Is digital audio intrinsically "broken"?

[fas42]

Amir suggested in another thread that audio was broken in so many ways. The thread was about digital formats, so I will interpret that comment to refer to the digital side of things. People accept that analogue has various problems, but that doesn't get in the way of them enjoying extremely satisfying playback from reel to reel, and vinyl.

Now, I would take his comment as an opinion that there are very difficult inherent problems in the whole process of going from analogue to digital, and then back again, in the key process of actual replay of digital recordings.

My take on this is that it is all about the implementation: how a particular manufacturer of a component that is involved in this area has gone about getting the job done, how well the gear has been engineered. The implication in what Amir said, and what a lot of people seem to think, is that this whole business of digital sound has substantial weaknesses in it, in the very design of the media format itself, making it very difficult to achieve top notch sound, and that somehow it will always be inferior in certain ways.

Frank

 

[cjfrbw]

Think I'll sit this one out and watch the food fight.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Could you link us to Amir's comment so we know what we're discussing, in context?

Tim

 

[fas42]

From here, Tim, which references a thread elsewhere on audible differences between FLAC and WAV playback: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?5175-WAV-vs-FLAC-revisited&p=76401&viewfull=1#post76401

Frank

 

[MylesBAstor]

Think I'll sit this one out and watch the food fight.

Did someone say food fight??? Toga party!!!!

 

[audioguy]

Think I'll sit this one out and watch the food fight.

+1

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

From here, Tim, which references a thread elsewhere on audible differences between FLAC and WAV playback: http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?5175-WAV-vs-FLAC-revisited&p=76401&viewfull=1#post76401

Frank

Ah, of course. While the conversation was about jitter, Amir didn't single out digital. In fact, he appears to have quite deliberately avoided that a couple of times in that thread. Here's the original:

Audio is so broken in so many ways! It is a miracle that we enjoy it regardless

Given a moment's thought and an understanding of the breadth of the statement, I doubt there is a rational designer or engineer who would disagree.

Tim

 

[Old Listener]

Here's the original:

"Audio is so broken in so many ways! It is a miracle that we enjoy it regardless"

Given a moment's thought and an understanding of the breadth of the statement, I doubt there is a rational designer or engineer who would disagree.

I think Amir's statement is just audiophile overstatement. Recorded sound became enjoyable to a great many people when sound quality was far more primitive than it is today on CDs.

Bill

 

[flez007]

I remember when I bought my first CD to use my recently bought Yamaha CD player (a Wang Chung title), I thought something was wring with the player, checked cables, phase, etc... all looked OK, so?

Digital has been evolving for the good, and people like me, who are not sticked to any particular sort of material, might found far more content in this format than in vinyl or, sadly, tapes.

Once one realize that we are listening to reproduced material, and focus on the artist message and intent, this hobby becomes an enjoyable one.

 

[Vincent Kars]

Audio is so broken in so many ways! It is a miracle that we enjoy it regardless .

Amir used a smiley.
Might it be he was joking?

 

[Mike Lavigne]

reproduced music does have it's limitations, no matter how you look at it. just like any media does in re-creating reality.

OTOH reproduced music succeeds on many levels too. how well it succeeds, or how badly any media fails, depends entirely on the perspective and expectations of the perceptor.

so wild generalizations like Amir's statement without considerable specific context is not helpful....and as Vincent suggests....could be just a joke.

getting back to the OT, based on my personal expectations for digital, i do not consider it intrinsically broken. of course, digital comes in many shapes and sizes and is enjoyed in all kinds of environments. mostly it serves the listener well. i can think of environments and contexts where i would think of it as something less than desired; but 'broken', no.

 

[MylesBAstor]

reproduced music does have it's limitations, no matter how you look at it. just like any media does in re-creating reality.

OTOH reproduced music succeeds on many levels too. how well it succeeds, or how badly any media fails, depends entirely on the perspective and expectations of the perceptor.

so wild generalizations like Amir's statement without considerable specific context is not helpful....and as Vincent suggests....could be just a joke.

getting back to the OT, based on my personal expectations for digital, i do not consider it intrinsically broken. of course, digital comes in many shapes and sizes and is enjoyed in all kinds of environments. mostly it serves the listener well. i can think of environments and contexts where i would think of it as something less than desired; but 'broken', no.

I think the other problem is Mike that most draw generalizations from listening to the commercially released product. That sad part, even for digital, is that any resemblance between the commercial release and what's produced in the studio is purely coincidental. I know that there's far more information on the original recording, as I've heard at Chesky's, than the resulting CD, DVD, etc. About the only valid comparison and I know you have some, are the super high rez files like Bruce produces.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I think Amir's statement is just audiophile overstatement. Recorded sound became enjoyable to a great many people when sound quality was far more primitive than it is today on CDs.

I think Amir made a broad, philosophical statement, exaggerated for effect, that any rational man with any reasonable audio experience would have to agree with on some level.

Tim

 

[Vincent Kars]

Including those who say the jitter problem has been solved?

Vincent

 

[microstrip]

Amir suggested in another thread that audio was broken in so many ways.

This aspect is presented by F. Toole in his book "Sound Reproduction" (as well as 95% of what we debate here in WBF) -Chapter 1. 1.1 A PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVE

"Audiophile fans of “high culture” music have repeatedly expressed disappointment that what they hear in their living rooms is not like a live concert, implying that there is a crucial aspect of amplifier or loudspeaker performance that prevents it from happening. The truth is that no amount of refinement in audio devices can solve the problem; there is no missing ingredient or tweak that can, outside of the imagination, make these experiences seem real. The process is itself fundamentally flawed in its extreme simplicity. The miracle is that it works as well as it does. The “copy” is sufficiently similar to the “original” that our perceptual processes are gratified, up to a point, but the “copy” is not the same as the “original.” Sterne (2003) explains that “at a very basic, functional level, sound-reproduction technologies need a great deal of human assistance if they are to work, that is, to ‘reproduce’ sound”. Sound reproduction is therefore significantly about working with the natural human ability to “fill in the blanks,” providing the right clues to trigger the perception of a more complete illusion. It is absolutely not a mechanical “capture, store, and reproduce” process. In addition to the music itself, there is now, and probably always will be, a substantial human artistic, craftsmanship, component to the creation of musical product".

IMHO, what is really broken is our comprehension of the processes of audio as an whole. Empirically, we know when something seems better to us. We are able to deal with some aspects with great expertise and quality But we are still very far from knowing from models that a certain system in a specific room will fulfill its function of recreating great listening experiences.

BTW, the book costs only usd 43.49 - and it is great reading!

http://www.amazon.com/Sound-Reproduction-Acoustics-Psychoacoustics-Loudspeakers/dp/0240520092

 

[fas42]

The “copy” is sufficiently similar to the “original” that our perceptual processes are gratified, up to a point, but the “copy” is not the same as the “original.” Sterne (2003) explains that “at a very basic, functional level, sound-reproduction technologies need a great deal of human assistance if they are to work, that is, to ‘reproduce’ sound”. Sound reproduction is therefore significantly about working with the natural human ability to “fill in the blanks,” providing the right clues to trigger the perception of a more complete illusion. It is absolutely not a mechanical “capture, store, and reproduce” process. In addition to the music itself, there is now, and probably always will be, a substantial human artistic, craftsmanship, component to the creation of musical product".

And that I very much agree with. Quite some time ago on the forum I mentioned that experimentally they had reached that point with the visual senses quite some decades ago, in the playback of film information. But they decided not to go ahead with putting it out there as an entertainment mechanism, because of the real dangers of people suffering medical problems from reacting to the "entertainment", and the legal consequences. So now we just have this cute 3D trick, which the body still treats as being a fake, so all is OK.

But that doesn't mean we can't try going for the "effect" in the auditory area, the suspension of belief, which is achievable if the reproduction is good enough ...

Frank

 

[fas42]

Okay, if Amir was, humourously, suggesting that ALL audio playback was broken, try suggesting that to people the next time they are listening to a high class replay of a 1" R2R tape. The point being, that extremely convincing reproduction IS possible, and once something has been shown to be possible once, even just that once, that then opens the door to saying, maybe, just maybe, one can push the boundaries to what playback can do with more "ordinary" recorded material, using less ambitious components ...

And that's the angle I've been coming from for over 25 years ...

Frank

 

[amirm]

I think Amir made a broad, philosophical statement, exaggerated for effect, that any rational man with any reasonable audio experience would have to agree with on some level.

Tim

OK, seems like while I was busy programming my Crestron system, you all ran with my one-liner .

First, let me say Tim is right about what I said. I was NOT talking about digital but audio reproduction in general.

Let me explain how video is done, and then you will see why audio is so broken in contrast.

In video, at capture time, we calibrate our camera and capture devices to a strict standard. Here is a slide gain from my presentation on Video for Audiophiles:

The signal coming out of the camera is *measured* to match what that color chart says it must be. We don't produce video unless we can achieve that (almost by force of law in US).

The signal then becomes digital and stays in that domain until it gets to the display. For starters, jitter is non-issue. It is there alright. But since the pixels in our displays don't move around, timing variations are inconsequential.

Then we get to the display which is the equiv of speaker in audio. We point a measurement instrument at it, and if it agrees with what was used in production, we are golden. If it doesn't, then we know how wrong it is. No blind test need apply here. We freeze a video image, examine it with instruments and we *know the truth* about what it is supposed to be.

Now contrast that with audio. Is there a standard in capture like that color chart? Nope. The whole production chain is an artistic rendering. Now, I would be fine with that if at the end, there was some metric embedded in the soundtrack that tells me if I achieve that in my room/speakers, I am hearing what that producer heard. But no such thing exist. I could be hearing bass that is 15 db higher at 40 Hz than he did. I wouldn't know it. Some of us would think that is awesome bass, others would say too boomy. My speaker could be resonating and have a +3 db peak some place. I might mistake that as better vocal, better focus, better soundstage, or too bright, too edgy, not enough soundstage.

I could have a broken speaker and have people rave about it and buy it by the dozen. Clearly this is occurring as we have thousands of speaker brands. Are they all right? That can't be because they all sound different. Clearly most of them are wrong. There are dozens of speakers at >$10K each. They all sound different. Clearly most of them are wrong.

I can stick an instrument at the end of audio chain but it doesn't tell me much with regards to what the talent and producer *heard.* That is what was approved. NOT the signal on the medium. They heard it with their speaker, with their room, with their ears. I am hearing something completely different.

Then there is this bizarre thing about acoustics and speaker design. It seems hardly anyone agrees with anyone else. Surely this is proof point that very hard to demonstrate what is right. Or else, we would only be buying products that follow that scheme. Magico, Wilson and Revel speakers produce three different sounds. How could they all be right?

Surely it must be a crap shoot then that we think one is more right than the other. Likely as we go from song to song, the level of fidelity to the original recording as heard by the talent is varying all over the place. Maybe that is why we itch to upgrade as this happens to us. But maybe we are imagining it all because we never know what is right, what is wrong!

Thankfully it all sounds dynamic and grand. So we feel good, thinking we are getting it all. I don't think we are. We are getting a carbon copy with colors shifted all over the place and we don't even know it. And worse yet, the color shift depends on what the source looks like!

You guys really wanted to get me started this way? I think not.

 

[fas42]

Ho boy, Amir, don't get me started! The one big hole in your analogy is that the eye is intrinsically (where have I seen that before?) a thousand times less sensitive than your ears. Dynamic range of vision is 60dB, of auditory is 120dB. And guess what ? It's pretty damn easy to get things accurate to 1 part in a thousand, falling off a log easy for measuring gear in particular. But once you go past that point it starts to get dicky, you have to be fussier and fussier to make sure you're really getting a reading that measures what you're really after, and that the gear is working that precisely. That's where the headache with audio is, that the ear/brain is smarter and more picky than the components and test instruments are set up to be ...

Frank

 

[mep]

Amir-Does this reinfoce the point I was tyring to make in an earlier thread where I said we don't really have good measurements for audio (if we have them at all)? It's funny that we can nail down the light spectrum with science and we can't nail down the audio spectrum.

Mark