Well, Frank, you've repeated it all so many times, in so many contexts - a couple of which were actually relevant - I imagine almost any WBF veteran could summarize your, ahem, positions.
Tim
What objectivists and subjectivists can learn from each other
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Well, Frank, you've repeated it all so many times, in so many contexts - a couple of which were actually relevant - I imagine almost any WBF veteran could summarize your, ahem, positions.
Tim
And I have not heard of an amplifier that does not have a noise floor. That doesn't mean I can hear it. And while I agree that there can be a correlation between measured impulse response and sound, in competent, much less professional or high-end gear, it falls into the realm somewhere between insignificant artifacts we have to train ourselves to hear, and unidentifiable with your eyes closed. I believe in jitter. I even believe in audible jitter. But much more importantly, I believe the audible differences between DACs, 99.9% of the time, are in their analog output stages. There is a whole world full of gearheads out there, chasing the boogeyman of inaudible jitter from under their digital beds while warmly embracing analog output "voiced" right out of fidelity to the recording. But even that's rare. What's common is expectation bias.
Tim
It's these little exchanges with Tim that make life worth living, that put a glow in my cheeks ...
Frank
Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
I have several ADC's in here.
Grimm AD1
EMM Labs ADC 8IV
Digital Audio Denmark AX24
MSB Studio ACD with Femtosecond clock
Lynx Aurora
Digidesign 192
Korg MR2000s
Tascam DV-RA1000HD
Alesis Masterlink
Everyone has their unique signature/sound. Mostly I use the Grimm for DSD and the MSB for PCM. These I have found the most transparent of the group. I've been lurking in the thread but refuse to get in a pissing match with the objectivists.
Carry on... !
Yes my mistake was apparently thinking that objectivists are interested in trying to correlate measurements with audio qualities and characteristics, and then finding ways to improve our audio reproduction hardware. Apparently, though, our hardware is already perfect and the only frontiers worth investigating are multi-channel and room acoustics. I suspect that more investigation in those areas will show we already have all the answers there too
Bruce,
Thanks for writing so clearly my findings. IMHO, the question is not being objective, is being fundamentalist When you must assume that the rules of the game were frizzed thirty years ago and everything else is useless, there is little to debate.
Last week I had the opportunity to listen to two great systems, mainly using my own reference recordings - CD´s I have listened to the live performance and direct cut LPs. It included models such as Kalista, Caliburn, NHT458, ARCR EF250s, MAXX3 and Aida's. It has shown me I still have a lot to learn ...
Yes my mistake was apparently thinking that objectivists are interested in trying to correlate measurements with audio qualities and characteristics, and then finding ways to improve our audio reproduction hardware. Apparently, though, our hardware is already perfect and the only frontiers worth investigating are multi-channel and room acoustics. I suspect that more investigation in those areas will show we already have all the answers there too
Wow a double whammy. A mistaken assumption that believing in efficacy of scientific measurement makes you scientist followed by an oft-repeated strawman.
Tim
Strawman concentrate! And I'm not sure you can draw conclusions about DACs used for simple playback from the much more demanding use of ADCs in a recording studio. But in this context it's a pretty moot point. I'm sure there are enough high-end manufacturers boogering around with "voicing" output sections (typically for the dubious benefit of making them sound more "analog") that there are more than enough audible differences to be found. And I believe I've already said this, saw Strawman 3, the terror returns.
Tim
Tim,
You are now the strawman guardian ? Congratulations for your new job!
BTW, I do not have experience with ADCs in audio and never referred to it.
BTW2, I do not enjoy terror movies - sorry to disappoint you.
Tim,
You are now the strawman guardian ? Congratulations for your new job!
BTW, I do not have experience with ADCs in audio and never referred to it.
BTW2, I do not enjoy terror movies - sorry to disappoint you.
Didn't think you claimed ADC experience, Micro. I was referring to Bruce's post above. I can't stand those horror/slasher movies anyway. Have a great Easter.
Tim
For some the pursuit of the reproduction of music is a linear progression. We are at least, from the hobbyist point of view, working with.products provided to us by others. Right or wrong we move as close as we can to the live event. As Tim reminds us,often there is no "live evnt."
Consider this- antying man trys to reproduce is never a "perfect replica ." Take a piece of paper and rip it apart. It is forever changed. Our ability to rejoin the two parts may be elaborate, but it is still not the same. By anaolgy then once we replace the ear with a microphone, we have forever changed the music. The question is how close can we come to the original?
Returning to our ripped paper anaolgy the methods of rejoinder is usually chosen for us. That product is judged by two standards. 1. How well it does what it is supposed to do.2. How well it performs on an absolute scale. It matters not much what the method is. The question how well it perfoms the job of rejoinder.
We statrt then witht the question how close do we need to come to an exact repica?How much effort doe it require(cost /beneift). It is without doubt the indidvduals chioce of how far he wants to go and how much he wants to spend. There remains a standard however. The untorn sheet of paper. No matter how much we want to ignore it and pursue less stringnet standards, it sits there mocking us.
We have some pretty airplanes out there. Would it not be great if we could flap our wings and fly away any time we like. i read a fictional account of how the governmentwas trying to do just
that.
My point is in your pursuit of perfection,you can stop anywhere you like, but don't claim you stopped becauuse the road ran out. Everytime you live music, or a sound system that is superior to yours, it sits there mocking you.
Consider this- antying man trys to reproduce is never a "perfect replica ." Take a piece of paper and rip it apart. It is forever changed. Our ability to rejoin the two parts may be elaborate, but it is still not the same. By anaolgy then once we replace the ear with a microphone, we have forever changed the music. The question is how close can we come to the original?
Returning to our ripped paper anaolgy the methods of rejoinder is usually chosen for us. That product is judged by two standards. 1. How well it does what it is supposed to do.2. How well it performs on an absolute scale. It matters not much what the method is. The question how well it perfoms the job of rejoinder.
We statrt then witht the question how close do we need to come to an exact repica?How much effort doe it require(cost /beneift). It is without doubt the indidvduals chioce of how far he wants to go and how much he wants to spend. There remains a standard however. The untorn sheet of paper. No matter how much we want to ignore it and pursue less stringnet standards, it sits there mocking us.
We have some pretty airplanes out there. Would it not be great if we could flap our wings and fly away any time we like. i read a fictional account of how the governmentwas trying to do just
that.
My point is in your pursuit of perfection,you can stop anywhere you like, but don't claim you stopped becauuse the road ran out. Everytime you live music, or a sound system that is superior to yours, it sits there mocking you.
That is interesting, but it carefully straddles the boundary between reality and subjective delusion. Hey, he sells converters, so he has to say that truncation distortion at -96 dB, and jitter 20-40 dB softer than that, are a problem, even though they aren't. This too was interesting:
John Siau said:
No converter has noise as low as -144 because the theoretical thermal limit is closer to -132. If he removed the word "almost" he'd be 100% correct.
Barry is one of the silliest subjectivists I've ever read. He uses the most nonsensical 'phoole words around. I once asked him to define "microdynamics" and the next day the thread was gone. Not locked, but deleted - along with my question.
It amazes me that the same people who love their analog tape and vinyl records criticize digital as being too colored, and not transparent enough.
--Ethan
I was talking about a total null, to zero volts. That's what I'd expect when nulling a Wave file against a lossless copy of itself, which was the context:
http://www.whatsbestforum.com/showt...rom-each-other&p=101452&viewfull=1#post101452
Not really. Music is nothing more than a bunch of sine waves of varying amplitude, frequency, duration, and phase.
The residual from a nulling distortion analyzer proves that there's nothing more to audio fidelity than is already known. But yes, modern nulling of Wave files lets us prove that two files are the same, even when people are convinced they sound different. If you believe otherwise, please explain how that's possible.
--Ethan
Of course. Again, if you believe otherwise please explain how that's possible.
Of course different players can sound different. In practice, most do not sound different unless one or both are defective. But that's a red herring because that's not what I addressed.
Only if one is coded incorrectly. A player program reads a stream of data from a file, then sends that stream to the sound card. Unless one adds EQ or some other effect, or changes the volume (which happens), the two streams should be identical.
--Ethan
Bruce B
WBF Founding Member, Pro Audio Production Member
Taken from the MSB Technologies Studio ADC
THD+N: (measures higher near 0 db because of zero feedback buffer)
1Khz @ 0db: 0.004%
1Khz @ -3db: 0.002%
1Khz @ -14db: 0.0002%
1Khz @ -30db: 0.0005%
Dynamic Range:
48Khz: 153 dbA
96Khz: 150 dbA
192Khz: 148 dbA
384Khz: 145 dbA
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