fact, I do work for the Marketing department). We all have our expectations and biases - and a large percentage of them are shared equally by all of us. And you're entirely right - we CAN'T "turn them off"; at best we can recognize them and either compensate for them or simply acknowledge that they play a part in our decisions. And not all biases are bad. Is it really so awful that the next steak you buy will seem to taste better if you eat it in a nice restaurant, with soft music playing and dim lights, instead of in a cafeteria-style place with tiled floors and an annoying PA system? I'd be happy to pay the extra $20 to enjoy my meal more, but I like to know whether I'm paying for better meat, or better ambiance. Likewise, I've been known to pay a lot extra for a piece of audio gear because it has a knob that feels nice when you turn it, or a heavy metal face plate instead of a plastic box, and I really prefer equipment that accepts a power cord instead of adding another brick to the pile under my rack.
 
Unfortunately, there's a "vicious cycle" today....  Many customers really want to believe that they CAN avoid their biases. This, in turn, means that it would be "product suicide" for a vendor to say that their $500 DAC had the same parts inside it as their $200 one, but the metalwork and display were a lot nicer. That would offend some of their customers, many of whom would rather believe that they're paying for better performance, or better parts. So, in turn, the company has to add a few "audiophile parts", whether they really matter or not, or make up some imaginary reasons to justify the cost. (The problem is that we all pay the price - which is why you can never seem to find a lower-end product that has ALL the features of the top model, but in a cheaper case, with a less fancy display. The manufacturer is almost obliged to remove at least a few important features from their cheaper product so customers will "see" a difference other than the externals.)
 
Now, as for that sales guy, a pretty good sales guy will be honest; a REALLY good sales guy will find out how you feel - and tailor his response to whether you actually want all the information or not. (He should be giving you what YOU want - or, at the very least, what he's calculated will make you most likely to buy the product.)

 

[sonitus mirus]

I don't know if I will ever purchase a lossless file at a premium price if I can still purchase the CD of the same music.   Other than the testing that I did, which required that I had some good quality HD files to ABX, I think the best option for me is to purchase a CD for $6 to $8 and then rip it to whatever format(s) I need.  Any of the streaming services work well for me, and I can't hear a difference between Tidal FLAC and the Google MP3 format with nearly every song.  I say nearly every song as I cannot possibly test every available song, but of those that were tested by me, I could not hear a difference.  
 
Edit: Your cheeseburger to filet comparison does not make sense in my situation.  I cannot hear a difference between an iTunes AAC file and Red Book.  Any food would have to taste exactly the same and be an identical amount, but the cost would need to be significantly different.

 

[KeithEmo]

   
The problem here is that we're talking audio where sound quality is usually determined by sighted evaluations that are inherently debilitatingly flawed as I have explained here without credible rebuttal many, many times.
 
In the minds of many audiophiles the demonstrations of obvious superiority is any reviewer's claim, any blogger's claim, any audiophile's claim no matter how inherently flawed and therefore irrelevant.
 
One of the best large-scale examples of this was given during the first 5-7 years after the introduction of SACD and DVD-A when audiophiles almost universally praised it, but in fact about 50% of all recordings were based on low resolution masters. 
 
The recordings were low resolution, but the public was told that they were high resolution and sold them at the higher price point. The "Obvious superiority" did not in fact exist.
 
This is obviously fraud. Do you support massive fraud like this?:

 
I'm not convinced that it was fraud.
 
Here's a hypothetical.... Let's assume that I buy a large quantity of some reasonably good "middle of the road wine". I put half of it in relatively normal bottles, which I sell for $12.99 each. I put the other half in really fancy bottles, designed by a high-end artist, with fancy corks and gold foil, and sell those bottles for $49.99 each. Now, further, let's assume that, when I survey my customers afterwards, many of the customers who bought at least one of each "type of wine" actually enjoyed the $49.99 bottle more. (This is almost certain to happen.)
 
Was anybody defrauded? (The folks who paid more got more enjoyment for their money.)
 
The legal standing for the wine would be that, as long as I didn't claim that the wine in the two bottles was actually different, I hadn't committed fraud.
 
And I'm pretty sure that saying that "SACDs sound better than CD" constitutes a claim based on an opinion.
In other words, there's an unspoken.... "We, and lots of other people, BELIEVE that SACDs sound better than CDs".
For that matter, they could probably have said, quite truthfully, that.....  "65% of the people we've surveyed told us that they think the SACD sounds better".
 
It's only fraud if they SPECIFICALLY said that those discs were created from high-resolution masters.
(And neglected to mention, in the fine print, that those high-resolution masters were themselves made from low-resolution recordings.)
I'm sure all of the claims were "reviewed by the legal department" and found to NOT "cross the line into false advertising or fraud".
 
I honestly don't see anything "more fraudulent" there than I see every evening on most TV commercials.

 

[Ruben123]

It's just very smart to ask $200 for an ordinary power cable and people actually buying them. Even better when they advertise that they hear enhanced bass, better soundstage and treble extension. That way you don't have to lie. I can only laugh at the cable threads any many times at the DAP section too. Not that I've heard any expensive DAP... But buying a $3500 DAP to go with a $200 earphone and talking about better performance is just weird. (Also I don't think differences between those devices are easily heard when DBT'ed)

 

[Thad-E-Ginathom]

Keith, you are quite right about the food, and I am even with you all the way on the audio gear. When I know that I'm entertaining my own biases, and that I can afford it, I'm really very happy to go for that finely-engineered knob or the beautiful case. I fully acknowledge, and subscribe to buyer/owner satisfaction coming in many different forms, shapes and sizes.
 
People can even buy fake and fraud stuff, if that is what tickles them, but it doesn't make the sale right or ethical.
 
PCM (or DSD) may very well not be, at any bit/sampling rate, the ultimate in audio storage and reproduction. One thing that makes me sad is that chasing the numbers in that department is not putting resources into whatever might come next. It is a dead end.

 

[nick_charles]

   
 
I honestly don't see anything "more fraudulent" there than I see every evening on most TV commercials.

 
LOL - that's setting the bar pretty low for probity  

 

[RRod]

 
I'm sure all of the claims were "reviewed by the legal department" and found to NOT "cross the line into false advertising or fraud".

 
There's quite a difference between having honest intentions and passing them by the legal department, and having nefarious intentions and passing them by the legal department. 

 

[interpolate]

I have nothing further to add.

 

[castleofargh]

 

 
can we go below 8bit?(guess I'll try anyway, but am at a point in foobar where I need to remove stuff to add new components and the component folder is just a graveyard of all the crap I tried once and don't even remember what it is

). 
I have http://www.toneboosters.com/tb-dither/ on foobar and it's as intuitive as it gets, but I can only "ruin" my sound down to 8bit and then use an idiotic noise shaping to bring up the noise where it's clearly audible.  still its the one plugin that gave me the most obvious "in practice" idea behind the concept of noise shaping.

 
Another thing is to realize that you can "shape" truncation distortion as well; that is, if you truncate down to 8-bit, you can then move those distortion products around using various shaping algorithms/parameters. Of course you typically want to use dither to de-correlate errors from the signal, but it can be helpful to consider shaping as its own phenomenon, independent of dither.

yup that VST plug in I linked does just that, you shape the noise with what looks like a graphic EQ ^_^
that's why I was saying it was intuitive.(and kind of fun)
 
 

  I don't know if I will ever purchase a lossless file at a premium price if I can still purchase the CD of the same music.   Other than the testing that I did, which required that I had some good quality HD files to ABX, I think the best option for me is to purchase a CD for $6 to $8 and then rip it to whatever format(s) I need.  Any of the streaming services work well for me, and I can't hear a difference between Tidal FLAC and the Google MP3 format with nearly every song.  I say nearly every song as I cannot possibly test every available song, but of those that were tested by me, I could not hear a difference.  
 
Edit: Your cheeseburger to filet comparison does not make sense in my situation.  I cannot hear a difference between an iTunes AAC file and Red Book.  Any food would have to taste exactly the same and be an identical amount, but the cost would need to be significantly different.

maybe that would work better with a bad pizza and a good pizza? ^_^ I'll have both anytime.