desirable distortion

[Blumlein 88]

Ok, I will quibble a little, Serge. I agree that 44k/16 is a more than adequate distribution medium, although I personally would not describe it as "perfectly" adequate.

I also have trouble with "transparent". To me there are degrees of transparency. It is not a binary, true/false description. We may think something is transparent, until we hear something else we consider more transparent, in which case our standards shift. Personally, this has happened to me frequently in audio, usually with slight degrees of greater apparent transparency over the years, but not so much in recent years. The forward pace in audio has definitely slowed, I believe, except for some schiity backsliding, among other alarming mini trends.

As to your tests, I am unclear on their specifics. But, within whatever limits they may have, I accept them as totally credible, as I do you personally. Except, other very experienced recording engineers have done similar comparisons involving RBCD, hirez PCM or DSD vs. mic feeds, and they reach very different conclusions. Some stake their careers at substantial equipment expenditure upgrade levels in preferring recording and distributiion in hirez because they view it as sounding superior. Some of those guys are also very credible to me.

And, I have my own comparisons along with friends, hopefully all of us with discerning ears, of RBCD vs. various types of hirez at different sampling frequencies/formats from the same digital master. You and I do not agree that RBCD cannot be bettered, albeit slightly, but still noticeably and preferably. Note that native analog or RBCD recordings are not likely to reveal much difference for all the reasons cited in this thread about upsampling.

The 2016 Joshua Reiss meta analysis, carefully read, including looking carefully at the individual tests he summarized, can be looked at in various ways, depending on the reader's established viewpoint. To my mind, it demonstrates that some people, particularly those with prior training in what to listen for, can discern a difference with reasonable statistical significance with hirez, though not a preference which was not normally part of the testing. Others, of course, may read it as indicating such a small overall difference so as not to be worthwhile. And, some individual tests, excluding even the infamous, poorly conducted Meyer-Moran, do not show much discrimination of hirez for whatever reason.

https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/journal/?ID=591

Hirez is no panacea, and there is no slam dunk case to be made for it. In the slow evolution of audio, it might be a mere blip at substantial expense and inconvenience to many for not much improvement. But, others of us hear the improvement and value it.

There are other factors to consider in this. Early processing software did its work at the native rate of the file. Some processing will leave audible artifacts done this way. If upsampled, processed and downsampled you don't have the same artifacts. Or if you record and process at 96 or 192 you have lesser levels of artifacts. One of the most aggregious is compression. We know how commonly that is employed. It causes lots of aliasing. Modern processing software upsamples, processes and down-samples such processing. Some even has that as a variable where you can select anything from no upsampling to 64x or more.

So you could compare a wire connection to a straight-thru 44.1 khz ADC/DAC conversion and it be transparent. Yet recording and processing at 44.1 and 192 could give rather different end results. Once people in the business record at both rates and hear a difference they will of course have a firm opinion about it. Even as a listener, you may have heard recordings at different rates from the same master and similar effects may be present so it will sound subtly different.

Just as an example here are portions of a sweep, done at 48 khz in the first example and 384 khz in the second. Top is the sweep, and bottom is the sweep after a rather gentle 1.5:1 compression ratio without upsampling. Now the background goes to gray at -110 db so most of this is low in level. Portions of the 44.1 khz version are above -70 dbFS while none of the 384 khz version are above -95 dbFS or so. And remember this is only 1.5 to 1 compression which is not much at all.

Compression at 44.1 khz sample rate.

Compression done at 384 khz sample rate.
Sorry about not getting the image the same size. Not trying to be deceptive just a mistake.

 

[svart-hvitt]

Ok, I will quibble a little, Serge. I agree that 44k/16 is a more than adequate distribution medium, although I personally would not describe it as "perfectly" adequate.

I also have trouble with "transparent". To me there are degrees of transparency. It is not a binary, true/false description. We may think something is transparent, until we hear something else we consider more transparent, in which case our standards shift. Personally, this has happened to me frequently in audio, usually with slight degrees of greater apparent transparency over the years, but not so much in recent years. The forward pace in audio has definitely slowed, I believe, except for some schiity backsliding, among other alarming mini trends.

As to your tests, I am unclear on their specifics. But, within whatever limits they may have, I accept them as totally credible, as I do you personally. Except, other very experienced recording engineers have done similar comparisons involving RBCD, hirez PCM or DSD vs. mic feeds, and they reach very different conclusions. Some stake their careers at substantial equipment expenditure upgrade levels in preferring recording and distributiion in hirez because they view it as sounding superior. Some of those guys are also very credible to me.

And, I have my own comparisons along with friends, hopefully all of us with discerning ears, of RBCD vs. various types of hirez at different sampling frequencies/formats from the same digital master. You and I do not agree that RBCD cannot be bettered, albeit slightly, but still noticeably and preferably. Note that native analog or RBCD recordings are not likely to reveal much difference for all the reasons cited in this thread about upsampling.

The 2016 Joshua Reiss meta analysis, carefully read, including looking carefully at the individual tests he summarized, can be looked at in various ways, depending on the reader's established viewpoint. To my mind, it demonstrates that some people, particularly those with prior training in what to listen for, can discern a difference with reasonable statistical significance with hirez, though not a preference which was not normally part of the testing. Others, of course, may read it as indicating such a small overall difference so as not to be worthwhile. And, some individual tests, excluding even the infamous, poorly conducted Meyer-Moran, do not show much discrimination of hirez for whatever reason.

https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/journal/?ID=591

Hirez is no panacea, and there is no slam dunk case to be made for it. In the slow evolution of audio, it might be a mere blip at substantial expense and inconvenience to many for not much improvement. But, others of us hear the improvement and value it.

Just a short comment on «hirez», which is the word, writing you chose.

In my eyes, «hirez» is the fake thing (say 16/44 upsampled and sold at a higher price as 24/xxy), while «hires»/«hi-res» is the real thing.

Just a detail, but I don’t like the word «hirez» when it’s used about high quality productions.

See my point?

 

[andreasmaaan]

Ok, so how do we reconcile @amirm's test results with what we've been discussing about 16/44.1 as a playback distribution medium? (Sorry if it's all been discussed before...)

 

[Thomas savage]

There are threads about hirez vs RBCD , but either post in them or start a new one and I will move this over.

I can’t see how it’s got anything to do with the op.

 

[Thomas savage]

I moved the preceding posts on hirez to here https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...ion-audio-does-it-matter.11/page-5#post-88012

Anyone wanting to discuss that topic have a look over there.

Cheers

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

To me, there aren't degrees of adequacy. It's either adequate, in which case no improvement is necessary (note:- doesn't mean that an improvement can't be made), or it isn't. What I accept does vary is what each of us considers 'adequate'. For me, it's adequate if I can not hear any difference, i.e. it's transparent. I don't agree that there are degrees of transparency. That seems to me to be an oxymoron. If something passes a straight-wire bypass test, with different sources and with different listeners, then it's transparent.

The tests were done some years ago, comparing direct microphone feeds, commercial CDs and test signals.

As to commercial Hires releases, Many of them are a total con. Rereleases of classic recordings, done on analogue tape means that there's hardly anything there above 18-20kHz except noise, with a noise floor not much below 70dB, consisting of microphone amplifier noise, tape noise, aircon rumble etc etc. Even the classic microphones so valued by some don't have any response above 18kHz, so what's the point of a 96k/24 bit release?

Even early digital recordings would have been sampled at 48k (50k for the very early ones before standardisation) so again, what's the point?
Only recent recordings done at high resolution could be called Hires releases, if they're not resampled DSD or upsampled 48k material.

Anyway, enough of a rant.
S.

Ok, "transparency" is yet another audio metaphor derived from our sense of vision. In that context, I could show you two pieces of glass, both of which appear fully to be "transparent" to visible light. Yet, one may slightly block or filter some visible wavelengths, though not obviously unless you compare the two. I have done this with, for example, solar UV/IR protective films for windows. They all seem initially "transparent", but when you compare them, it is clear that some are somewhat more transparent than others. So, I still believe that transparency is ultimately relative, even in audio. And, like all metaphors, it may not be fully descriptive, particularly when applied to a quality from a different human sensory input. But, I don't think it is a bad audio metaphor to use. It's just that I still think there are relative degrees of it revealed only in direct comparisons.

I am also not clear on "Only recent recordings done at high resolution could be called Hires releases, if they're not resampled DSD or upsampled 48k material." I don't see why a recording made at DSD128 or 256, then downsampled to DSD64 is not still a hirez release. Or, why a recording made at PCM 88, 96, 176, 192, or 352, etc., then released on SACD converted to DSD64 would not be considered hirez. I also consider 48k recordings as hirez, including most BDs, but not something recorded in hirez and downsampled to an RBCD release. I think we do agree that uprezzing digital recordings in mastering may be cheating, however. But, the RIAA allows all of that in its definition of officially logoed "Hi-Res Audio", which, for better or worse, only pertains to the distribution format and which includes anything > RBCD in sample rate or bit depth.

In my own collection of recordings, I am reasonably sensitive to a recording's provenance in terms of original recording format and sampling rate. I don't really know much of what goes on with pop recordings or even jazz. But, with the classical stuff I have acquired by the thousands, uprezzing is extremely rare. I would say uprezzing is essentially nonexistent in new hirez classical recordings made from sessions over the last 15 years. Although, for a long time the BIS label recorded natively in 44k/24 Mch for their SACDs, which still fits my definition and the RIAA's of hirez. They switched to 96k/24 some years ago. But, their recordings are still excellent on SACD, as they were to my ears before the switch.

There is downrezzing from higher resolutions or format conversions, usually hirez PCM to DSD, with no intervening RBCD, to what are still hirez distribution formats. There are also remasterings from analog to hirez, including stuff from the Quadrophonic era as well as much from analog stereo masters and probably even some of the latter indirectly via 44k/16 or better remasters from the analog then upsampled to hirez, since the analog tapes have become unusable. Those are often not high on my list sonically. But, surprisingly, a few are excellent, like Solti's Wagner Ring cycle on Decca 48k/24 BD derived from RBCD masters. This classic "Greatest Recording of All Time" has never sounded better than this, though the "Greatest" label pertains to its historical significance, cast, performance, etc., not its absolute sonic merit, which was great for its day, but not for all time.

Confused? Yes, some record producers, streaming and download sites may have played games with sampling rates and formats. I do agree with Mark Waldrep of AIX Records and also with you, I think, that you aren't really hearing hirez unless you listen to native hirez recordings via hirez playback from a hirez distribution medium.

 

[svart-hvitt]

New good text from Archimago:

http://archimago.blogspot.com/2018/07/musings-zen-and-art-of-high-fidelity.html?m=1#more

 

[Wombat]

I'd drop the Zen slant.