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Topic: Can anyone ABX this? (Read 20422 times) previous topic - next topic
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Can anyone ABX this?

I've created two samples - one at 192000 Hz and 24 bits per sample and the other at 44100 Hz and 16 bits per sample (dithered, of course), and I wonder if anyone is able to ABX it. (I wasn't, but then again my audio equipment is not exactly high-quality...)

The interesting thing about this sample is that it actually has musical content above 22050 Hz, in fact all the way up to 96000 Hz. If you don't believe me just down-sample the 192000 Hz file until the content in-between 22050 Hz and 96000 Hz is in audible range and you'll easily verify that it's the musical content of the "plucks" of the instrument.

Here are the two samples:

192000 Hz, 24 bits/sample

44100 Hz, 16 bits/sample


Please inform me if the files become unavailable, I'll gladly upload them again.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #1
I'm not at a location with my "good" gear but I suspect that the answer is no.


Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #3
Here are example shots of what the two waveforms look like at approx. 5.357 seconds:

192000 Hz 24 bps

44100 Hz 16 bps

Some of the vertical lines are not at the exact same position in the two images, probably because the zoom level was not perfectly identical for both waveforms, but that's not important.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #4
I've created two samples - one at 192000 Hz and 24 bits per sample and the other at 44100 Hz and 16 bits per sample (dithered, of course), and I wonder if anyone is able to ABX it. (I wasn't, but then again my audio equipment is not exactly high-quality...)

The interesting thing about this sample is that it actually has musical content above 22050 Hz, in fact all the way up to 96000 Hz. If you don't believe me just down-sample the 192000 Hz file until the content in-between 22050 Hz and 96000 Hz is in audible range and you'll easily verify that it's the musical content of the "plucks" of the instrument.

Here are the two samples:

192000 Hz, 24 bits/sample

44100 Hz, 16 bits/sample


Please inform me if the files become unavailable, I'll gladly upload them again.


How many people around here even have DACs that can properly handle 192k/24bit w/o resampling, discarding the 8 least significant bits, etc.?

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #5
How many people around here even have DACs that can properly handle 192k/24bit w/o resampling, discarding the 8 least significant bits, etc.?
A lot of people here, including myself.


Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #7
There may be no human for which the difference is audible, that's the point I'm trying to make.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #8
There may be no human for which the difference is audible, that's the point I'm trying to make.

Well I was only curious. People claim to be able to tell the difference, I found a good sample that actually features musical content above 22050 Hz instead of just crap, so I thought why not give it an ABX test?

I also think that it's impossible to tell the difference (I'm actually 99% sure about it), but with all the discussion about it and some people actually getting offended when you try to explain to them that they simply can't hear the difference (you know what I'm talking about) I decided okay - let's put it to a test. I would do it myself if I had good enough hardware and speakers, but unfortunately I don't, but nevertheless it still isn't a proper test if only one person does it.

Who knows, maybe someone actually can tell the difference? I mean here's from the Wikipedia article on ultrasound:
Quote
The upper frequency limit in humans (approximately 20 kHz) is due to limitations of the middle ear, which acts as a low-pass filter. Ultrasonic hearing can occur if ultrasound is fed directly into the skull bone and reaches the cochlea without passing through the middle ear. Carefully-designed scientific studies have been performed supporting what the authors call the hypersonic effect — that even without consciously hearing it, high-frequency sound can have a measurable effect on the mind.

No I'm not trying to say that Wikipedia is the absolutely reliable source and that we should all just believe whatever is written there, and frankly I don't know what to make of that paragraph - does that mean that humans can hear sounds above 20000 Hz after all or what?

But in any case the point of this thread is just to provide an interesting high-quality sample to try to ABX. It certainly will be interesting if someone ends up being able to tell the difference, though.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #9
But in any case the point of this thread is just to provide an interesting high-quality sample to try to ABX. It certainly will be interesting if someone ends up being able to tell the difference, though.


Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD (24p/192khz native) + Sennheiser HD650 = no difference

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #10
But in any case the point of this thread is just to provide an interesting high-quality sample to try to ABX. It certainly will be interesting if someone ends up being able to tell the difference, though.


After a few attempts (quite relaxed though, ie, not really trying that hard), I couldn't distinguish them, either with an emu-0202 and AKG-K701 headphones or with JBL LSR4326P loudspeakers. I may give it a serious try tomorrow.

Since I have tried with sine waves and can't hear anything much above 17kHz, if I can ABX them, it'll be interesting (it could be due to distortion somewhere in the chain, for instance, or something more interesting--highly unlikely, though).

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #11
If you are testing in Windows 7 (and maybe Vista), be sure that the "shared mode" sampling rate is 192khz, or else you'll never hear a difference even if you are a bat


Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #12
But in any case the point of this thread is just to provide an interesting high-quality sample to try to ABX. It certainly will be interesting if someone ends up being able to tell the difference, though.


Auzentech X-Fi HomeTheater HD (24p/192khz native) + Sennheiser HD650 = no difference
But in any case the point of this thread is just to provide an interesting high-quality sample to try to ABX. It certainly will be interesting if someone ends up being able to tell the difference, though.


After a few attempts (quite relaxed though, ie, not really trying that hard), I couldn't distinguish them, either with an emu-0202 and AKG-K701 headphones or with JBL LSR4326P loudspeakers. I may give it a serious try tomorrow.

Since I have tried with sine waves and can't hear anything much above 17kHz, if I can ABX them, it'll be interesting (it could be due to distortion somewhere in the chain, for instance, or something more interesting--highly unlikely, though).

Thanks for the attempt, guys.

I have a theory on why some people do in some cases manage to hear a difference between a file sampled at 192000 Hz and the one you get when you downsample it to 44100 Hz. If you don't remove all the noise above the destination Nyquist frequency (which, in case of 44100 Hz, is 22050 Hz) prior to downsampling, then aliasing is going to occur, producing sounds in audible range which previously weren't there.

For example, take this sound:

Example @ 192000Hz

Don't worry, you (probably) won't be able to hear anything, but observe what the spectrum of that sound looks like while you play it (the only frequencies are above 22050 Hz so don't do something stupid like, I dunno, use Winamp to see what the spectrum looks like).

This is what I got after I downsampled it to 44100 Hz without any pre-filtering at all (such as removal of frequencies above 22050 Hz):

Example @ 44100 Hz

You probably won't hear much in there either unless you turn up the volume a bit, but again the point is to observe the spectrum of the new signal. There are sounds all over the audible range - there were none at all in the original signal. If you'd also like to hear what the resulting file sounds like here it is normalised:

Example @ 44100 Hz normalised

Also I'm not entirely positive that there was no pre-filtering because I don't think I can control Adobe Audition's pre-filtering really well. I'm pretty sure it does something even if you turn it off, so the actual downsampling without pre-filtering might end up being even worse than this.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #13
I've created two samples - one at 192000 Hz and 24 bits per sample and the other at 44100 Hz and 16 bits per sample (dithered, of course), and I wonder if anyone is able to ABX it. (I wasn't, but then again my audio equipment is not exactly high-quality...)

The interesting thing about this sample is that it actually has musical content above 22050 Hz, in fact all the way up to 96000 Hz. If you don't believe me just down-sample the 192000 Hz file until the content in-between 22050 Hz and 96000 Hz is in audible range and you'll easily verify that it's the musical content of the "plucks" of the instrument.

Here are the two samples:

192000 Hz, 24 bits/sample

44100 Hz, 16 bits/sample


Please inform me if the files become unavailable, I'll gladly upload them again.



The links appear fraudulent. I was unable to download anything but advertising.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #14
I've created two samples - one at 192000 Hz and 24 bits per sample and the other at 44100 Hz and 16 bits per sample (dithered, of course), and I wonder if anyone is able to ABX it. (I wasn't, but then again my audio equipment is not exactly high-quality...)

The interesting thing about this sample is that it actually has musical content above 22050 Hz, in fact all the way up to 96000 Hz. If you don't believe me just down-sample the 192000 Hz file until the content in-between 22050 Hz and 96000 Hz is in audible range and you'll easily verify that it's the musical content of the "plucks" of the instrument.

Here are the two samples:

192000 Hz, 24 bits/sample

44100 Hz, 16 bits/sample


Please inform me if the files become unavailable, I'll gladly upload them again.



More junk. No way are these files at all similar.

Neither of them are at all listenable.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #15
How many people around here even have DACs that can properly handle 192k/24bit w/o resampling, discarding the 8 least significant bits, etc.?
A lot of people here, including myself.



+1. Actually, +3 - the number of audio interfaces on hand that immediately come to mind as being 24/192 capable.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #16
The links appear fraudulent. I was unable to download anything but advertising.

You need to fix something on your end because both work fine here.
"We cannot win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win."

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #17
The links appear fraudulent. I was unable to download anything but advertising.

You need to fix something on your end because both work fine here.


My role in life is *not* debugging other people's pretend-freebie, come-on, watch our ads, download sites.

The samples could have been uploaded to HA itself.


Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #18
The links appear fraudulent. I was unable to download anything but advertising.

You need to fix something on your end because both work fine here.


My role in life is *not* debugging other people's pretend-freebie, come-on, watch our ads, download sites.

The samples could have been uploaded to HA itself.

Considering nobody else is reporting a problem, and I was able to download them even with Noscript running, and I see no adds, and nobody asked you to debug sendspace, I agree something is borked on your end - huffy attitude or not.
Creature of habit.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #19
How many people around here even have DACs that can properly handle 192k/24bit w/o resampling, discarding the 8 least significant bits, etc.?
I have two capable interfaces. E-MU & ASUS. Well, truth to be told, the ASUS only under certain circumstances. 

The links appear fraudulent. I was unable to download anything but advertising.

You need to fix something on your end because both work fine here.
Links work fine for me. I suggest using Mozilla Firefox with the "Adblock Plus" Add-on - you´ll see much less advertising then.
marlene-d.blogspot.com

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #20
I have a theory on why some people do in some cases manage to hear a difference between a file sampled at 192000 Hz and the one you get when you downsample it to 44100 Hz. If you don't remove all the noise above the destination Nyquist frequency (which, in case of 44100 Hz, is 22050 Hz) prior to downsampling, then aliasing is going to occur, producing sounds in audible range which previously weren't there.


That's the responsibility of the resampler and usually taken care of. Your mileage may vary with legacy technology as Windows XP's audio architecture. Anyway, I think non-lowpassing resamplers should be much rarer than properly low-passing resamplers. Do you know just one? Also sometimes imaging above 20kHz is accepted on purpose, to get better properties (e.g. impulse response) in the 0-20kHz band.

Regarding the audibility of ultrasonic frequencies. Ultrasonic frequencies can cause audible artifacts within the audible band due to the non-linear nature of the transporting medium, e. g. air. For perfect fidelity it is not required to capture the ultrasonic frequencies directly, though. Capturing the artifacts within the audible band (if there are any at all) is sufficient. The ear wouldn't do anything else.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #21
Who knows, maybe someone actually can tell the difference? I mean here's from the Wikipedia article on ultrasound:
Quote
The upper frequency limit in humans (approximately 20 kHz) is due to limitations of the middle ear, which acts as a low-pass filter. Ultrasonic hearing can occur if ultrasound is fed directly into the skull bone and reaches the cochlea without passing through the middle ear. Carefully-designed scientific studies have been performed supporting what the authors call the hypersonic effect — that even without consciously hearing it, high-frequency sound can have a measurable effect on the mind.


As I recall, high levels of ultrasonic energy can cause people to become more irritable, even though they do not consciously hear anything.

Makes a great selling point for high sample rates, for people who feel that thay are not irritable enough.

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #22
As I recall, high levels of ultrasonic energy can cause people to become more irritable, even though they do not consciously hear anything.

Sure, that makes sense. But why would anyone put high levels of random high frequency noise (/energy?) in that spectrum, just because they can?
Can't wait for a HD-AAC encoder :P

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #23
As I recall, high levels of ultrasonic energy can cause people to become more irritable, even though they do not consciously hear anything.

Sure, that makes sense. But why would anyone put high levels of random high frequency noise (/energy?) in that spectrum, just because they can?
No, I´d assume because it wouldn´t make sense to filter them out when they are already there. At least, modern hardware is capable of playing that back without problems. It´s not like ultrasonic noise would cause the amp / the speaker to blow during playback. And it´s not like ultrasonic noise would introduce severe distortions (those frequencies do not desire that much power). That may have happened 40 years ago but not today. So why bother?
marlene-d.blogspot.com

Can anyone ABX this?

Reply #24
How many people around here even have DACs that can properly handle 192k/24bit w/o resampling, discarding the 8 least significant bits, etc.?
I have two capable interfaces. E-MU & ASUS. Well, truth to be told, the ASUS only under certain circumstances. 

The links appear fraudulent. I was unable to download anything but advertising.

You need to fix something on your end because both work fine here.
Links work fine for me. I suggest using Mozilla Firefox with the "Adblock Plus" Add-on - you´ll see much less advertising then.


We're being played. I tried a thrid time and I downloaded completely differents files.

So the box score is:

First attempt download failed and all I saw were on-page ads put their by the site management. They weren't pop-ups, and it is unlikely that any plug in software would selectively remove text and graphics from a page based on their content.

Second attempt appeared to suceed, but the files were garbage.

Third attempt actually produced reasonable files.

Despite all of the unhelpful, blatantly self-righteous comments,  my only mistake was being prompt. I'm not expecting thanks for debugging the downloads for the late-comers.