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God of SINAD vs. reality we get from most available music files

amirm

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Amir, was there any claims for brands in that post?
There was implication that the top scoring products have lower reliability. Since they are mostly from China, I thought I show that reliability knows no borders.
 

solderdude

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When I used Audyssey for the first time it was a very, very easy process. That was around 15 years ago. I have used it recently due to a change of gear and it was even easier. I guess Dirac, in it's most basic (no custom) form is not too different in terms of usability.
Going full in is not that easy, but getting the most basic sweap is quite easy.

And well, that should not be at odds with pushing a higher SINAD on the device.

I expect EQ to be something that ASR readers would do.
However, ASR and even head-fi people are still a very, very small portion of the people that use headphones or listen to music.
If I were to ask any of my co-workers, people I know etc. what 'parametric EQ' is then all of them will say they never heard of it.
Yet all of them have either headphones or listen to music on (bluetooth) speakers.
They all could care less about EQ and parametric EQ. Well some may use it to set bass to +20 or so.

For people into 'hi-fi' this is easy. For the majorty of people... they would not even know what it is for.
 

Thomas_A

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There was implication that the top scoring products have lower reliability. Since they are mostly from China, I thought I show that reliability knows no borders.
I did not see that. However, you are completely correct that reliability issues can be all over the place, and there is no statistics that I know of that can be used.
 

Vacceo

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I expect EQ to be something that ASR readers would do.
However, ASR and even head-fi people are still a very, very small portion of the people that use headphones or listen to music.
If I were to ask any of my co-workers, people I know etc. what 'parametric EQ' is then all of them will say they never heard of it.
Yet all of them have either headphones or listen to music on (bluetooth) speakers.
They all could care less about EQ and parametric EQ. Well some may use it to set bass to +20 or so.

For people into 'hi-fi' this is easy. For the majorty of people... they would not even know what it is for.
15 years ago I did not know that concentric speakers existed and I had one playing, but I still used Audyssey. It was in the manual of the Denon, so go guess...
 

MaxBuck

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Slayer is not the same as "rock in any variant". Distortion can be a tool. I guess you've never listened to electric guitar.
Herbie Hancock last night employed plenty of distortion as a musical tool.

I suspect that a careful analysis of many classical pieces might reveal use of frequencies to cancel or modify others by acoustic addition or subtraction. That's distortion.
 

Cbdb2

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Not that I know of. I only know some companies like Meridian having the tool. It is probably not hard for someone to write it in Matlab or something. I just haven't spent the time doing it.
Not as easy as you think to get it right. As far as dynamics go whet we hear and what we measure can be very different. When I was a sound designer (editing sound effects for movies) part of the job was to make sounds as loud as possible with out going over 0 vu on a vu meter, or -14dbfs (for peaks.) at a -20 dbfs reference level. There are a few ways to do this. Filter out low freqs., or add some 6khz, combine similar sounds, (3 different gun shots mixed together can sound louder than one even if they both hit 0 vu.), peak limit/compress. (fast peaks are inaudable, bringing them down 6db can increase your level 6db.
So there are ways to make something sound louder without increasing the signal voltage (and not necessarily using compression) and thats why I always take these dynamic range figures with a grain of salt. The electrical dynamic range, what a device measures, is not the same as what you hear.
 

MaxBuck

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You lost me at cat videos. I like cats alright, but cat videos are the lowest common denominator. Yes, I know that was actually your point. It still rubs me the wrong way.

You want some real noise, just rub a cat the wrong way. Rowwwrrrrr.
 

DonH56

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I cannot do anything about distortion (however you define it) in the source material. My goal is to faithfully reproduce the source I have, perhaps flavoring for preference. So my viewpoint is that I do not care what distortions (intentional or not) are on the recording in my hand (player, network), I do not want my system to add to them, whether it be modifying the frequency response via room or speakers, or by adding distortion, crosstalk, noise and so forth from the components in my system.
 

amirm

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The electrical dynamic range, what a device measures, is not the same as what you hear.
So? The purpose of a container is to be transparent to whatever one puts in it. We can do this today so I see no reason to compromise due to some specific case.
 

Cbdb2

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Herbie Hancock last night employed plenty of distortion as a musical tool.

I suspect that a careful analysis of many classical pieces might reveal use of frequencies to cancel or modify others by acoustic addition or subtraction. That's distortion.
Or even:
 

Cbdb2

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So? The purpose of a container is to be transparent to whatever one puts in it. We can do this today so I see no reason to compromise due to some specific case.
??? Did you actually read my post? I'm talking about programs that tell you the dynamic range of music and that they don't tell you what you hear. There not accurate and can be misleading. Like the stated 70db of dynamic range in the Riki Lee album. Where they comparing the loudest part with the hiss?
 
OP
pma

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Or with the final fade-out :). Ricki-Lee Jones has something about 30 dB usable dynamic range.
 

Timcognito

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Okay I read all posts and feel its odd that SINAD wrongly gets singled out of the couple hands full of measurements that Amir presents on virtually every electronic device he tests. That measurement is a combination of two values the have been measured for close a century because they represent true benchmarks that allow apples to apples comparison of disparate electronic equipment. There have been many cogent points made about audibility, upstream signal quality and down stream loads and combining the the two measurements, not Amir's invention. We are talking about S/N and THD and ignoring the rest of the available data including purchase price that gets presented.
 
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solderdude

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Or with the final fade-out :). Ricki-Lee Jones has something about 30 dB usable dynamic range.
8 bits (dithered) should sound the same as 16 or 24 bit files in that case. (6 bits needed for 30dB range)
 

restorer-john

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There is no evidence of connection between those. My $6000 mark levinson dac failed with a bad cap. Both of my $25000 ML amps have become flakey. And I have had a non chinese DAC fail. In testing I have blown amps from Japan, France, and Canada. None from China.

So yes, it is weird to claim causation without any data.

Exhibit A on your own site, the Topping PA5 thread. None of those amps are more than one year old.

How old again is your ML DAC and amplifiers? 15 years?

PS, you should get the amps fixed. Don't put it off, as cascading failures could be very expensive and/or unrepairable. Do you have service manuals BTW? Probably should get whatever you can documentation/parts wise before they become completely NLA. :)
 

amirm

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Exhibit A on your own site, the Topping PA5 thread. None of those amps are more than one year old.
There is no "exhibit" there. Or any indication of cost cutting, bad manufacturing, etc. Indeed, their process as described is way, way better than a ton of audio companies especially in the high-end.

Hardware manufacturing is a pain in the neck and full of issues. Or have we forgotten about antenna gate of iphones, and myriad of issues with Pixel phones, etc. Many problems are only found once you mass produce them.

How old again is your ML DAC and amplifiers? 15 years?
It failed about 10 years ago. Not now.

PS, you should get the amps fixed. Don't put it off, as cascading failures could be very expensive and/or unrepairable. Do you have service manuals BTW? Probably should get whatever you can documentation/parts wise before they become completely NLA. :)
They are already a pain to fix. They want me to ship the monsters to some repair shop in LA as Harman no longer services them. I am sure they just going to swap boards and charge thousands of dollars for each. I don't think they will give me the service manual but I will ask at some point.

Boy do I wish I had some lightweight, module based class D amps.
 

Ra1zel

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Striving for some ultra high dynamic range is also funny, unless of course I'm unaware that every 18 bit music enjoyer is also a pro level diver and they hold their breath for the length of the track to realize the full potential of their lead encased listening rooms made in abandoned nuclear power plant.
Screenshot_20220809-092350_Chrome.jpg
 

mhardy6647

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8 bits (dithered) should sound the same as 16 or 24 bit files in that case. (6 bits needed for 30dB range)
I find this bon mot interesting (which may display my ignorance -- but, hey, at least I am still driven by curiosity!). Mind you, I don't pretend to understand too much about digitization (or whatever one would call this), but resolution in both x and y dimensions is important, isn't it? Is one more important than the other? 'cause there is no doubt (ahem that's probably too strongly worded: let's say I would opine ;) ) that a good old LP record can sound objectively pretty good, but obviously has limited dynamic range compared to other media (and, thanks to the rec/play EQ curve used for LPs, limitations to frequency response, too).

What would (what does) "CD quality" (44.1 kHz) sampling rate, 8 bit audio sound like compared to 14 or 16 bit when converted back to analog?
 
OP
pma

pma

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Go ahead and use Google. There are examples of the properly dithered 8-bit music files in the web space together with blind test option against original files. You might get very surprised.
 
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