Conclusive "Proof" that higher resolution audio sounds different

[jkeny]

........
I see that Mr. Keny makes the same mistake:

http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showthread.php?16388-Objectivists-what-might-be-wrong-with-this-label-viewpoint!!&p=297622&viewfull=1#post297622

"if the measurements show there is no audible difference then there can be no audible difference."

A measurement all by itself sheds no light on audibility no matter what some subjectivists and other seekingly poorly informed people may simplistically say. The correct procedure is to compare the measured results to the known thresholds of audibility for the kind of defect that is measured, and if the measured results exceed the threshold of detection for that kind of flaw, then the measurement strongly suggests an audible flaw.

Your propensity for ignoring, misreading or misunderstanding what is said, amazes.
What do you think this means "measurements show there is no audible difference? Do not realise that this means compared to JNDs for the measurement in question??

Really, your comments about "talking to walls" is one of your very few astute self-revelations

 

[jkeny]

......
You clearly didn't know what SACD or HDCD were. Yet went on to pontificate on how they work, etc. With track record like this, and only one double blind test in which you participated, I say you are standing on very thin ground with these strong proclamations.

Wow, what year is that quote from, Amir?
I would say thin ground has long since been passed & deep hole is the correct imagery.

 

[amirm]

So that we are not just arguing back and forth, let me bring some new data to the discussion. Arny refreshed this thread by comparing my testing of Adele CD vs Blu-ray to Meyer and Moran. When I asked him what tests he has run that we can use as a standard to measure mine, he listed such:

It is true that I worked with others who have helped me document some of the DBTs that I was involved with:

Greenhill, Laurence , "Speaker Cables: Can you Hear the Difference?" Stereo Review, ( Aug 1983)
Greenhill, L. L. and Clark, D. L., "Equipment Profile", Audio, (April 1985)
Nousaine, Thomas, "Wired Wisdom: The Great Chicago Cable Caper", Sound and Vision, Vol. 11 No. 3 (1995)
Nousaine, Thomas, "Flying Blind: The Case Against Long Term Testing", Audio, pp. 26-30, Vol. 81 No. 3 (March 1997)
Nousaine, Thomas, "Can You Trust Your Ears?", Stereo Review, pp. 53-55, Vol. 62 No. 8 (August 1997)
Masters, I. G. and Clark, D. L., "Do All Amplifiers Sound the Same?", Stereo Review, pp. 78-84 (January 1987)
Masters, Ian G. and Clark, D. L., "Do All CD Players Sound the Same?", Stereo Review, pp.50-57 (January 1986)
Masters, Ian G. and Clark, D. L., "The Audibility of Distortion", Stereo Review, pp.72-78 (January 1989)
Carlstrom, David, Greenhill, Laurence, Krueger, Arnold, "Some Amplifiers Do Sound Different", The Audio Amateur, 3/82, p. 30, 31, and Hi-Fi News & Record Review, Link House Magazines, United Kingdom, Dec 1982, p. 37.

etc. etc. etc.

As I noted, other than one test at the end, the rest doesn't involve Arny as there is no acknowledgement of him playing any role in them. Let's say he does for now. And drill into one of the above references, namely the Tom Nousaine's Flying Blind article in Audio magazine. The purpose of the article is to show that short term testing is more accurate in determining differences which I agree with but not the point I want to make. Here is the point that I like to highlight:

Note what I have highlighted. That expert listeners have far better abilities than average people in hearing differences. And that training matters and matters a lot. Search for our self-proclaimed objectivists and you immediately find countless references chuckling at the notion of "golden ears" existing. Clearly they cannot have it both ways. If Tom's work is authoritative, and in this regard he 1000% is, then one has to assume that Arny's of the world have not really read these articles. Or that if they have read them, they don't understand them.

Why else would they defend Meyer and Moran's test which some *10 years later*, let me repeat, 10 years later in 2007, go one to conduct the test of SACD/DVD-A versus a "CD loop" without utilizing any training, or expert listeners?

As I said, Tom is absolutely right. Whenever possible we want to use trained listeners. We want to screen out all that are not. We want to pick revealing material for the distortion at hand, boost its level and train the testers before starting. Failing to do this highly biases the outcome toward the negative side.

Sadly, in one of the other references Arny lists above, Tom goes on to conduct listening tests while ignoring his own statement above. Training is not used. And listeners picked with the qualification of being audiophiles and such.

At the risk of appearing immodest, as a trained listener, I automatically qualify in this regard but almost none of the other hobbyist run tests do. Yet folks like Arny run with them regardless. Not sure what bible they pray to that allows them to act this way.

 

[arnyk]

> Reading between the lines and speculating wildly, SACD seems to me
> to be a bit stream-oriented digital data coding technique, one that
> effectively uses data words of various lengths for different parts
> of the audio spectrum and/or sound levels. There seem to be claims
> that such data that is transmitted is not subject to lossy
> compression, but if, as I may erroneously or correctly infer,
> different parts of the frequency and/or amplitude domains are coded
> with different length data words, then it SACD is in fact a form of
> perceptual (lossy) coding. FWIW, HDCD seems to have implemented a
> subset of these benefits.[/COLOR]

You clearly didn't know what SACD or HDCD were.

Except I did, and far better than many of my critics.

Amir, the fact that you don't recognize the perceptual consequences of intentionally decreasing the dynamic range in a frequency range where the ear's sensitivity is vastly reduced shows that the basic theory of perceptual coding is lost on you.

 

[amirm]

Except I did, and far better than many of my critics.

You did? Who were the critics?

I have never, ever see anyone relate HDCD to SACD. Only a lay person would assume the two letters "CD" in both names create any technical associations. I don't even know how to characterize someone who goes on and talk about "data words of various lengths" for SACD. What do you think the "data words and lengths" are in SACD?

Amir, the fact that you don't recognize the perceptual consequences of intentionally decreasing the dynamic range in a frequency range where the ear's sensitivity is vastly reduced shows that the basic theory of perceptual coding is lost on you.

That post is just gibberish Arny. Nothing there can be salvaged to mean anything much less with a pedantic statement of ear's sensitivity that had no mention whatsoever in the original post.

 

[jkeny]

You did? Who were the critics?

I have never, ever see anyone relate HDCD to SACD. Only a lay person would assume the two letters "CD" in both names create any technical associations. I don't even know how to characterize someone who goes on and talk about "data words of various lengths" for SACD. What do you think the "data words and lengths" are in SACD?


That post is just gibberish Arny. Nothing there can be salvaged to mean anything much less with a pedantic statement of ear's sensitivity that had no mention whatsoever in the original post.

Watch out, Amir, I fear Arny's hole is becoming a singularity. Run before you are caught in it's gravitational pull - oops, too late!!

 

[arnyk]

You did? Who were the critics?

I think you know. It seems highly unlikely that you found this post, one of 10,000s of post to rec.audio.opinion from over a decade ago with random searching. There is one person who was present when the original post was made, and posts to AVS, and gave the same poorly informed criticism as we see over a decade later.

I have never, ever see anyone relate HDCD to SACD.

That is false. You have seen me relate HDCD to SACD. You proved it with your quote. Or did you not even read and comprehend it?

Only a lay person would assume the two letters "CD" in both names create any technical associations.

Which means that I had something else in mind, which I said explicitly in the quote you provided above. It's that reading comprehension problem you seem to have, Amir.

I don't even know how to characterize someone who goes on and talk about "data words of various lengths" for SACD. What do you think the "data words and lengths" are in SACD?

Well Amir since you appear to think you know everything there is to know about audio, it is logical in your mind to claim that what you can't understand is wrong. However, anybody who evaluates the dozens of valid criticisms of your posts that I made on AVS knows that you are far from knowing everything there is to know about audio. In many cases other people backed up my statements. I often backed them up with references to standard texts and authoritive web sites.

I strongly suggest that you quit while you are only this far behind, Amir. ;-)

 

[amirm]

I think you know. It seems highly unlikely that you found this post, one of 10,000s of post to rec.audio.opinion from over a decade ago with random searching. There is one person who was present when the original post was made, and posts to AVS, and gave the same poorly informed criticism as we see over a decade later.

Give us a link to his description of SACD so that we can see if he is more wrong than you.

Which means that I had something else in mind, which I said explicitly in the quote you provided above. It's that reading comprehension problem you seem to have, Amir.

Well Amir since you appear to think you know everything there is to know about audio, it is logical in your mind to claim that what you can't understand is wrong. However, anybody who evaluates the dozens of valid criticisms of your posts that I made on AVS knows that you are far from knowing everything there is to know about audio. In many cases other people backed up my statements. I often backed them up with references to standard texts and authoritive web sites.

I strongly suggest that you quit while you are only this far behind, Amir. ;-)

I gave you a chance to explain Arny. What are the word lengths in SACD and how they varied based on perceptual coding?

 

[arnyk]

Again Amir repeats the same error - claiming that absence of proof that Amir in his ongoing state of confusion accepts as proof, is proof of absence.

The first and most relevant fact is that I built the first ABX(1982) Comparator and did the first ABX (1982) test.

For people those who are unaware of one of Amir's latest boondogles, over on Hydrogen Audio he has confused in his mind the ABX test that I developed and first performed in 1976 with a different test that was also called ABX but had many differences and was first written up in 1950. Jim Johnson caught wind of Amir's big mistake and tried to correct him over on Hydrogen Audio but Amir appears to, as seems to be his unfortunate habit. continue making the same mistakes over and over again.

ABX development started back in 1976:

http://djcarlst.provide.net/abx.htm

"An argument over the audibility of differences between amplifiers at a club meeting in November 1976 resulted in an agreement that a double blind test could settle the question. Just six months later, Arny Krueger gave a lecture on his design of a double blind comparator and the first three double blind tests were done."

Tom's article is dated March 1997 which is over 20 years later. By then ABX was a widely accepted technology and there was no need to recount the details of its inception over and over again.

Tom was a good friend and just thinking about him so soon after his recent tragic and premature death causes me pain, but extracting pain by abusing the dead and those who grieve over their loss is what some people seem to like to do. It is just like bringing up my recent hearing impairments on every forum where I post. I'm not going to be bullied!

The fact of the matter is that with due respect Tom Nousaine was a true believer in golden ear high end audio when I first met him. The ABX team including myself befriended him and slowly and hopefully gently showed him the error of his ways. As is often the case, as a recent convert Tom became an excellent evangelist for ABX. As the saying goes, the rest is history.

BTW the article below that Amir takes his out-of-context quote from is posted in full at http://www.nousaine.com/pdfs/Flying Blind.pdf .

(Referencing)...Tom Nousaine's Flying Blind article in Audio magazine. The purpose of the article is to show that short term testing is more accurate in determining differences which I agree with but not the point I want to make. Here is the point that I like to highlight:

Note what I have highlighted. That expert listeners have far better abilities than average people in hearing differences. And that training matters and matters a lot. Search for our self-proclaimed objectivists and you immediately find countless references chuckling at the notion of "golden ears" existing. Clearly they cannot have it both ways. If Tom's work is authoritative, and in this regard he 1000% is, then one has to assume that Arny's of the world have not really read these articles. Or that if they have read them, they don't understand them.

As I have written dozens of times and as Amir now wants to pretend has never ever been said by me, almost immediately after we invented ABX 1982 tests in 1976-1977 and starting testing everything in sight starting in 1977, we recognized the need for listener training. One never gets hit with the need for listener training the way ABX hits you in the face by just doing sighted evaluations because of the many, many, many false positives. Listener training became a holy grail of sorts and by the mid-1990s we had developed a custom CD of carefully chosen musical excerpts for listener training and testing that we called "LTT" which stands for "Listening Technology Training"

It had about 100 tracks, some of which were also adopted by Jim Johnson for his MPEG coder development project.

In the year 2000 I set up www.pcabx.com which included a fully supported methodology for listener training as I announced here on September 27, 2000:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.audio.opinion/z3skw3GmPNw

"What's New At www.pcabx.com?"

"The PCABX software also facilitates listener training, as shown at
http://www.pcabx.com/training/index.htm "

 

[amirm]

Wow, what year is that quote from, Amir?

I was going to say 2000 something but I see Arny standing behind the statement he made. So the answer is today, December 2014 .

 

[rbbert]

I am curious: how are SACD and HDCD related?

 

[amirm]

As I have written dozens of times and as Amir now wants to pretend has never ever been said by me, almost immediately after we invented ABX 1982 tests in 1976-1977 and starting testing everything in sight starting in 1977, we recognized the need for listener training. One never gets hit with the need for listener training the way ABX hits you in the face by just doing sighted evaluations because of the many, many, many false positives. Listener training became a holy grail of sorts and by the mid-1990s we had developed a custom CD of carefully chosen musical excerpts for listener training and testing that we called "LTT" which stands for "Listening Technology Training"

It had about 100 tracks, some of which were also adopted by Jim Johnson for his MPEG coder development project.

In the year 2000 I set up www.pcabx.com which included a fully supported methodology for listener training as I announced here on September 27, 2000:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/rec.audio.opinion/z3skw3GmPNw

"What's New At www.pcabx.com?"

"The PCABX software also facilitates listener training, as shown at
http://www.pcabx.com/training/index.htm "

Where would I read your criticism of Meyer and Moran for lack of listener training Arny?

Where would I read your criticism of any listening test with negative outcome due to lack of trained listeners and or training?

 

[amirm]

I am curious: how are SACD and HDCD related?

They are not in any form or fashion but Arny has said that they are so we are waiting for that technical explanation.

 

[arnyk]

I was going to say 2000 something but I see Arny standing behind the statement he made. So the answer is today, December 2014 .

The joke is on you Amir, and your lack of reading comprehension. The post you quoted says:

"...as I may erroneously or correctly infer..."

IOW I said right up front that I was speaking speculatively. Amir do you know what Speaking Speculatively means?

Amir, can you, even in your current state of confusion construe "Speaking Speculatively" into standing behind anything?

Bottom line, I stand behind what I meant, not what exactly what I said back in Y2K.

 

[arnyk]

Where would I read your criticism of Meyer and Moran for lack of listener training Arny?

No place, because unlike you I know that absence of proof is not proof of absence.

What I will criticize is your reliance on sighted evaluations in this article:

http://www.madronadigital.com/Library/MarkLevinsonNo53Amplifier.html

"In comparison testing I have done, switching amplifiers using the classic class D configuration always sport incredible low frequency control and power. They beat out linear class AB amplifiers almost regardless of price. What they give up though is high frequency fidelity which I find somewhat harsh. The distortion is highly non-linear and challenging to spot but it is there. The Mark Levinson No 53 is the first switching amplifier I have heard which does not have this compromise. Its bass is amazingly authoritative: tight and powerful. Yet the rest of the response is absolutely neutral and pleasant."

Please describe how Double Blind testing and formal listener training was involved in the above.

And no doubt partially due to the type of testing that was done we find the following exceptional claim:

"Being a “statement” product, the Mark Levinson No 53 sports a traditional linear power supply from the Mark Levinson Reference 532 amplifier. The temptation in class D designs is to use a switching mechanism in the power supply itself feeding the amplifier. While this provides improved efficiency it aggravates a weakness of switching amplifiers which is their very high sensitivity (compared to linear amplifiers) to power supply voltage variations and noise which unfortunately get worse with switching supplies. "

The above is regrettably 100% false for reasons I have stated on HA.

 

[Tony Lauck]

No place, because unlike you I know that absence of proof is not proof of absence.

What I will criticize is your reliance on sighted evaluations in this article:

http://www.madronadigital.com/Library/MarkLevinsonNo53Amplifier.html

"In comparison testing I have done, switching amplifiers using the classic class D configuration always sport incredible low frequency control and power. They beat out linear class AB amplifiers almost regardless of price. What they give up though is high frequency fidelity which I find somewhat harsh. The distortion is highly non-linear and challenging to spot but it is there. The Mark Levinson No 53 is the first switching amplifier I have heard which does not have this compromise. Its bass is amazingly authoritative: tight and powerful. Yet the rest of the response is absolutely neutral and pleasant."

Please describe how Double Blind testing and formal listener training was involved in the above.

And no doubt partially due to the type of testing that was done we find the following exceptional claim:

"Being a “statement” product, the Mark Levinson No 53 sports a traditional linear power supply from the Mark Levinson Reference 532 amplifier. The temptation in class D designs is to use a switching mechanism in the power supply itself feeding the amplifier. While this provides improved efficiency it aggravates a weakness of switching amplifiers which is their very high sensitivity (compared to linear amplifiers) to power supply voltage variations and noise which unfortunately get worse with switching supplies. "

The above is regrettably 100% false for reasons I have stated on HA.

Please be specific as to statements that you claim are 100% false. Please provide links to reasons stated on HA.

 

[rbbert]

...Furthermore your logic is excruciatingly bad, as there is no rule or convention that requires that all be given public credit for the contributions that they have made to any particular magazine article.

Perhaps not in a "magazine article", but it is definitely true for any scientific journal. It's always a matter of debate and opinion about when a person's contributions reach the "author" stage as opposed to the "acknowledgement" stage, but any substantive contribution requires at least the latter.

 

[amirm]

No place, because unlike you I know that absence of proof is not proof of absence.

I didn't ask you about the conclusion of a test Arny. That is an independent factor with respect to whether a test is proper or not. If you really believe in listener training and merits of experts listeners, that ought to come across loud and clear as it does from me. Yet we have you saying in "no place" have you ever said that about Meyer and Moran? One of the most talked about listening tests online? And you say you have been silent on those points because the outcome?

 

[BlueFox]

Perhaps not in a "magazine article", but it is definitely true for any scientific journal. It's always a matter of debate and opinion about when a person's contributions reach the "author" stage as opposed to the "acknowledgement" stage, but any substantive contribution requires at least the latter.

I would suspect it also applies to magazine articles. Otherwise, every loon will claim credit for something.

 

[arnyk]

Please be specific as to statements that you claim are 100% false. Please provide links to reasons stated on HA.

http://www.hydrogenaud.io/forums/index.php?showtopic=107604&view=findpost&p=882554

http://www.madronadigital.com/Library/MarkLevinsonNo53Amplifier.html

Reinventing the Audio Power Amplifier: Mark Levinson No 53
By Amir Majidimeh

While this provides improved efficiency it aggravates a weakness of switching amplifiers which is their very high sensitivity (compared to linear amplifiers) to power supply voltage variations and noise which unfortunately get worse with switching supplies.

Because of my professional experience with computers particularly mainframe computers going back to 1965 I have long been intimately familiar with SMPS. I've also built thousands of PCs and every one had a SMPS.

In addition I have some background with after market car audio, whose power amplifiers have long made heavy use of SMPS.

The following statement is denied by facts accessible to everybody who has enough electrical engineering talent to read the required plain English labeling of the SMPS wall warts that are endemic today: "... power supply voltage variations and noise which unfortunately get worse with switching supplies. "

Just read the label! For example the SMPS for this (and virtually every other) laptop is rated for input voltages from 100 to 240 volts (or an even wider range). This one has a rated output voltage of 20 volts and were one to be technical enough to measure it, one would find that it has good regulation with respect to input voltages and changes in load. It also has low output and radiatednoise - legally mandated by FCC Part 15.

Modern SMPS power supplies are vast improvements over their linear predecessors. A typical linear iron transformer-and-diode wall wart rated at say 9 volts had such poor regulation that it would put out more like 12 volts with no load and might barely make 9 volts with rated load, or not. This presumes a predictable and stable power line which may not be the case. It also produced massive amounts of noise in its output because unlike the SMPS this was not a federally-mandated parameter (FCC Part 15). The simple brute force single capacitor filter if present allows volts of ripple noise when the current drain goes up.

Virtually every switchmode power amplifier on the market today has a SMPS power supply. They sacrifice no sound quality because of it.

I speculate that the Levinson 53 has a linear power supply because some marketing person decided that they needed to pander to audiophile hysterical fear of modern technology, particularly SMPS.

Please notice that this official document from Levinson seems to fail to make the above false claims:

http://www.marklevinson.com/tl_files/catal...010_5.17.10.pdf

The false claims in the Madronna article are likely the invention of its author.