If no IMD due to distortion was heard in the studio (one would expect studios to be using superior equipment)...
Who says they use superior equipment? And how do you know IMD was not heard there?
but it is audible in the home, you have magnified the difference by keeping the ultrasonics.
I addressed this point already. If said distortions are harmful to my listening enjoyment, I can filter them off better than the mastering engineer can because I would be testing the results on *my* system, not his.
In my mind, this is a red herring. I believe you previously argued against basing the format on assumed limitations of the equipment or environment, and I agree with that.
I did not get us there with this IMD thing. You did in your paper and here.
Rhetorical question.
Is it OK for sizable portions of the public to believe in ghosts, alien abductions, creationism, quack cancer treatments, vaccines causing autism, etc...? Generally, we say it's a persons' choice to believe what they want, right, even if there's no evidence to support it. Some things are harmless (like audio) some quite harmful (vaccines). But it's all a convenient dismissal of science whenever it disagrees with something we really want to believe.
Your argument may depend on existence of ghosts or lack thereof but mine does not. I repeat: when high res content is released to consumers, it is almost by definition today is *pre* mastering for CD/digital distribution where extreme amount of loudness compensation is applied.
It is ironic that the proof point of this is in one of the other references in your article, namely the Meyer and Moran test of high-resolution audio:
"Several readers have wanted to know how, if ultrasonics can cause audible intermodulation distortion, the Meyer and Moran 2007 test could have produced a null result. It should be obvious that 'can' and 'sometimes' are not the same as 'will' and 'always'. Intermodulation distortion from ultrasonics is a possibility, not a certainty, in any given system for a given set of material. The Meyer and Moran null result indicates that intermodulation distortion was inaudible on the systems used during the course of their testing."
Putting aside the point that the paper does indeed provide counter evidence of the "harm" that you say exists with respect to ultrasonics, here is the salient point related to mine:
"A NOTE ON HIGH-RESOLUTION RECORDINGS
Though our tests failed to substantiate the claimed advantages of high-resolution encoding for
two-channel audio, one trend became obvious very quickly and held up
throughout our testing: virtually all of the SACD and
DVD-A recordings sounded better than most CDs—
sometimes much better. Had we not “degraded” the sound
to CD quality and blind-tested for audible differences, we
would have been tempted to ascribe this sonic superiority
to the recording processes used to make them.
Plausible reasons for the remarkable sound quality of
these recordings emerged in discussions with some of the
engineers currently working on such projects. This portion
of the business is a niche market in which the end users are
preselected, both for their aural acuity and for their willingness to buy expensive equipment, set it up correctly,
and listen carefully in a low-noise environment.
Partly because these recordings have not captured a
large portion of the consumer market for music, engineers
and producers are being given the freedom to produce
recordings that sound as good as they can make them,
without having to compress or equalize the signal to suit
lesser systems and casual listening conditions.
These recordings seem to have been made with great care and
manifest affection, by engineers trying to please themselves and their peers.
They sound like it, label after label.
High-resolution audio discs do not have the overwhelming
majority of the program material crammed into the top 20
(or even 10) dB of the available dynamic range, as so
many CDs today do."
So as you see, as a practical matter, what you are advocating does result in poorer sound. Not because of any technical reasons but for a business one. There is little chance of someone producing popular music in 16/44.1 Khz that is not subject to loudness compression today. The labels and talent have a strong say in that and they are not letting that be the same high fidelity experience that was originally created.
As I have said and continue to repeat is that I do not have a dog in this hunt. I am not here to advocate the befits of ultrasonics or harm thereof. Ditto for high sample resolution. I am here to say that let's release the original bits and be done with it. The producer wants and is offering it. And the consumer is willing to pay for it. You seem to be running interference in this without articulating any reason as to why.
We can debate the how and why, and try to figure out why the graphs match or don't, but the result remains the same: No one's been able to hear the claimed differences in a controlled test. I invite everyone in this forum to sign up and prove the scientific establishment wrong. It would be a heck of a news story.
Well, I just provided research data for you above that you cite yourself that clearly indicated with respect to actual music in the market the superiority of the high-resolution content is without question in their mind. Again not because of the specs but as a practical matter.
Sadly it didn't make the news as you say because people who cite that paper are so anxious to use it to argue that there is no benefit to high-resolution data that they usually don't bother to actually read the darn thing. And worse yet, actually experience the difference using *listening* tests of real music in the market in both formats rather than going by stuff they have read.
This was the thesis of your paper:
"Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space."
You have not managed to show any inferiority as a technical matter. And as a matter of actual product in the market, you are speaking of the opposite of reality.
As for the AES; it's comprised of all of us, skeptics and enthusiasts. The papers run the gamut of hard research data to interesting but untested ideas, to crazy thinking aloud with expensive machines. I'm surprised there's a tendency here to treat anything the AES has published as authoritative. Publication doesn't meant you're right, it only serves as an invitation for others to try out your ideas. Sometimes (as in the case of Oohashi), the ideas are not well tested or presented enough to merit much response.
You are absolutely right that something being published on AES is no proof of it being right. But you need to demonstrate that. All else being equal a web article written by someone not in that industry does have lower apparent credibility. You need to overcome that by being able to articulate clearly why the AES articles are wrong.
My read of your article vs Bob's left me with the impression that yours was casual and sensational whereas his was scientific and well researched. His has tons of data and measurements, yours has hardly any. His is full of other research he builds on, yours hardly has any.
The basis for understanding is testing, knowing for certain what's being tested, and retesting. We know that the differences we're listening for are small enough that human factors swamp the signal, otherwise, it would already be settled. Genuine question: Is that in debate here?
The question is moot. It has been and I have said it multiple times. It matters not if we can prove technical superiority when actual superiority is abundantly clear. And that there is already a marketplace for it.
