[castleofargh]

And we can also believe that:

(1.) We know all that is measurable
(2.) Our beep-boop boxes are capable of measuring all that we know
(3.) We are perfect interpreters of those measurements.

Of course none of that is true, which is why most of this thread is religion not science.

Science strives to find answers for observable phenomena, not discount that which is not explainable as not observed.

Colonel8 up there gets a pass for being a kid - I was a know-it-all arsehat when I was his age too, but for the rest of the people here?

This is supposed to be a science forum which means when something is observed we don't dismiss it, but attempt to find an answer - the absence of our ability to explain observation does not equal an absence of the observed ... which is the very definition of doctrinal region and what 99% of people on this "science" forum toss out: doctrine.

The only reason I post here is for the innocent; in the hopes they don't take all the pseudo-science claptrap doctrine as reality.

Cables make a difference and there are lots of reasons we think we know for that, but there's a lot we don't know.

Nothing is settled, and that's the scientific state-of-the-art right now.

I suggest to measure or to listen. apparently you do want to believe there is a third path that isn't the way I described it. which path is it?

so here is my mind blowing concept. if we really care about sound, we should test sound and only sound. I know it's a lot to take in. that of course implies blind testing. if you know another way please propose it because I don't.
IMO going to switch the cable myself, cable that I bought because I already hoped at the time that it would alter the sound(hey there preconception!). cable I picked because it was (strike the unneeded mention) pretty, expensive, had some technology I was told about by a guy who knows a guy who's a serious audiophile. then going to sit in my chair, grab a glass of coca cola(I take serious drugs), and trying to find out if I can hear the differences I'm positively dying to hear at this point. well I'm not sure we can honestly call that a listening test. sound seems to be coming to me with a lot of non audio baggage.

if something is obvious for me, but when I try to find it again in a blind test, it becomes really hard or sometimes just impossible. I don't conclude that I'm always right and that blind testing sucks. I admit that I exaggerated the difference in my head or simply made it up. so instead of who has the ear of science, I'd argue that we just have a vastly different idea of what defines an observable phenomena in sound.

oh and BTW, if you know of any audible change in sound that can be confirmed under test but cannot be measured, please tell me all about it. because I can't think of anything like that.

 

[bigshot]

The thing that a lot of audiophiles seem to miss is that measurements are just half the story. Comparing numbers without relating measurements to actual real world listening conditions is what gets people to double down over and over again on "Improvements" they can't actually hear. It really helps to play with an equalizer and a SPL meter and a sound editing program to learn what all those numbers sound like. What do the various frequencies sound like and how do they contribute to the sound? How much is a dB? Is it a lot? A little? Is a dB difference at one frequency range the same as a dB difference at a different range? How high and low can humans hear? How much distortion is too much and what do different kinds of distortion sound like? If you know the answers to these questions, you can look at a chart showing the response of headphones or read manufacturer's specs and understand how it will impact you listening to your music in your home. If you haven't a clue, it's just abstract numbers.

 

[gregorio]

He explains jitter for you ...

Thanks for those videos, some of the funniest I've seen. That guy is a complete nutter!

Well not "no understanding" ... I went to college for EE and worked as an engineer for 10 years, but not designing consumer audio equipment.

I've never designed consumer audio equipment. However, I've got 25 years experience of using high-end professional audio equipment and I've been lucky enough to work with a number of the world's best drummers and percussionists. The very best ones are incredibly accurate, sometimes to as little as a milli-second or so, it's really amazing. The problem here of course should be blatantly obvious, with jitter we're talking about the pico-second range of timing inaccuracy. That's several million times more timing accuracy than the world's best drummers. That guy in the videos you posted really is a nutter!

(1.) We know all that is measurable
(2.) Our beep-boop boxes are capable of measuring all that we know
(3.) We are perfect interpreters of those measurements.

Of course none of that is true, which is why most of this thread is religion not science.

I'm afraid you have that backwards! It's completely irrelevant whether we know "all that is measurable" or whether we are "capable of measuring all that we know". Audio recording is measuring/converting, therefore, if we can't measure/convert it, then we CANNOT record it!! Since the dawn of recording technology we've measured/converted and recorded just two things; amplitude and frequency, that's it, nothing else! This is true with today's technology, the only difference being that we can measure/convert these two properties many times more accurately than could Edison. If there were something else out there that we don't know about or that we do know about but can't measure then it's irrelevant because we can't record it and it does not exist in any of the audio recordings to which you listen!!

As your preposition is irrelevant, your conclusion is nonsense!

G

 

[bigshot]

Thanks for those videos, some of the funniest I've seen. That guy is a complete nutter!

He's pretty popular with audiophools. He validates what they want to be told and he does it with a level of obfuscation that makes it seem believable if you don't understand how anything he's talking about works.

 

[amirm]

Comparing numbers without relating measurements to actual real world listening conditions is what gets people to double down over and over again on "Improvements" they can't actually hear.

Who gets to define real world for everyone else? You? I don't think so....

 

[amirm]

It really helps to play with an equalizer and a SPL meter and a sound editing program to learn what all those numbers sound like. What do the various frequencies sound like and how do they contribute to the sound? How much is a dB? Is it a lot? A little? Is a dB difference at one frequency range the same as a dB difference at a different range?

What is this doing in a thread about USB cables? Anyone is saying it changes the frequency response?

 

[amirm]

've never designed consumer audio equipment. However, I've got 25 years experience of using high-end professional audio equipment and I've been lucky enough to work with a number of the world's best drummers and percussionists. The very best ones are incredibly accurate, sometimes to as little as a milli-second or so, it's really amazing. The problem here of course should be blatantly obvious, with jitter we're talking about the pico-second range of timing inaccuracy. That's several million times more timing accuracy than the world's best drummers

There is a ton of confusion in these statements. Jitter does NOT change the arrival accuracy of notes. You are confusing very low speed changes with effects of jitter that occurs as modulation of music as a carrier.

Audibility of jitter has been shown to be in nanosecond range. Tell me that is impossible too because of what a drummer can or cannot do!

Anyway, best to stay on the top of USB cables before we give away the farm on audio objectivity due to lack of our understanding of other topics like jitter.

 

[bigshot]

Jitter is inaudible because (aside from products that are defective or poorly designed) jitter levels are below the threshold of audibility even in the cheapest home audio products.

Sound is at its essence frequency and amplitude. If some sort of degradation is going to be audible, it has to manifest itself through frequency and amplitude.

I won't try to define the real world for you. You've already defined your world for yourself and nothing is going to change it.

 

[amirm]

Jitter is inaudible because (aside from products that are defective or poorly designed) jitter levels are below the threshold of audibility even in the cheapest home audio products.

As I said, no one better let you define what the "reality" means in audio. With no data from 99.999% of audio gear out there, you declared inaudibility of jitter in all of them?

Sound is at its essence frequency and amplitude. If some sort of degradation is going to be audible, it has to manifest itself through frequency and amplitude.

You are in dire need of understanding the difference between linear and non-linear systems.

 

[colonelkernel8]

You are in dire need of understanding the difference between linear and non-linear systems.

You need to stop holding water for crackpot theories by obsessing over corner cases seen in less than 0.01% of audio setups. It’s utterly *insane* to believe that before we declare jitter to be almost always inaudible we need to measure every device on the planet. It’s disingenuous and unscientific.

Observe:


This is from the AES Damn Lies seminar in bigshot’s signature.

 

[amirm]

You need to stop holding water for crackpot theories by obsessing over corner cases seen in less than 0.01% of audio setups. It’s utterly *insane* to believe that before we declare jitter to be almost always inaudible we need to measure every device on the planet. It’s disingenuous and unscientific.

"Almost?" 0.01%? Where did you get those numbers scientifically? How many studies have you read in jitter audibility or think exists?

That graph hurts your case, not help. For one, it is for a single, sinusoidal jitter. You think that is the profile of jitter for all devices?

That aside, the chart shows that at 20 kHz, jitter contributions better be less than 1 nanoseconds. You are willing to stipulate that as the requirement for audio reproduction for 16-bit samples?

The only thing crackpot is for non-technical people to make grand technical statements. Audio science is a beautiful thing. No need to screw it up with lay intuition masquerading as the real thing.

 

[colonelkernel8]

"Almost?" 0.01%? Where did you get those numbers scientifically? How many studies have you read in jitter audibility or think exists?

That graph hurts your case, not help. For one, it is for a single, sinusoidal jitter. You think that is the profile of jitter for all devices?

That aside, the chart shows that at 20 kHz, jitter contributions better be less than 1 nanoseconds. You are willing to stipulate that as the requirement for audio reproduction for 16-bit samples?

The only thing crackpot is for non-technical people to make grand technical statements. Audio science is a beautiful thing. No need to screw it up with lay intuition masquerading as the real thing.

Better be less than 1ns? Because -85 dB and 20 kHz is terribly audible? Please. Stop focusing on the minutiae that is only applicable to the science of signals in general to that of the audio realm. That is the real beautiful science here; signals, audio is but a tiny, almost inconsequential portion of it in the big picture, and one that is very, very easy in this day and age to get right.

 

[bigshot]

As I said, no one better let you define what the "reality" means in audio. With no data from 99.999% of audio gear out there, you declared inaudibility of jitter in all of them?

WHAT A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU TO PROVE ME WRONG! 20ns is the threshold for jitter in music (or somewhere between -40dB and -50dB if you prefer that rating). Find me something that measures above those thresholds in the core frequencies and OH! What a donkey I will look like! Go! Run! Do it now! I'm waiting to be proven wrong! I'm patient.

In the meantime I'll chew on the logic of "just because no one has ever tested proving a phenomenon exits, that means we should assume it does exist until we have a chance to test everything." Will the sun rise in the East tomorrow... Hmmm... I don't know. We'll find out tomorrow. But by then tomorrow will be day after tomorrow and we'll have to wait to find out again!

 

[gregorio]

[1] There is a ton of confusion in these statements. Jitter does NOT change the arrival accuracy of notes. You are confusing very low speed changes with effects of jitter that occurs as modulation of music as a carrier.
[2] Audibility of jitter has been shown to be in nanosecond range. Tell me that is impossible too because of what a drummer can or cannot do!

1. I'm afraid the confusion is yours! I know jitter does not change the arrival time of notes, I was referencing several statements made in the video posted; regarding drummers' timing acuity and that drummers would therefore be particularly sensitive to the timing inaccuracy of jitter. Those statements were nonsense because as I stated, we're talking about several orders of magnitude difference in timing inaccuracy between jitter and what drummers are capable of, and because as you have stated, jitter does not change the arrival accuracy of notes anyway.

2. I can't remember the published study off the top of my head but jitter (in musical material) was demonstrated to be audibly detectable down to 200ns. That's a thousand or so times more jitter than I'd expect to see in even a cheap modern DAC. I don't think any of the test subjects were drummers though!

G

 

[ev13wt]

Who gets to define real world for everyone else? You? I don't think so....

Since you love reading, read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-fulfilling_prophecy



I heard a song once on youtube that had lots of jitter (I was using my onboard soundcard). Sounded really bad. Bought the CD and a good DAC and now the song is clean sounding! Jitter is real.