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High Resolution Audio: Does It Matter?

Dismayed

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The limited number of Hi-Res files I have to listen to sound quite good on my modest system: Hypex Amps, Emotiva DACs, TinkerBoard with Volumio, DIY SEAS monitors, my CDs stored on NAS and streamed over Volumio.

Part of that is that I suspect that particular care was taken in the recording, mixing, etc. of the Hi-Res music, many times created by lesser known artists. I have some Redbook CD's that sound fantastic, and others sound like excrement. A lot has to do with how the record was produced.

When Sony and Phillips determined the specs for CD's it was a very different world. The CD fairly rapidly diminished vinyl. Now streaming has diminished the CD, and vinyl has made a comeback, as has cassette, IMHO more out of nostalgia than anything else.

The reason Hi-Res has not taken off is that the masses who consume music do not listen critically. Lossy formats are good enough for them to blast in their earbuds or in their cars.

It is only a small percentage of us audio freaks who closely and critically listen to music. Now that Hi-Res and streaming have become affordable enough for a slow growth in distribution to occur, I welcome it.

If one guy picked it right 8 out of 10 times, that is meaningful. Given the average person's hearing, the average person may never be able to detect a delta between lossy, Redbook or Hi-Res. If some can, and I think I am one of them, then it is worth it.
One guy getting 8/10 right could chance.
 
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dtaylo1066

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If 20 people try a test, 1 of them will get 8/10 by chance. The person getting that result needs to do it again, and see what happens the next time.

I will not argue that.

Personally I would rather see a focus on better production and outcomes within the recording process than a focus on bit rate or sample rate of its replay. I have Redbook CDs that sound fantastic. Many others are just crap due to lousy recording sessions or engineering.

We can debate Redbook vs Hi-Res til the cows come home, and I have no qualifications as an EE, I'm just a listener. I "think at times" I can hear a difference. Emphasis on the quoted area. But I listen to so few Hi-Res recordings that it is a moot point. In on-line tests of Redbook vs. lossy, I scored pretty well, so I am more confident in that delta.

I likely will soon buy into a streaming service, so I may have more of an opinion then. Kind of like video, at what pixel rate does detectable picture improvement by the human eye begin to cease?

Despite the technological improvement, there exists great variation in human hearing and human vision. And both get worse with age. I am 66 years old, have had recent hearing tests, and my hearing is a bit above average for a person of my age. 20-20K forget it. I'm good to maybe 13K or so. But that is not indicative of how well or not I can discern differences in tonality and notes within a recording.

And despite the accuracy and bit or sample rate, ultimately is must be heard through a speaker, arguably the weakest link in the chain in terms of distortion and coloration.

We can all agree that Redbook beats an antique Victrola! I can recall when LP's promoted on the album cover that they were in "Living Stereo." In the end, we are listening to an illusion.
 
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j_j

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Personally I would rather see a focus on better production and outcomes within the recording process than a focus on bit rate or sample rate of its replay. .

Yeah, I can go along with that! I could play some of the 78's on my shelf, though, and get music you will never find in the modern day.
 

krabapple

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The limited number of Hi-Res files I have to listen to sound quite good on my modest system: Hypex Amps, Emotiva DACs, TinkerBoard with Volumio, DIY SEAS monitors, my CDs stored on NAS and streamed over Volumio.
Can you name some of the hi rez files are you referring to?


The reason Hi-Res has not taken off is that the masses who consume music do not listen critically. Lossy formats are good enough for them to blast in their earbuds or in their cars.
You're confusing things. If something they play in their car sounds obviously bad at home, it could simply be too much *dynamic range* compression or extreme EQ, was baked in to the mastering (or in the stream). Lossy data compression, which is a totally different thing, does not automatically sound bad -- or like anything at all. I'd put my money on bad mastering/postprocessing.

If one guy picked it right 8 out of 10 times, that is meaningful.
Not necessarily.
 

abm0

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I think this is a common misunderstanding of what 95% confidence interval means. [...] if one person gets 19 of out 20 heads, if does not mean we're 95% sure the coin had a preference for heads for that one person. The 95% confidence interval is to allow assumptions to be made for broader populations, as to where the mean lies.
Yes, and furthermore, the 95% threshold has long been abused in scientific papers to draw definitive conclusions on whether the investigated effect was found to be real or not. That's not what it's supposed to do, it only adds partial information that should modify our confidence (probability estimate) on whether we're dealing with a real effect or not. Lots of scientists came out against the usual use of the 95% threshold around 2019, but I don't know if the situation has improved much since then.

We are not calling for a ban on P values. Nor are we saying they cannot be used as a decision criterion in certain specialized applications (such as determining whether a manufacturing process meets some quality-control standard). And we are also not advocating for an anything-goes situation, in which weak evidence suddenly becomes credible. Rather, and in line with many others over the decades, we are calling for a stop to the use of P values in the conventional, dichotomous way — to decide whether a result refutes or supports a scientific hypothesis.

In fact it seems various experts in statistics had been raising concerns about the typical use of p<0.05 for a good 2 decades before that: https://amstat.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00031305.2016.1154108
 
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j_j

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Yes, and furthermore, the 95% threshold has long been abused in scientific papers to draw definitive conclusions on whether the investigated effect was found to be real or not. That's not what it's supposed to do, it only adds partial information that should modify our confidence (probability estimate) on whether we're dealing with a real effect or not. Lots of scientists came out against the usual use of the 95% threshold around 2019, but I don't know if the situation has improved much since then.



In fact it seems various experts in statistics had been raising concerns about the typical use of p<0.05 for a good 2 decades before that: https://amstat.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00031305.2016.1154108

This is disturbing for several reasons. First, there are two kinds of error, and both must be evaluated. There is the 'p value' for a given effect appearing at random, and there is also the "type 2 error" effect of "failure to detect".

Simply put, for tests that show effects for one or two people, the answer is more testing for those people. This goes for both large and small tests, but the larger the test, the more likely for type one errors due to randomness, and the less likely for type 2 "missed detection" errors. Both must be evaluated to start with, before any real statistical (or multidimensional statistical) approaches can be even attempted.

Using this to argue for the importance of high-res, however, is not particularly wise at extreme levels. When the understanding of physics is even more telling than the understanding of the human auditory system, well, you're likely reaching.
 

MRC01

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Yes, and furthermore, the 95% threshold has long been abused in scientific papers to draw definitive conclusions on whether the investigated effect was found to be real or not. That's not what it's supposed to do, it only adds partial information that should modify our confidence (probability estimate) on whether we're dealing with a real effect or not....
Even a blind squirrel sometimes finds a nut. And considering the likelihood that any particular observation could have been random chance, here are some fun yet real spurious correlations: https://tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations
 

pablolie

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I would never ever embark on a listening test where I am not in control of the songs. I want songs *I* am familiar with and that I enjoy listening to.

We talk ad nausea about statistical significance, but which listener really gives a crap unless they are really invested in the music? And also take note of the complete and total insignificance of consequences if ones fails the test. So what? Why apply myself to the fullest if absolutely nothing is at stake?

If my livelihood or life depends on passing a test, I better apply myself. The experimental attempt to hear differences between 16/44 and 20/96 etc doesn't quite motivate me to do so.
 

SIY

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I would never ever embark on a listening test where I am not in control of the songs. I want songs *I* am familiar with and that I enjoy listening to.

We talk ad nausea about statistical significance, but which listener really gives a crap unless they are really invested in the music? And also take note of the complete and total insignificance of consequences if ones fails the test. So what? Why apply myself to the fullest if absolutely nothing is at stake?

If my livelihood or life depends on passing a test, I better apply myself. The experimental attempt to hear differences between 16/44 and 20/96 etc doesn't quite motivate me to do so.
I usually hear the opposite argument. "My hearing acuity is diminished because of the stress of testing."
 

Andysu

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I usually hear the opposite argument. "My hearing acuity is diminished because of the stress of testing."
drink orange juice it replenishes revives , yet tinnitus still on off around most no days but can hear sine wave 16KHz

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11063777_10153579690180149_5808070273735328324_o.jpg
416588_10150903654905149_825080446_o.jpg
 

pablolie

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In such case I'd rather ask why participate in the test at all :)
You have never participated in a survey or test you didn't much care about? They are imposed on many us very often, unfortunately... :)

I am not disputing whatever those tests set out to establish, by the way. I am just pointing out that given the utter lack of consequence, people ,may start the test and then realize "Hmm this is taking far more effort than I anticipated" for one reason or the other, with loss of motivation to truly give it your best try.
 

krabapple

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You have never participated in a survey or test you didn't much care about? They are imposed on many us very often, unfortunately... :)

I am not disputing whatever those tests set out to establish, by the way. I am just pointing out that given the utter lack of consequence, people ,may start the test and then realize "Hmm this is taking far more effort than I anticipated" for one reason or the other, with loss of motivation to truly give it your best try.
that's fine, as long as they aren't the same people who seem forever motivated to rhapsodize about the audible difference between 16 and 24 bits.
 

voodooless

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I am just pointing out that given the utter lack of consequence, people ,may start the test and then realize "Hmm this is taking far more effort than I anticipated" for one reason or the other, with loss of motivation to truly give it your best try.
I don’t see a problem with that. If this is the conclusion of someone that was previously utterly convinced that they could hear differences between two DUTs, this is a massive win! Nothing at stake? I think there is! It’s the confidence that person had before they started the test.
 

pablolie

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I don’t see a problem with that. If this is the conclusion of someone that was previously utterly convinced that they could hear differences between two DUTs, this is a massive win! Nothing at stake? I think there is! It’s the confidence that person had before they started the test.

Indeed very true. And it happens pretty much every time - I for one have never ever witnessed anyone reliably telling apart 16 vs 24 bit, or 44 vs 192 kHz. Never even once. It's undiluted charlatanerie, IMHO. If it's based on a better master etc, you could, but then it has zero to do with the format.

320k vs RedBook can be done if (1) I pick the songs (2) which contain very specific attributes (great recording, fast percussion transients)... *but* doing so is not fun ... and I can thoroughly enjoy both versions of the performance to the fullest. Been there, done that, never will again. :)
 

Sokel

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Asking people doing controlled tests makes me have a bitter smile some times.
I mean people are afraid to describe what they hear in a simple test like this as if the Ultimate Judge will sentence them as wrong if what they heard is *wrong* :

Out of the thousands of membership here,only 3!


Come on people,it's fun,it won't go in our permanent record!
 

j_j

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I am not disputing whatever those tests set out to establish, by the way. I am just pointing out that given the utter lack of consequence, people ,may start the test and then realize "Hmm this is taking far more effort than I anticipated" for one reason or the other, with loss of motivation to truly give it your best try.

This is why controls are added in every decent test, both positive and negative controls.
 

Sal1950

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Indeed very true. And it happens pretty much every time - I for one have never ever witnessed anyone reliably telling apart 16 vs 24 bit, or 44 vs 192 kHz. Never even once. It's undiluted charlatanerie, IMHO. If it's based on a better master etc, you could, but then it has zero to do with the format.
Amen, that's the truth.
Much as many wish to crow over hi-rez or hi-def, redbook has yet to be proven as insufficient for delivering as high as quality audio as we humans can hear. Even Mark Waldrep, the owner of a recording studio that made it's bread and butter
selling 24-96 admitted the same.
I won't say it's impossible, I think it may be in rare cases of very dynamic music and 16 vs 20 or 24.
But that's just a guess and again it's never once been proven.

I would never ever embark on a listening test where I am not in control of the songs. I want songs *I* am familiar with and that I enjoy listening to.
I don't see where in tests were short pieces are rapidly switched between A/B or A/B/C, where the familiarity of the music should have any bearing. But what do I know, I'm just a mechanic. ;)
 

j_j

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I don't see where in tests were short pieces are rapidly switched between A/B or A/B/C, where the familiarity of the music should have any bearing. But what do I know, I'm just a mechanic. ;)

If the subjects are given time to learn what they are hearing, and allowed some training time, it's not an issue, of course, assuming that the material to be detected (or not) is in the source material.

A good test not only allows quick, clickless switching, but also looping around material the SUBJECT thinks is critical.
 
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