AP Mastering: "Nyquist theorem debunked: why 44.1kHz sounds bad"

[mhardy6647]

Nah, it's just drama in exchange for money -designed to attract clicks and views through deliberate controversy. To me, that suggests the creator prioritizes YouTube ad revenue over accuracy. And if they occasionally decide to create content in good faith, it’s hard to fully trust them.

indeed... it's pretty short on science.

This guy is really good as being consistently incorrect.

Judging by his videos, Uncle Paul McGowan @ PS Audio might give this cat a run for his money.

 

[Waxx]

I'm a Fl studio user, and I saw that video too. I swear it's just ragebait calling it by the old name of "Fruity Loops". He insisted that no one does mixing and mastering with FL Studio "just because" the pro's don't. Totally stupid conclusion. It's not like ever DAW these days doesn't mix at 32-bit FLOAT, and support VST's to do whatever mastering you need. It's ridiculous. Though, I believe he needs pushback on stuff like this. No Rage, just calm, collective, and objective proof that he is out of touch.

Fruity loops in the first versions was crap, but that changed. Today it's still used a lot for a lot of more underground electronic music, where it has a kind of mythical reputation. But almost any daw (any major one) can give you good productions. Pro studio's use certain daws more than others because of tradition/habit, hardware integration, compability with other studio's and/or workflow, not for sound quality reasons.

I always used cubase, already from the mid 90's, so I stick with that. But in studio's i also worked with Pro Tools (different versions), Logic and Samplitude (for post productions) and all did the job. It's not the software, but the skills of the engineer/producer that make a DAW work for a production. They all work more or less the same way, certainly internally. The biggest difference between them is the interface and integration with hardware (for some).

 

[AnalogSteph]

We had Crystal Semiconductor reps come to our company back in early 1980s, demonstrating their DACs.

Are you sure this wasn't about a decade later? I've only been able to track their audio DACs to about 1992 (e.g. CS4303) / 1993 (e.g. CS4328, CS4231 ISA codec). ADCs go back a few years more, with about 1989 for the CS5326/27 (delta-sigma) and 1988 for the CSZ5126 (later CS5126, SAR ADC). There were some pioneering products for telephony and the like before, but no "proper" hi-fi. AFAICT, they had no expertise in multibit (14+) DACs.

If you wanted a DAC for a real early CD player (ca. 1983), your choices pretty much were Sony CX890 or CX20017, Philips TDA1540 + SAA7030 and Burr-Brown PCM51 or PCM52 (which have a lineage going back even further to a PCM50 and DAC71 - 1978 baby (*)).

I should add a few more of these oldies to the list; unfortunately a lot of them are specified in classic DAC terms and not in terms of audio performance and precisely determining their release dates can be a challenge.

*)

Spoiler

See if you can find "78" by Yumi Matsutoya on streaming. It's not on YT, but e.g. Amazon has it. Good song.

 

[danadam]

Not that I'm defending the video, but...

Then he gets hilariously wrong by inferring, from a graph, that a sine wave near half the sample rate will modulate in amplitude (beat). This isn't true, of course. The sad thing is it's so easy to check. Just record or generate such a sine wave in a DAW, play it back, and view with an oscilloscope.

If you play it back on your typical DAC, whose anti-imaging filter attenuates quite past fs/2, then you will in fact get a modulated amplitude.

Chord FTW

He states that only DS chips are used and are 1 bit, they aren't they are multibit.

At 14:40 he says "and although modern systems are multi-bit the original Delta Sigma is just one bit"

 

[earlevel]

Not that I'm defending the video, but...

If you play it back on your typical DAC, whose anti-imaging filter attenuates quite past fs/2, then you will in fact get a modulated amplitude.

Chord FTW

Yes, I discussed that in one of my comments to the video—that what he was seeing was due to his DAC allowing aliasing, not that the sampling theorem failed.

 

[lini]

(...) I'm often a little bummed out at how success in the music industry often seems to have more to do with how well you can fool people.

On a (hopefully amusing) side note:

Greetings from Munich!

Manfred / lini

 

[Cbdb2]

From the same guy. WTF? Who sells DIGITAL plugins for DAWs.

"This study examines claims of perceived sonic differences between DACs by conducting a blind listening test utilizing a loopback methodology. A music recording was played through a moderately priced DAC (TC Electronic BMC-2) and rerecorded (using a MOTU 24Ai) to create a loopback signal. Participants (N = 1,367) attempted to detect differences between the original and loopback signals via the YouTube platform. Statistical analysis of responses found no evidence that listeners could reliably distinguish between the original recording and its loopback version (p < 10⁻⁹).

 

[J.M. Noble]

Participants (N = 1,367) attempted to detect differences between the original and loopback signals via the YouTube platform.

Emphasis added.

What kind of nonsense "test" is this?

 

[Salt]

From the same guy. WTF? Who sells DIGITAL plugins for DAWs.

"This study examines claims of perceived sonic differences between DACs by conducting a blind listening test utilizing a loopback methodology. A music recording was played through a moderately priced DAC (TC Electronic BMC-2) and rerecorded (using a MOTU 24Ai) to create a loopback signal. Participants (N = 1,367) attempted to detect differences between the original and loopback signals via the YouTube platform. Statistical analysis of responses found no evidence that listeners could reliably distinguish between the original recording and its loopback version (p < 10⁻⁹).

Well, YouTube is so and so, but this is how it is ...