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Topic: Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl. (Read 206195 times) previous topic - next topic
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Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #100 –
Be careful guys. Some of the comments being made are getting kind of personal.

Woodinville, if there is a history between you two, please keep it out of this discussion. This thread is very close to breaking out in flames, and as I see it, you seem to be instigating.

The next time anyone makes any personal remarks here, I'm going to lock this thread.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #101 –
Quote from: Canar on
Be careful guys. Some of the comments being made are getting kind of personal.

Woodinville, if there is a history between you two, please keep it out of this discussion. This thread is very close to breaking out in flames, and as I see it, you seem to be instigating.

The next time anyone makes any personal remarks here, I'm going to lock this thread.



I regard Arny's test as inaccurate and irrelevant. For what it's worth, I rather do suspect that the results he did get are correct, merely totally irrelevant to the issue at hand.

I regard any such incitement as arising from Arny's "scaring little boys" and other such evasions, machinations, and provocations, easily visible above.

I disagree with Mr. Kreuger on this issue, and will continue to disagree with him. My disagreements are backed up, after examination, by work from people ranging from Fletcher to Jont Allen, combined with the AES reprints on vinyl technologies.  There is nothing "new" in the ideas or information, which have been around for quite a few years now.  I don't know anyone willing to fund a definitive test. Do you? If you do, let me know, we can talk about the issue privately.

These issues surrounding perceived dynamic range in no way endorse or validate the claims of LP as 'more accurate' or "having more information" both of which are measureable and testable, and which are simply clearly not true.  Any kind of analytic accuracy issue is easily resolved, CD is better. LP is worse. There is no dispute on this, assuming we accept the usual 20-20kHz bandwidth for human audio perception, which I think is reasonable and completely  justified in the case of teens or adults.  The ONLY possible analytic dispute is in bandwidth, and I, like most here, question its relevance.

The issue is purely in the realms of acoustics (in terms of missing information in a stereo signal) and psychoacoustics in the human auditory system.  Some people do in fact prefer LP, and that is not something that can be said to be right or wrong, unless and until somebody comes along and starts with the "more accurate", etc, claims. Such claims can be very, very wrong. On the other hand, L-R enhancement from stylus flexure, hinging, etc, varying distortion mechanisms, etc, are documented and well understood, and do result in perceptual effects. Certainly, they are inaccurate, but if someone prefers them, so be it.

That is all.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #102 –
jj, I'm not going to get between you and Arny, but I've got to call you out on one specific point, regarding something you've said a lot over the years (go look it up in AES).

I spent a significant amount of coin out of pocket to get AES membership and E-Library access ~1-2 years ago to further my own interest in vinyl, and while it was money astonishingly well spent, it did not explain all the LP distortions you claim it does. The papers are priceless for studying harmonic distortion, wow/flutter, tracking/tracing distortion (but note that a lot of that was done in other journals..), etc. But IIRC: stylus flexure, axial compliance/hinging (same thing right?), detailed L-R enhancement mechanisms, tonearm/table acoustic effects, generator nonlinearities, rheological properties of vinyl besides mere tidbits, etc - getting any kind of hard data or rigorous treatment on a lot of those things is excruciatingly difficult. In particular, there's a particularly infamous AES preprint on tonearm resonances - I think Ladegaard wrote it? - that is not in the E-Library. It just ain't there! But everybody quotes it six ways to Sunday and I wound up getting a hold of it as a PDF scan of it from a B&K app note. I think Hi-Fi World did more tonearm resonance work than was ever published in JAES.

In summary: could you please open up and be less coy in citing your references?  You're not posting in rec.audio.opinion anymore. You're not posting in Propeller Head Plaza anymore. You're posting at HA and (Arny willing) we're going to take you seriously when you make specific citations and we're not going to bludgeon you over the head if you misremember something. Not too much, anyway.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #103 –
Quote from: Axon on
jj, I'm not going to get between you and Arny, but I've got to call you out on one specific point, regarding something you've said a lot over the years (go look it up in AES).

I spent a significant amount of coin out of pocket to get AES membership and E-Library access ~1-2 years ago to further my own interest in vinyl, and while it was money astonishingly well spent, it did not explain all the LP distortions you claim it does. The papers are priceless for studying harmonic distortion, wow/flutter, tracking/tracing distortion (but note that a lot of that was done in other journals..), etc. But IIRC: stylus flexure, axial compliance/hinging (same thing right?), detailed L-R enhancement mechanisms, tonearm/table acoustic effects, generator nonlinearities, rheological properties of vinyl besides mere tidbits, etc - getting any kind of hard data or rigorous treatment on a lot of those things is excruciatingly difficult. In particular, there's a particularly infamous AES preprint on tonearm resonances - I think Ladegaard wrote it? - that is not in the E-Library. It just ain't there! But everybody quotes it six ways to Sunday and I wound up getting a hold of it as a PDF scan of it from a B&K app note. I think Hi-Fi World did more tonearm resonance work than was ever published in JAES.

In summary: could you please open up and be less coy in citing your references?  You're not posting in rec.audio.opinion anymore. You're not posting in Propeller Head Plaza anymore. You're posting at HA and (Arny willing) we're going to take you seriously when you make specific citations and we're not going to bludgeon you over the head if you misremember something. Not too much, anyway.


Well I'm not trying to be coy, they are references I read a long time ago, that could be startlingly well verified off some LP's.

The harmonic and tracing distortions are key, btw, but you have to ponder a bit to figure out how they apply.  The L/R vs, M/S stuff can be examined even by capturing LP output and measuring it, of course with blind identification you have to average the (deleted) out of it.  I'd love to cite the paper on actual vertical vs. horizontal distortions, but it's been about 20 years since I read it.

It may have been (sorry) a BSTJ article. Don't forget that BTL started out doing vertical/horizontal recording instead of +-45, until they recognized the problems with the differences in tracking. I have no way to search BSTJ any more, sadly.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #104 –
BSTJ = Bell System Technical Journal
BTL = Bell Telephone Labs
I had to look those up and thought it might save other readers some time by posting it here

BTW, thanks to Canar and Axon for trying to keep HA free from usenet style discussions.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #105 –
May I respectfully request that literature used as evidence in the public domain be taken from the public domain? Suggesting that people join organisations that require money to be spent that they may not have in order to be able to verify the claims of others is very unhelpful and smacks of elitism to me. With the current economic climate, many of us are struggling just to keep a roof over our head and our stomach full, and I'd hate to see this forum gradually become of no use whatsoever to the average Joe if this trend is allowed to escalate. 

Cheers, Slipstreem. 

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #106 –
Quote from: Slipstreem on
May I respectfully request that literature used as evidence in the public domain be taken from the public domain? Suggesting that people join organisations that require money to be spent that they may not have in order to be able to verify the claims of others is very unhelpful and smacks of elitism to me. With the current economic climate, many of us are struggling just to keep a roof over our head and our stomach full, and I'd hate to see this forum gradually become of no use whatsoever to the average Joe if this trend is allowed to escalate. 

Cheers, Slipstreem. 


No, you can't. I could not move such material to the public domain even if I wanted to, it would be against the law, and constitute theft.  All IEEE, AES, BSTJ, etc, journals are copyrighted. Btw, BSTJ was a publically circulated journal, you did have to subscribe, of course.

If you want to limit discussion to "public domain" you are conciously limiting yourself to unrefereed, unverified, unconfirmed work for the most part. I don't think you want to do that.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #107 –
Quote from: Slipstreem on
May I respectfully request that literature used as evidence in the public domain be taken from the public domain? Suggesting that people join organisations that require money to be spent that they may not have in order to be able to verify the claims of others is very unhelpful and smacks of elitism to me. With the current economic climate, many of us are struggling just to keep a roof over our head and our stomach full, and I'd hate to see this forum gradually become of no use whatsoever to the average Joe if this trend is allowed to escalate. 

Cheers, Slipstreem. 



Sorry, that's totally unrealistic.  In a perfect world, no one would ever have to go to a physical library to read a cited reference 'for free' (as I can for some years of JAES, which are bound and stacked at my local university library), and in some realms of science (e.g., life science)  more and more journals are giving free online access (though often not for the current issue), but in fact, most scientific and engineering journals today are not 'free access' to the 'lay' public; they require either a university account, or a subscription, or a society membership.

For that matter, most popular magazines don't make all their content available online either.  (And 'free online' isn't quite 'free' either, if you think about it -- someone, often yourself, is paying for internet access).

Axon's point is well taken, and it's something I have discussed before with others as well as him...that it would be a benefit to the perennial audio 'debates'  to compile at least a  *bibliography* of references germane to them, classified by subject or doled out onto appropriate wiki pages.  The problems are at  least twofold -- access to the 'databases' (I don't know offhand if the BSTJ is even indexed anywhere) , and  knowing what information is actually contained in what articles (something that cannot always be gleaned from titles; and older articles  to lack online abstracts).  Ideally, fair-use quotes from the references could be pulled regarding specific issues (e.g., measured distortions in the LP record/playback chain).

HA.org already hosts at least one thread that collects titles of useful books on audio and psychoacoustic modelling are noted (e.g., Zwicker and Fastl) , so this kind of group effort is at least remotely possible.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #108 –
Quote from: Axon on
jj, I'm not going to get between you and Arny,


Nor should you, I had no idea that "Woodinville" was JJ, and my lack of familiarity (as a new user) with how this forum works kept me unecessarily in the dark.

I'm approaching JJ offline to see if it is possible to resolve what apparently has been a long-simmering matter.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #109 –
Quote from: Woodinville on
Well I'm not trying to be coy, they are references I read a long time ago, that could be startlingly well verified off some LP's.
Right - I'm not doubting that. It's not hard to reproduce the SNR of a pressing or a laquer, or measure wow/flutter, or use tracking angle tests to measure HTA/VTA distortion values, etc. (If you don't mind cutting a few records of course.)

What I am doubting is that the "usual" references cover every distortion effect that is known or otherwise reasonably posited today. I really get the feeling like a really huge gap developed between the SOTA of vinyl technology and what wound up getting documented in JAES - and I also really get the feeling that not all of it is snake oil. I'm hoping that as much of this gap as possible isn't snake oil, and also that it wasn't handled as trade secrets that die when the principal investigators die.

Quote
The harmonic and tracing distortions are key, btw, but you have to ponder a bit to figure out how they apply.  The L/R vs, M/S stuff can be examined even by capturing LP output and measuring it, of course with blind identification you have to average the (deleted) out of it.  I'd love to cite the paper on actual vertical vs. horizontal distortions, but it's been about 20 years since I read it.

It may have been (sorry) a BSTJ article. Don't forget that BTL started out doing vertical/horizontal recording instead of +-45, until they recognized the problems with the differences in tracking. I have no way to search BSTJ any more, sadly.
 

Now we're getting somewhere  I'll keep an eye out for BSTJ articles. At the same time, weren't there also technical journals released by the other big players in the industry (I want to say CBS and RCA released journals)? Can you think of any other journals that held a particular interest in vinyl? Are there particular one-offs or application notes that need to be looked at, like from Bruel & Kjaer, or Discwasher's microscope studies?

Quote from: krabapple on
Axon's point is well taken, and it's something I have discussed before with others as well as him...that it would be a benefit to the perennial audio 'debates'  to compile at least a  *bibliography* of references germane to them, classified by subject or doled out onto appropriate wiki pages.  The problems are at  least twofold -- access to the 'databases' (I don't know offhand if the BSTJ is even indexed anywhere) , and  knowing what information is actually contained in what articles (something that cannot always be gleaned from titles; and older articles  to lack online abstracts).  Ideally, fair-use quotes from the references could be pulled regarding specific issues (e.g., measured distortions in the LP record/playback chain).

HA.org already hosts at least one thread that collects titles of useful books on audio and psychoacoustic modelling are noted (e.g., Zwicker and Fastl) , so this kind of group effort is at least remotely possible
I will say that this goal a lot harder for vinyl than for psychoacoustics, because the papers were never collected into such extraordinarily comprehensive works as Zwicker/Fastl. But there really is a good need for this sort of info. Meaning, we should collect it.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #110 –
Quote from: Woodinville on
I could not move such material to the public domain even if I wanted to, it would be against the law, and constitute theft.  All IEEE, AES, BSTJ, etc, journals are copyrighted.
JJ, isn't it allowed to at least quote parts of relevant articles ? I couldn't find copyright info on the AES website, but JASA states:
Quote
Permission is granted to quote from the Journal with the customary acknowledgment of the source. To reprint a figure, table, or other excerpt requires the consent of one of the authors and notification to AIP.
Participating in forum discussions shouldn't become too time consuming, but an occasional quote could be helpful IMHO.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #111 –
Quote from: Axon on
What I am doubting is that the "usual" references cover every distortion effect that is known or otherwise reasonably posited today.


I don't think that much new has come to light since the Kilmanus paper. BTW, the FM distortion due to offset arms that he found is pretty huge - not a subtle effect. Furthermore, it is effectively addressed by using a linear tracking system. Ironically, bent arms still rule, even in so-called SOTA systems.

Quote
I really get the feeling like a really huge gap developed between the SOTA of vinyl technology and what wound up getting documented in JAES


That would be optimism.

The proof of he pudding would be measurements on a so-called SOTA playback system that shows exceptional noise and distortion performance. Ironically, the limited evidence I've seen goes the other way -the more SOTA systems may even measure worse in ways that have to be audible.

Ironically, the best measurements on the web seem to come from fairly modest systems by the standards of the SOTA that you read about in the ragazines.

This actually makes sense, since the noise and distortion largely comes from the vinyl LP and how it is made. Unless you come up with an effective nonlinear compensator, the playback system has no choice but to play whatever is on the disc.

Jim Lesurf's papers that I cited make this point - there are some nasty problems inherent in the geometry of the recording and playback equipment. The Kilmanus/Rabinow (sp?) bent arm problem being one of them.

It also makes sense in a perceptual way. If the noise and distortion inherent in vinyl is what you prefer, then you may have more prefereence for a system that has *more* of those noises and distortions. 

It's something like what SETs seem to mean to some who prefer tubed amplifiers. The popular SETs seem to be made in a way that increases the common audible distortion modes that tubed amps are prone to. If you prefer tubed sound, then you get more of it with these SETs! ;-)


Quote
and I also really get the feeling that not all of it is snake oil. I'm hoping that as much of this gap as possible isn't snake oil, and also that it wasn't handled as trade secrets that die when the principal investigators die.


Is it snake oil? I think almost all of it  past certain fairly basic levels is gorgeous industrial design and the expert toolmaker's art. Audio jewelry to cynics like me. I'm not immune to the joys of the eye, but art wrapped around legacy technology is still legacy technology.

I prefer my works of art to have no function but art (paintings, photographs, or sculptures), or highly and/or uniquely functional pieces that are also good or great art (architecture, weapons, everyday applicances, etc)

It seems to me that a tiny but noisy subset of music lovers develop preferences for the peculiar menu of noises and distortions that are part and parcel of LP playback. I have no problems with that as long as they don't try to say that this represents some higher state of sonic accuracy than what is routinely done with for example, the CD format.

Regrettably almost 100% of the people I enounter, who have developed the vinyl preference, use one or more of the well-known audiophile mythologies about digtial to justify their preferences. Case in point the two RAHE posters who have pledged their allegance to the audibility of "missing spaces" between digital levels. Or, they retreat into solipsism, and we've also got some of that on RAHE right now. They think that LP has to be more accurate than good digital because that's what they naively perceive, relevant scientific facts be damned.

Quote
The harmonic and tracing distortions are key, btw, but you have to ponder a bit to figure out how they apply.  The L/R vs, M/S stuff can be examined even by capturing LP output and measuring it, of course with blind identification you have to average the (deleted) out of it.  I'd love to cite the paper on actual vertical vs. horizontal distortions, but it's been about 20 years since I read it.


At the mechanical level the LP medium is recorded M/S, but it is being treated in practice like it is a two stereo channels. Therefore analyzing the LP's  performance in the context of music listening, as stereo  channels is not automatically invalid. The downside of this is that sooner or later you're going to have to start thinking M/S if you want to understand some of the basic mechanisms that you see in play.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #112 –
As to persistent myths, I had occasion today to re-visit the paper by Meridian' J Robert Stuart, on 'Coding High Quality Digital Audio'  (it was published as a white paper, and in essentially the same form in a March 2004 JAES issue) . It's a notable paper for several reasons, one being that it was an impetus for Meyer and Moran's work on comparing DSD to DSD-->PCM  using ABX methods (basically, Stuart's paper was a call for higher-rez delivery formats, but some felt he hadn't actually established scientific proof that they were audibly better than CD in the first place).  In that paper from four years ago, to his credit he notes two persistent myths about PCM:

Quote
Even among audio engineers, there has been considerable misunderstanding about digital audio, about
the sampling theory, and about how PCM works at the functional level. Some of these
misunderstandings persist even today. Top of the list of erroneous assertions are:
i.    PCM cannot resolve detail smaller than the LSB (least-significant bit).
ii.    PCM cannot resolve time more accurately than the sampling period.


I bring this up in this thread because IME  those two assertions are *STILL* almost guaranteed to come up in one guise or another in any 'debate' with a vinyl-loving anti-digital opponent -- the assertions are like the deathless 'flaws in evolution' lists that get passed around by creationists, despite having been roundly debunked by biologists years ago.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #113 –
Quote from: krabapple on
Quote
Even among audio engineers, there has been considerable misunderstanding about digital audio, about
the sampling theory, and about how PCM works at the functional level. Some of these
misunderstandings persist even today. Top of the list of erroneous assertions are:
i.    PCM cannot resolve detail smaller than the LSB (least-significant bit).
ii.    PCM cannot resolve time more accurately than the sampling period.


I bring this up in this thread because IME  those two assertions are *STILL* almost guaranteed to come up in one guise or another in any 'debate' with a vinyl-loving anti-digital opponent -- the assertions are like the deathless 'flaws in evolution' lists that get passed around by creationists, despite having been roundly debunked by biologists years ago.


Over and over and over and over and over and over again, too.

Aaarrrrggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

But mostly in digital-hating folks of all bents.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #114 –
[quote name='krabapple' date='Nov 23 2008, 02:02' post='600754']
As to persistent myths, I had occasion today to re-visit the paper by Meridian' J Robert Stuart, on 'Coding High Quality Digital Audio'  (it was published as a white paper, and in essentially the same form in a March 2004 JAES issue) . It's a notable paper for several reasons, one being that it was an impetus for Meyer and Moran's work on comparing DSD to DSD-->PCM  using ABX methods (basically, Stuart's paper was a call for higher-rez delivery formats, but some felt he hadn't actually established scientific proof that they were audibly better than CD in the first place).
[/quote]

Ironically, Meyer and Moran seem to have *not* supported Stuart's iniitiative.

Quote

> In that paper from four years ago, to his credit he notes two persistent myths about PCM:

Even among audio engineers, there has been considerable misunderstanding about digital audio, about
the sampling theory, and about how PCM works at the functional level. Some of these
misunderstandings persist even today. Top of the list of erroneous assertions are:
i.    PCM cannot resolve detail smaller than the LSB (least-significant bit).
ii.    PCM cannot resolve time more accurately than the sampling period.


I bring this up in this thread because IME  those two assertions are *STILL* almost guaranteed to come up in one guise or another in any 'debate' with a vinyl-loving anti-digital opponent.
[/quote]

We just saw erroenous assertion (1) come up on RAHE in the form of the "empty spaces" urban myth.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #115 –
I guess it is time for a little layman to add his two cents to all this. I can never, ever see how with all the processes used in order to make a vinyl record, that this processes can not in anyway add to the sound of the original recording. I can never, ever see how in the equipment used in playing back of a vinyl record that nothing again is added to what is now on the vinyl record. Everything in the chain adds and/or subtracts from the original recording, it is plain and simple.

I am also so tired of vinyl people telling me that I haven’t heard the magical system that will show me the light of vinyl recording, and the reason for this is because I still prefer digital. It doesn’t matter that now I heard words to rocks songs I never heard before, it doesn’t matter how much clearer music sounds to me, as long as I prefer digital, I’m not hearing and/or don’t know what to listen for, I just don’t have that GOLDEN EAR.

It is true that my system is not in the tens of thousands of dollars, has it is true that I don’t eat the most expensive ice-cream, but I still know what a grain of sand is when it is in my mouth coming from said ice-cream and I still know when I’m hearing less distortion on my equipment.

Bottom line is, that when you have to do so many things to the playback equipment (turntable) this should yell out loud that there is something wrong, but I guess that gets lost in that beloved added distortion.

Paul

     
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #116 –
[quote name='krabapple' date='Nov 23 2008, 02:02' post='600754']

Even among audio engineers, there has been considerable misunderstanding about digital audio, about
the sampling theory, and about how PCM works at the functional level. Some of these
misunderstandings persist even today. Top of the list of erroneous assertions are:
i.    PCM cannot resolve detail smaller than the LSB (least-significant bit).
ii.    PCM cannot resolve time more accurately than the sampling period.[/quote]

I bring this up in this thread because IME  those two assertions are *STILL* almost guaranteed to come up in one guise or another in any 'debate' with a vinyl-loving anti-digital opponent -- the assertions are like the deathless 'flaws in evolution' lists that get passed around by creationists, despite having been roundly debunked by biologists years ago.
[/quote]

I just became aware of myth 2 showing up in a technical paper that is making the rounds:

Published in Acta Acustica united with Acustica, Vol. 94, Pgs. 594–603 (2008). [ISSN 1610-1928]
(The Journal of the European Acoustics Association (EAA). International Journal on Acoustics.)
Temporal resolution of hearing probed by bandwidth restriction
Milind N. Kunchur
Department of Physics and Astronomy
University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208
Email: kunchur@sc.edu
(Dated: Received: 10 August 2007. Accepted: 21 May 2008)


"Every component’s bandwidth limit
(even if it behaves perfectly linearly) causes it to have a
finite relaxation time of τ∼1/ωmax; use of digital carriers
limits the shortest resolvable time interval to about half
the sampling interval (which for CD would be 11 μs);
and spatial dimensions of speaker drivers (or separations
between multiple drivers) introduce temporal smearing
and delays."

Key phrase:

"use of digital carriers limits the shortest resolvable time interval to about half
the sampling interval (which for CD would be 11 μs);"

The shortest resolvable time interval is closer to the sampling interval divided by the total number of distinct digital levels, depending on how you define "resolved", Just offhand, I think that amount of time is down in the picosecond range for the audio CD format.

You can think of this as follows. If I have two digital samples, the line drawn between them by a proper reconstruction process changes if either sample changes by as little as one count. That line defines the shortest resolvable time interval's unique reconstruction.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #117 –
Just to add my two penny'th as a non-technical music lover  .....................

Some of the best music I have is on vinyl. Some of the best music I have is on CD. Some of the best music I have was recorded from FM radio. I guess to me the point is the music rather than the format. Isn't that the whole point of us all spending our hard-earned cash on music playback systems?

Quote
...........I still know when I’m hearing less distortion on my equipment.


I found this interesting in the light of a recent conversation I had with my dad. He told me that when he bought his first serious music system in the 1950's the holy grail of amplifier designers/manufacturers was to produce an amp with 0.1% total distortion. It was felt that this level would render distortion totally inaudible and irrelevant. Leak, a major British amplifier manufacturer of the day, apparently achieved this goal with the duly named "Point 1" amplifier. This left me wondering. Were they right? Does my amp, that probably has another zero or two in front of the "1", sound better than their 50 year old design? On the one hand it does matter to me. As I've said, I'm more interested in the music. On the other hand, it does matter if people are making claims about the superiority of one format over another on the basis of its superior measurements if nobody can hear the improvement anyway.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #118 –
Quote from: botface on
On the other hand, it does matter if people are making claims about the superiority of one format over another on the basis of its superior measurements if nobody can hear the improvement anyway.

I for one hear the improvement.

It is my vinyl loving friend that has to play with his equipment all the time in order to be happy, not me. It is he who doesn't understand how digital really works, not me. It is he who is never happy and is playing again and again with his equipment, wire etc and/or other tweaks, not me. It is the misunderstandings of digital and so-called analog recordings that do bother me, not so much the sound.

Paul

     
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #119 –
Quote from: Paulhoff on
Quote from: botface on

On the other hand, it does matter if people are making claims about the superiority of one format over another on the basis of its superior measurements if nobody can hear the improvement anyway.

I for one hear the improvement.

It is my vinyl loving friend that has to play with his equipment all the time in order to be happy, not me. It is he who doesn't understand how digital really works, not me. It is he who is never happy and is playing again and again with his equipment, wire etc and/or other tweaks, not me. It is the misunderstandings of digital and so-called analog recordings that do bother me, not so much the sound.

Paul

     

Paul,
      Sorry, my comments weren't aimed at you - or anybody else for that matter. Nor were they anti-digital. I've seen people claim that analogue is superior for reasons that they say they can measure and hear - I daresay your vinyl-loving friend can quote them.

I've also seen plenty of instances on this very forum of people worrying about whether codec "A" is better than codec "B" and asking for advice on what bitrate to use etc. I'm just saying "lighten up lads. Why not  listen to the music instead?". Having said that as a result of my conversation with my dad I am genuinely interested in knowing whether there is a generally accepted point at which further improvements are actually inaudible and whether we are all ultimately susceptible to relentless marketing, consumerism etc making us think want things we don't actually need.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #120 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Ironically, Meyer and Moran seem to have *not* supported Stuart's iniitiative.



That's what I was trying to convey.  M&M were among the skeptics.  IIRC, Dr. S. Lipshitz was also a signatory to the Letter to the Editor objecting to Stuart's assumption (but I could be misremembering that, the xerox I made of it years ago is buried deep in a desk pile.)

THere's a 'limts of CD' thread going on on AVSforum as I write.  One guy pointed to an old Stereophile report of a 2000 AES conference session, where Drs. Stuart, Malcolm Hawksford and other panelists seem to have referenced certain listening tests conducted by dCS in support of the need for hi-rez; Stuart also refers to them in his JAES paper. Alas these data still remain unpublished....

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread....52#post15083052

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #121 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
"use of digital carriers limits the shortest resolvable time interval to about half
the sampling interval (which for CD would be 11 ?s);"



Actually, this is right, but doesn't say what some may think it says.

If we have a COMPLETELY UNKNOWN signal, that is the detection for its onset IN ONE CHANNEL.

We have two channels, we KNOW a signal. Finding the advance/delay to the other channel is, despite the uncertainty above, MUCH MORE ACCURATE (roughly 1/fs/number_of_pcm_lvels).

I wonder if the original writer meant this was to show that interchannel delay was limited to quanta of 1/2 sample time. If so, the original writer is wrong.  If the original writer was simply stating the dt*df>1(or 1/2 for gaussian vs line), that's ok. But that is for one channel, and a completely unknown signal.

Since we can observe one channel when we look at the other, this work does not apply.  This is easy to tell, just make a gaussian pulse centered at 10khz with a 1kHz sigma. This is a bandlimited signal, there is no aliasing to speak of.

Delay it by much less than 1 sample, compare the 16 bit outputs. They are different. Q.E.D.
-----
J. D. (jj) Johnston

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #122 –
Quote from: krabapple on
THere's a 'limts of CD' thread going on on AVSforum as I write.  One guy pointed to an old Stereophile report of a 2000 AES conference session, where Drs. Stuart, Malcolm Hawksford and other panelists seem to have referenced certain listening tests conducted by dCS in support of the need for hi-rez; Stuart also refers to them in his JAES paper. Alas these data still remain unpublished....
IIRC these weren't double blind tests with checks for statistical significance.

It seems the papers aren't on the dCS website anymore, but for once Archive.org has them...
http://web.archive.org/web/20030220024414/...o.uk/papers.htm

see especially
http://web.archive.org/web/20030407091305/...ers/effects.pdf

Cheers,
David.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #123 –
Quote from: 2Bdecided on
Quote from: krabapple on
THere's a 'limts of CD' thread going on on AVSforum as I write.  One guy pointed to an old Stereophile report of a 2000 AES conference session, where Drs. Stuart, Malcolm Hawksford and other panelists seem to have referenced certain listening tests conducted by dCS in support of the need for hi-rez; Stuart also refers to them in his JAES paper. Alas these data still remain unpublished....
IIRC these weren't double blind tests with checks for statistical significance.

It seems the papers aren't on the dCS website anymore, but for once Archive.org has them...
http://web.archive.org/web/20030220024414/...o.uk/papers.htm

see especially
http://web.archive.org/web/20030407091305/...ers/effects.pdf


The word 'blind' does not exist in the above paper.  They seem to have been sighted evaluations.

The paper is presented as a demonstration, not a test.

Vinyl vs Digital and 24 bit vs 16 bit from vinyl.

Reply #124 –
Quote from: Woodinville on
... just make a gaussian pulse centered at 10khz with a 1kHz sigma. This is a bandlimited signal, there is no aliasing to speak of...
Delay it by much less than 1 sample, compare the 16 bit outputs. They are different. Q.E.D.
Does it have to be a gaussian pulse ? Long time ago I've done the test with a 1kHz sine, upsampled 8x, added one sample to the file and downsampled back. The result was a perfect sine with an 1/8 sample delay and the difference with the 16 bit original was far above LSB level.