Does DSP belong in State of the Art Systems?

[pjwd]

I see .. Thanks

The Faculty of high fidelity does not exist in any university that I know .. even acoustics is usually a poorly funded , small section of engineering so I doubt this type of study is going to happen but even they did would you accept their conlusions if they clashed with your hard won empirical knowledge.
I think we are doomed to stumble on through the fog with the notion that reducing distortion is generally a good thing but not the only thing

Phil ( clearly not a scientist)

 

[microstrip]

I see .. Thanks

The Faculty of high fidelity does not exist in any university that I know .. even acoustics is usually a poorly funded , small section of engineering so I doubt this type of study is going to happen but even they did would you accept their conlusions if they clashed with your hard won empirical knowledge.
I think we are doomed to stumble on through the fog with the notion that reducing distortion is generally a good thing but not the only thing

Phil ( clearly not a scientist)

Well, I disagree on such a negative perspective on audio and acoustics - many universities have excellent departments with good labs on audio science, some audio companies are spin-offs of their activity. But they are wise people and surely most are not interested in the particular perception and preference of a small group of people and their favorite hobby!

 

[pjwd]

Well, I disagree on such a negative perspective on audio and acoustics - many universities have excellent departments with good labs on audio science, some audio companies are spin-offs of their activity. But they are wise people and surely most are not interested in the particular perception and preference of a small group of people and their favorite hobby!

I was more or less saying the same thing .. this kind of research isnt going to cure cancer and is not going to get big funding ( the micro school of high fidelity sounds good ?)
Some of the best research into correlation of the acoustic characteristics of concert hall with their perceived quality is by Tapio Lokki of the alvar aalto university . I think he is in the school of computer science his lab is very humble . A million miles from billion dollar medical research labs.
I basically dont see the point in demanding to see research that is very unlikely to be done. Particularly in a way that would satisfy audiophiles
So we have to make do with our own ears and the small amount of research that is done by industry and dedicated individuals
My question remains... if it existed and contradicted your experience would you change your mind on certain aspects of hifi
Cheers
Phil

 

[Holmz]

Well, I disagree on such a negative perspective on audio and acoustics - many universities have excellent departments with good labs on audio science, some audio companies are spin-offs of their activity.

Clearly the advent of Digital Signal Processing and later speech processing tie-in mathematically.

But they are wise people and surely most are not interested in the particular perception and preference of a small group of people and their favorite hobby!

If there is a way to manufacture equipment cheaper and simultaneously get to higher fidelity levels is something that businesses are interested in.
This, however, does not include studies on transparency and soft perception that cannot be easily quantified in objective ways.

 

[PeterA]

Companies somewhere or doing some pretty serious research into this stuff. The microphone in my iPhone allowed me to record two videos I made and shared with a couple of WBF friends. They demonstrated the difference between two industrial power cords to my turntable motor.

I can barely even see the microphone in my iPhone. I clearly heard the difference between the cords listening live to my system, but I also heard it on my desktop computer and over the speakers of my telephone. That is pretty incredible technology and it could not have been developed without a great deal of research.

 

[pjwd]

Companies somewhere or doing some pretty serious research into this stuff. The microphone in my iPhone allowed me to record two videos I made and shared with a couple of WBF friends. They demonstrated the difference between two industrial power cords to my turntable motor.

I can barely even see the microphone in my iPhone. I clearly heard the difference between the cords listening live to my system, but I also heard it on my desktop computer and over the speakers of my telephone. That is pretty incredible technology and it could not have been developed without a great deal of research.

Peter.. the particular research being discussed is the correlation of distortion in electronics with precieved transparency .. I'm just saying its such an arcane multifaceted issue that it is unlikely that high level double blind peer reviewed research will be ever carried out to micros satisfaction as available research funding would go to much more relevant fields (such as the miniaturization you mention) so its pointless to demand it

 

[microstrip]

Companies somewhere or doing some pretty serious research into this stuff. The microphone in my iPhone allowed me to record two videos I made and shared with a couple of WBF friends. They demonstrated the difference between two industrial power cords to my turntable motor.

I can barely even see the microphone in my iPhone. I clearly heard the difference between the cords listening live to my system, but I also heard it on my desktop computer and over the speakers of my telephone. That is pretty incredible technology and it could not have been developed without a great deal of research.

Peter,

We are discussing audio science, not sighted biased listening tests carried in casual conditions that are not accepted by science.

Anyway, an hand held mobile will always show differences due just to phone location. Do you switch the AGC off during movie recordings?

 

[PeterA]

Peter,

We are discussing audio science, not sighted biased listening tests carried in casual conditions that are not accepted by science.

Anyway, an hand held mobile will always show differences due just to phone location. Do you switch the AGC off during movie recordings?

Fransisco, You keep asking for studies that do not come. The discussion is at a standstill. Now it is opinion sharing. BTW the WBF members I sent the videos to for comparison did not know what cable they were hearing in each video.

 

[microstrip]

Fransisco, You keep asking for studies that do not come. The discussion is at a standstill. Now it is opinion sharing. BTW the WBF members I sent the videos to for comparison did not know what cable they were hearing in each video.

No, AGC is not an opinion, it is an objective fact. Do you switch it off when recordings the videos?
Contrary to turntable power cables, it is directly related to the main subject of this thread.

 

[PeterA]

No, AGC is not an opinion, it is an objective fact. Do you switch it off when recordings the videos?
Contrary to turntable power cables, it is directly related to the main subject of this thread.

I am not claiming that Automatic gain control is an opinion. I presume it is a feature on my telephone but there does not seem to be an easy way to disengage it so I presume it is on for my videos, but that is not the subject of this thread discussion.

I was simply expressing (inelegantly) my opinion that research is being done in audio science and that my cell phone is one example of it.

I did just discover that I can listen to videos of my home system on my truck’s JBL audio system as I drive to work which is pretty awesome.

 

[Atmasphere]

IMO you and Bjorn are in very different pages. You focus on distortion that is innocuous by nature and he focuses on extremely low distortions.

However, unfortunately both refer to science and knowledge and do not provide us with proper references or links to such sources. In order to become science something must be clear and accessible to others - secret information about UFOs is not science.

I do not see any point in referring to ASR - they are not an high-end forum.

I can put a number on this. If the amplifier is going to have distortion so low as to be inaudible, depending on the harmonic value, IME it needs to be less than -105dB down. That's in the realm of 0.0005% and less; numbers that you kinda see with the Purifi, Benchmark and Soulution amps. My contention is that number isn't low enough (which is why you read really variable comments from users- some good and others not) so the distortion spectra is still important. IOW the distortion has to be innocuous. I don't think there's seriously any talk about UFOs here

 

[microstrip]

I am not claiming that Automatic gain control is an opinion. I presume it is a feature on my telephone but there does not seem to be an easy way to disengage it so I presume it is on for my videos, but that is not the subject of this thread discussion.

It become a subject of thread as soon as you entered your movies in the thread. I will skip it for now, but it is an extremely important aspect in subjective audio - when using the phone to make measurements the software of the instrument being emulated disables AGC. It is mandatory!

I was simply expressing (inelegantly) my opinion that research is being done in audio science and that my cell phone is one example of it.

Yes, but the fact that so much "non natural" processing due to this audio reasearch goes in the phone reduces the credibility of your recordings. .

 

[DHT4ME]

I love how polarizing this subject is. My experience is Yes and No. LOL

So far I have been able to get very significant improvements from DSP but not in full range. The best so far has been to do a digital XO and speaker correction in my PAP Quattro 15's a multi amped setup and using DSP and digital XO on the 15" woofers and an additional set of 15" Ripole subs.
I have the AER BD3b's in that system and there is a significant loss of magic so far with what I have tried when trying to do DSP on the AER.

Now this was not a fully digital domain setup so there were ADC's and DAC's on the woofers which are not up to par with my AN DAC5 Special. A fully digital domain system would be the ultimate but really doesn't exist in any turnkey gear that is to the standard I would want.

 

[Bjorn]

I believe it's mainly polarized due to the fact that many misunderstand what DSP is. They are looking at something specific and small of what a DSP can do, and that's something that's highly debatable, and name this DSP in general.

So we basically don't have a discussion of DSP, but about only a tiny a precentage of what it does. Like I've pointed out before, a DSP can mimic the passive filter and do nothing else. It comes down to how it's being used.

We also have the prejudice that an extra DA conversion must be very negative. But that's simply not true when you look at the best measuring DSPs. And since they can also have a volume control, there is no extra. The ironly here is that the DAC that many use doesn't necessarily measure that well (not as good as the best DSPs), plus the passive components in the passive crossover adds considerably more distortion.

But of course, when people go an hear an ill implemented DSP system and especially when a lot "room correction" has been in play with a very unatural result, they will easily draw the conclusion of DSP without considering how it was used. That's simply the way things work. We believe what we hear.

 

[iansr]

I believe it's mainly polarized due to the fact that many misunderstand what DSP is. They are looking at something specific and small of what a DSP can do, and that's something that's highly debatable, and name this DSP in general.

So we basically don't have a discussion of DSP, but about only a tiny a precentage of what it does. Like I've pointed out before, a DSP can mimic the passive filter and do nothing else. It comes down to how it's being used.

We also have the prejudice that an extra DA conversion must be very negative. But that's simply not true when you look at the best measuring DSPs. And since they can also have a volume control, there is no extra. The ironly here is that the DAC that many use doesn't necessarily measure that well (not as good as the best DSPs), plus the passive components in the passive crossover adds considerably more distortion.

But of course, when people go an hear an ill implemented DSP system and especially when a lot "room correction" has been in play with a very unatural result, they will easily draw the conclusion of DSP without considering how it was used. That's simply the way things work. We believe what we hear.

Yup. All DSP gets tarred by the same brush ( are people outside the UK familiar with that expression?) and most people’s experience of DSP comes from using or hearing MiniDSP. Their gear is cheap and has great functionality, but they have to make money and so something has to give. I’ve tried their kit and I wouldn’t have it in my system because of the adverse impact on sound quality. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to experiment with Acourate or AudioLens which represent the SOTA in DSP.

I do wonder how do all the DSP naysayers think music is recorded, mixed and mastered these days ?

 

[Ian B]

Yup. All DSP gets tarred by the same brush ( are people outside the UK familiar with that expression?) and most people’s experience of DSP comes from using or hearing MiniDSP. Their gear is cheap and has great functionality, but they have to make money and so something has to give. I’ve tried their kit and I wouldn’t have it in my system because of the adverse impact on sound quality. That doesn’t stop me from wanting to experiment with Acourate or AudioLens which represent the SOTA in DSP.

I do wonder how do all the DSP naysayers think music is recorded, mixed and mastered these days ?

This comment cuts two ways, though. Modern music has generally poor audio quality, and plugin artifact signature is everywhere. Even a few years ago recordings were sounding much better with analog consoles, and even 2" tape. High end mastering still uses analog signal processors for this reason, with the exception of limiters.

It's been a few years since I've done ITB mixing, but I always felt like DSP EQ added artifacts and degraded audio quality.

 

[iansr]

We need to be careful that we don’t conflate any inherent sonic traits of DSP (that may or may not be discernible) with the way it is being used; eg you can’t blame DSP for the proliferation of dynamic compression. Mitch Barnett is a massive advocate of the DSP software I mentioned but he warns against over-correction . . .

 

[Ian B]

Speaking from practice, if I use the same processing and settings with an analog compressor or EQ vs a digital one, there are generally artifacts added with the digital one and it doesn't sound as nice.

Consider the group, with generally the same production style. Slight level and instrumentation differences, but you can tell which one was still processed in the analog realm and which is DSP.

There might be stuff like Weiss that does digital EQ well, though much of what I've seen hyped did not.

 

[Solypsa]

I tend to feel ( agree ) that digital processing needs to be auditioned, implemented and analyzed carefully. But this is also the case with analog...so I am merely saying no free ride with digital.

As to mini dsp I can't say regarding quality but I do know that not all tools are equal.

Question to the digital processing experts: any point in using AES67 / Dante in a home setup?

 

[ecwl]

Speaking from practice, if I use the same processing and settings with an analog compressor or EQ vs a digital one, there are generally artifacts added with the digital one and it doesn't sound as nice.

While I agree with your statement, but I think it’s only true if you take an analog source (RCA/XLR) and feed it through an analog EQ vs digital EQ. This is of course because you’re taking an analog source and feeding it into the ADC of a digital EQ and then doing digital EQ and then running it through the cheap DAC of the digital EQ device.

If you start with a good digital source and have a great DAC, you can either feed the DAC with an analog EQ component or you can actually do digital EQ directly on the source with no sample rate conversion so that your DAC is receiving a digitally EQ’d source signal and in my opinion, you’ll get much greater transparency with digital EQ at the source feeding a DAC, rather than taking a DAC and running it through an analog EQ.

Moreover, your analog EQ will never be as precise as your digital EQ settings so you can always do better and more accurate correction digitally compared to your analog EQ.

This is why I never loved the thread topic whether DSP can be SOTA because ultimately it depends on the setup. It’s like asking can vinyl be SOTA or streaming or CDs be SOTA or wireless all-in-one speakers be SOTA. But I also do believe that if you want DSP to be SOTA, you almost have to start off planning to optimize your DSP setup first in order to achieve SOTA. To add DSP to an existing vinyl system haphazardly is never going to achieve an SOTA sound.