Welcome to the forum Monty. Appreciate you responding with your perspective.
with apples vs oranges encoding defaults. You are right that this bit of marketing in how you created the encoding mode was clever and led to much more success for your codec than it deserved. We were constrained by the fact that devices played our format (as with MP3) which could not handle VBR encoding peaks so we had to leave the default what it was. You were PC only so didn't care.
. People just need to know that as they read your work such as this article that you are not an objective bystander/researcher writing such papers.
Even though someone like Bob Stuart has its own biases, you can see that for him to write an article that says highest sampling rate/bit depth is not necessary goes against obvious bias. Had he sang the praises of high-res audio and referenced audio tests without a bit of documentation on where to go to read about them, his paper would have been dismissed as biased too. Fortunately it was not and published and presented at AES conference.
. Mailing lists are forums. I don't recall how you had structured the discussion so perhaps it was that. It certainly was a public discussion and not in email. Either way, I stand by the information as foundation of where I come from as I look at you as the author of this article and potential bias on your part combined with lack of field experience with the topic being discussed.
"The goals for setting a standard here shouldn't be what is adequate but what has some safety margin as to give us high confidence of inaudibility. In that regard, we need to also allow for less than optimal implementations. To that end, Bob Stuart has published a much more authoritative version of this report at AES. Here is an online copy: http://www.meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Coding2.PDF. These are his recommendations:
"This article has reviewed the issues surrounding the transmission of high-resolution digital audio. It is
suggested that a channel that attains audible transparency will be equivalent to a PCM channel that
uses:
· 58kHz sampling rate, and
· 14-bit representation with appropriate noise shaping, or
· 20-bit representation in a flat noise floor, i.e. a ‘rectangular’ channel"
So as we see, the CD standard somewhat misses the mark on sampling rate. And depending on whether you trust the guy reducing the sample depth from 24-bit to 16 bits, we may be missing the right spec there too.
Ultimately, I think to the extent bandwidth and storage have become immaterial for music, it is best to get access to the same bits the talent approved when the content was produced. For a high-end enthusiast, there is no need for them to shrink down what they recorded before delivery. Let the customer have the same bits and then there is no argument one way or the other ."
And this follow up:
"Again, let me repeat that Bob's paper is much in support of this article in grand scheme of things rather than the other way around. It is just that if you are going to read something like this, read Bob’s paper which is from someone who has designed such equipment and has far more credentials in this field than Monty. For a web article, Monty's article is very good but let's not be so biased as to put his effort forward as A+, and people whose shoulders he is standing on, much lower, just because they dare setting a more solid standard for audio."
If you read that thread, you see that it is hardly focused on you but the topic at hand. We talked about you because your credentials were put on the pedestal so the conversation turned that way more than I intended or ever aim for. For me it was a simple situation of a having the proper research paper that is already public as compared to a web article with sensational claims (that somehow higher resolution is harmful).
Well, the reaction from the community is to the original version. Certainly mine was. The fact that the current version is so much longer shows that perhaps the original wasn't so well thought out. I pointed out specifics for example in the AVS thread where you talked about listening tests of ultrasonics showing harm yet no reference was provided as to where that listening test came from. Here is what you said: "The effect is very slight, but listening tests have confirmed that both effects can be audible." If I said your audio codec was confirmed to perform worse than another yet provided no specifics, you would be up in arms. There were other issues with that graph which I have documented in the AVS thread.
It was not a few emails. It was a discussion on a forum. I remember it well because your forum software displayed my public email address in posts which led me to getting a ton of spam. When I reached out to you to remove that, you hesitated that it was against your policy to do that but eventually made the change.
Yes, you are right 11. Either way, the point is made that you are a champion of a technology, as I was I will add, that it's time has come and gone in the eyes of audiophiles. We now have plenty of storage and bandwidth so trying to get things down to 64 kbps and have them still sound good, is no longer in our vocabulary. We anticipated some of this in that era, developing WMA Lossess.
Well, you recall part of the story. I told the other part
with apples vs oranges encoding defaults. You are right that this bit of marketing in how you created the encoding mode was clever and led to much more success for your codec than it deserved. We were constrained by the fact that devices played our format (as with MP3) which could not handle VBR encoding peaks so we had to leave the default what it was. You were PC only so didn't care. It was not so prominent when people compared a CBR encoding mode of one codec comparing it to your VBR mode. That is why I came to argue with you about it. If you were so clear with your community and they knew the answer, we would have had nothing to discuss. Regardless, as I said above, we have moved on. What matters here is what I said: that beside being technical, you are also good at technical marketing of what you produce. That is a good skill to have. I think I have been known to be that way
. People just need to know that as they read your work such as this article that you are not an objective bystander/researcher writing such papers. Even though someone like Bob Stuart has its own biases, you can see that for him to write an article that says highest sampling rate/bit depth is not necessary goes against obvious bias. Had he sang the praises of high-res audio and referenced audio tests without a bit of documentation on where to go to read about them, his paper would have been dismissed as biased too. Fortunately it was not and published and presented at AES conference.
Other encoders worked just as perfectly without tinkering. The difference was that the other codecs followed the stated goals of the user: if he wanted 128kbps encoding, that is what he was getting. They also had a simple option to mimic your encoding mode but they didn't make that the default because as I explained, it would break device playback. And streaming use.
You confuse me for someone who cares about this history more than I do
. Mailing lists are forums. I don't recall how you had structured the discussion so perhaps it was that. It certainly was a public discussion and not in email. Either way, I stand by the information as foundation of where I come from as I look at you as the author of this article and potential bias on your part combined with lack of field experience with the topic being discussed.The source of that was your then idea that if you developed something from scratch, and gave it away, that companies should adopt and ship it without worry. I tried to explain that patents can read on such technologies and in that case, you would owe royalties and be subjected to lawsuits. I am curious if you realize that now.
Not in the original version of the article. Problem with your oversimplification is just that: oversimplification. Bob takes a much more rigorous approach. He defines what the threshold of hearing is relative to distortion and then works from there to show what sampling we need to have to assure that. For audiophiles, that is the target, not what is good enough.
I provided plenty in the AVS thread. Indeed, I stated that what you wrote directionaly agrees with Bob's work. It is just that if someone wants to read about it, they should go to an authoritative source. Here is what my first post was on the topic there:
"The goals for setting a standard here shouldn't be what is adequate but what has some safety margin as to give us high confidence of inaudibility. In that regard, we need to also allow for less than optimal implementations. To that end, Bob Stuart has published a much more authoritative version of this report at AES. Here is an online copy: http://www.meridian-audio.com/w_paper/Coding2.PDF. These are his recommendations:
"This article has reviewed the issues surrounding the transmission of high-resolution digital audio. It is
suggested that a channel that attains audible transparency will be equivalent to a PCM channel that
uses:
· 58kHz sampling rate, and
· 14-bit representation with appropriate noise shaping, or
· 20-bit representation in a flat noise floor, i.e. a ‘rectangular’ channel"
So as we see, the CD standard somewhat misses the mark on sampling rate. And depending on whether you trust the guy reducing the sample depth from 24-bit to 16 bits, we may be missing the right spec there too.
Ultimately, I think to the extent bandwidth and storage have become immaterial for music, it is best to get access to the same bits the talent approved when the content was produced. For a high-end enthusiast, there is no need for them to shrink down what they recorded before delivery. Let the customer have the same bits and then there is no argument one way or the other ."
And this follow up:
"Again, let me repeat that Bob's paper is much in support of this article in grand scheme of things rather than the other way around. It is just that if you are going to read something like this, read Bob’s paper which is from someone who has designed such equipment and has far more credentials in this field than Monty. For a web article, Monty's article is very good but let's not be so biased as to put his effort forward as A+, and people whose shoulders he is standing on, much lower, just because they dare setting a more solid standard for audio."
If you read that thread, you see that it is hardly focused on you but the topic at hand. We talked about you because your credentials were put on the pedestal so the conversation turned that way more than I intended or ever aim for. For me it was a simple situation of a having the proper research paper that is already public as compared to a web article with sensational claims (that somehow higher resolution is harmful).
