Geert
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That was also my understanding because if you gave it a long stretch that could somehow make sense. But there's more going on.Watts doesn't claim to hear -300dB or -350dB though. He claims that he could hear differences between 2 different filters where the measurable differences for distortion were in that area.
At 11:08 Watts states you can hear noise floor modulation below the level of measurability.
At 11:29 he applies that theory to mains cables, so it's not only about filters in DAC's.
At 11:44 he repeats immeasurable small levels of modulated noise can be detected by the brain, which affects sound timbre.
From 13:00 on he explaines how distortion between -130 dB and -150 dB is easily audible. OK, not -300 dB but does -150 dB make more sense?
At 20:46 he states no matter how small an error in a small signal is, it's audible. (Error refers to small signal linearity I think, as he explained before). From here on he applies this small signal theory to the noise floor of noise shapers, and that's where the -350 dB refers to. Not filtering but noise shaping. This time there's an effect on perceived depth
This is summarized at the slide at 23:10, which also states this theory explains why interconnects sound different.
At 28:20 he explains how noise floor modulation is responsible for the sound difference between different DAC concepts, like R2R DAC's.
A lot to unpack here. Nevertheless he repeatedly suggest immeasurable small non linearities in audio signals are audible, being it in mains cords, interconnects or DAC's. It's not realy clear if he attributes all of this to noise floor modulation.
Next to that, at 19:28 he explains how audio systems have a huge problem with depth, giving two examples (organ in a cathedral and barking dogs miles away). This is one of the problems he tackles with his -350 dB noise shaping.
According to me, the organ in a cathedral sound you can only try to simulate using multi channel recording and playback. Or do we have an Chord DAC owner who can confirm the depth of these DAC's is jaw dropping?
And a stupid question, if Chord DAC's can fix this digital audio reconstruction error that has a fatal effect on depth than this means we should also get this incredible depth perception from analoge audio, like tape or vinyl (where no noise shaping is involved). Can we indeed confirm the depth perception of digital audio is worse than with analog?
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