AES meta analysis on audibility of hi-res

[BobShermanEsq]

I detected a hint of sarcasm Bob, but forgive me if I was wrong following the well established narrative you have cast both here and else where I think it was a fair assumption on my part.

Still it's all rather either way.

I guess it is your bat sense working.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

Bad science is bad science Steven. If we don't dismiss it even if the outcome is to our liking, we lose the whole mission. In law, bad evidence is thrown out even if everyone thinks the defendant is guilty. If we were running a drug trial and the people running it didn't bother to make sure that the control was the control and the drug was the drug, no respected journal would accept their paper. Yet the president of AES allowed this to get published in their Journal. We need to speak out about that so that it doesn't cheapen the entire universe of research published in J AES.

Now if they had just published it in their user group report, that would have been fine. But it should have never risen to the J AES and folks who reviewed that work should have been more trained in the field, as young as it was then.

Fair enough. Why is it bad science?

Tim

 

[amirm]

Fair enough. Why is it bad science?

The paper hits on it. Just search for Meyer in there. I also point out some of the issues here: http://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/high-resolution-audio-does-it-matter.11/

 

[Keith_W]

Paper freely available: http://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20160629/18296.pdf

The original paper 404's out for me. Is everyone else still able to access it?

 

[amirm]

It is failing to load on my tablet. Will try later on pc where it worked before.

 

[amirm]

Ok, the paper is still there and he is another temporary link to it: http://www.aes.org/tmpFiles/elib/20160702/18296.pdf

The way to find it permanently is to go to the root of the page and then click download: http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=18296

I think they put all the papers in a database and then pull them out on demand in a temporary place that eventually expires. The home page clearly says open access so should remain valid.

 

[SoundAndMotion]

I think they put all the papers in a database and then pull them out on demand in a temporary place that eventually expires. The home page clearly says open access so should remain valid.

I think your speculation is right. But this link (click here) should always work. It looks like this: http://www.aes.org/e-lib/download.cfm/18296.pdf?ID=18296
That is the link under the "Download Now" link. I think you are immediately redirected to a temporary place, like Amir suggests.

 

[ceedee]

The paper hits on it. Just search for Meyer in there. I also point out some of the issues here: http://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/high-resolution-audio-does-it-matter.11/

If it's true that the A/D/A loop wasn't tested to make sure it was 16/44.1, then I agree that's a big issue. I had not heard that before.

I hope a similar test is attempted in the future. While we're at it, let's try the same thing with vinyl! I'd love to see Fremer try to identify the live analog signal vs. the 16/44.1 loop!

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

If it's true that the A/D/A loop wasn't tested to make sure it was 16/44.1, then I agree that's a big issue. I had not heard that before.

I hope a similar test is attempted in the future. While we're at it, let's try the same thing with vinyl! I'd love to see Fremer try to identify the live analog signal vs. the 16/44.1 loop!

Fremer already makes 24/96 recordings of various TT, tone arm and cartridge setups. He plays them at vinyl seminars as illustrations. Yet, to him, vinyl is King and digital sucks. Go figure.

 

[amirm]

If it's true that the A/D/A loop wasn't tested to make sure it was 16/44.1, then I agree that's a big issue. I had not heard that before.

It was indeed an issue. They used an oddball CD writer as the test device, imagining that if you loop audio through it, it must filter the audio to 44.1 Khz. After a lot of research I found the manual for that CD writer but nowhere in there did it say what the monitor function does, other than the obvious aspect of passing audio through the machine. This could have very well been an analog pass through function instead of digital with filtering.

 

[Werner]

Could be.

But on the other hand, it is (and was then) common practice with digital recorders to loop the audio through AD-DA when in pass-through or monitor mode. This not only is cheaper, it also makes a lot of sense.

I really don't think this is an issue in this case.

To me the biggest flaw in MM is that you cannot have people travel tens of kilometers, enter an unfamiliar room, with an unfamiliar system, and then do some critical listening. It doesn't work that way.


With all of these test reports, be they negative or positive, there is always something that spoils the broth and invalidates the result. The only firm outcome is that, if there is a difference, it is certainly very very subtle, and probably not worth losing any sleep about.

 

[amirm]

But on the other hand, it is (and was then) common practice with digital recorders to loop the audio through AD-DA when in pass-through or monitor mode. This not only is cheaper, it also makes a lot of sense.

Maybe so. But when you submit a study results to a Journal, you confirm your assumptions. If you are doing hobby work for yourself, maybe assumptions like this fly. But they just don't in this case and the president of AES was mistaken in allowing this submission to go through against objections at the time.

 

[ceedee]

To me the biggest flaw in MM is that you cannot have people travel tens of kilometers, enter an unfamiliar room, with an unfamiliar system, and then do some critical listening. It doesn't work that way.

It looks like they did do several tests in systems that were familiar to the subjects. They mentioned a mastering facility and a university studio setup, among others. I agree that the MM tests show us that, if there is any audible difference, it's so small that it's about the last thing we should be worrying about. The quality of the mastering is about 1000x more important than hi-res vs CD. What you eat for breakfast or the weather outside is probably more important as well.

 

[dallasjustice]

Fremer already makes 24/96 recordings of various TT, tone arm and cartridge setups. He plays them at vinyl seminars as illustrations. Yet, to him, vinyl is King and digital sucks. Go figure.

I've talked to him at audio shows. He's a good guy. IMO, he's very smart and knows very well all the technical limitations to TT playback. From my side of what he told me, I'd be willing to bet he falls into the more reasonable TT camp. IOW, he believes that the TT is less technically accurate but the TT distortions are more pleasing.

I personally disagree with that but I find that approach much easier to understand than the TT folks who think somehow it's also technically superior. I have never understood those people.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

It looks like they did do several tests in systems that were familiar to the subjects. They mentioned a mastering facility and a university studio setup, among others. I agree that the MM tests show us that, if there is any audible difference, it's so small that it's about the last thing we should be worrying about. The quality of the mastering is about 1000x more important than hi-res vs CD. What you eat for breakfast or the weather outside is probably more important as well.

If I recall correctly, most of their music selections were remasters of original analog recordings. Few were natively recorded in DSD. It seems to me that would negate much of the potential advantage of hi rez, which also offers increased dynamic headroom and freedom from noise on the recording side. That is also why hi rez, though not DSD, is increasingly used by recording engineers, even for material destined for CD.

I have been through several previous heated debates about Meyer-Moron (thanks for that gem, dallasjustice), and I had some email conversations with Moran himself. I agree with Amir. Their whole experiment has too many open questions to be truly useful and definitive. But, hey, it was published by the AES. But, even they publish some junk, too.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

I've talked to him at audio shows. He's a good guy. IMO, he's very smart and knows very well all the technical limitations to TT playback. From my side of what he told me, I'd be willing to bet he falls into the more reasonable TT camp. IOW, he believes that the TT is less technically accurate but the TT distortions are more pleasing.

I personally disagree with that but I find that approach much easier to understand than the TT folks who think somehow it's also technically superior. I have never understood those people.

I have met him, too. He has mellowed considerably. There was a time when he was knee-jerk irrationally anti-digital, I mean totally. But, he has built an edifice and a considerable world-wide following about the beautiful subtleties of vinyl playback. It is a business for him that he actually enjoys. I still do not think you will ever get him to concede that digital is even the remote equal of vinyl. He is the world's #1 cheerleader for the awesome advantages of vinyl, still after all these years.

But, he is a very good writer. I read his stuff regularly, even though I have zero interest in the format.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I don't doubt that Meyer and Moran has its problems, but depending on what your objectives are, it did some things right. You want to find out if there is, in the absolute, an audible difference between RB and hi-res? Yes, use one system. Use highly-trained listeners. Want to find out how much it matters? Use a broad spectrum of experienced listeners -- audiophiles, studio pros, audio engineering students with fresh, trained young ears. Use a broad variety of systems from studio monitoring systems to audiophile-approved high end. Run a lot of trials. If, in the end, very few people from any group listening to any system could differentiate any of the files (not just the up-sampled ones that shouldn't have been in the test) from each other, you've learned that it doesn't matter much. It may not meet scientific rigor. It proves nothing. But it sure seems to indicate that we're counting angels on the head of a pin. With all its flaws, it should have shut down the audiophile hyperbole around hi-rez like stepping on a hose.

But of course it didn't. In that world, the most rigorous science that disagrees with conventional wisdom is flawed, and no science at all that supports the tenants of the religion is new gospel.

Tim

 

[amirm]

Want to find out how much it matters? Use a broad spectrum of experienced listeners -- audiophiles, studio pros, audio engineering students with fresh, trained young ears. Use a broad variety of systems from studio monitoring systems to audiophile-approved high end. Run a lot of trials. If, in the end, very few people from any group listening to any system could differentiate any of the files (not just the up-sampled ones that shouldn't have been in the test) from each other, you've learned that it doesn't matter much.

I think I have heard that before: http://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/high-resolution-audio-does-it-matter.11/

"Do we throw out all of Meyer and Moran results then? No, that would not be proper either. If there were night and day audible differences it should have showed up better than it did. The fact that it did not means that these differences, if they existed in their setup, were small. So this work is also a cautionary note to the other camp."

 

[fas42]

To repeat myself, , all my experiments have shown me that there is a big fat zero in hi res - looking at sample tracks on the 2L, and slicing out the true above 20kHz content the only place where there's anything significant is in transient, non-musical sounds, and deep in the midst of big orchestral type crescendos - places where the subjective value is, well, zero. If one wants hi res, to ensure the DAC works at its best, then just upsample RB source - there is no value in doing anything else ...

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I think I have heard that before: http://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/high-resolution-audio-does-it-matter.11/

"Do we throw out all of Meyer and Moran results then? No, that would not be proper either. If there were night and day audible differences it should have showed up better than it did. The fact that it did not means that these differences, if they existed in their setup, were small. So this work is also a cautionary note to the other camp."

Yeah, bear with me, Amir. I repeat the obvious to reinforce my bias. I want to believe it doesn't matter much, because I'm not changing formats at this point.

Tim