Master Thread: Are measurements Everything or Nothing?

[ZööZ]

well it definitely can't be the final word... not be all rule all.. cause it's always dependent on the room... and listening distance... and desired listening volume... but it's the only proper thing you can compare them without having every FUCKING piece of equipment in your disposal and vast amounts of time. So if they measure like shit you'd better have a pretty damn good reason why they sound better in your specific system than the equipment that measures better before you claim otherwise... because every time you don't audio science can point you in the right direction... unless you can confess that it is just a personal preference

EDIT or a budget limitation (bang for buck)

 

[krabapple]

Any consensus on this? I think I hear a significant difference with HD vs nonHD

Before even considering that question, you'd need to know if the mastering was the same. For streaming you'd have to know what processing ,if any, is in use.

Any of THAT can be very audible.

HD vs nonHD, not so much.

I wish people would *get* this. IT'S THE MASTERING.

 

[Newman]

I think I hear a significant difference with HD vs nonHD

Hi, I think you were talking about streaming services, but if you want to hear for yourself if you can hear big differences between a 24/96 music file and the same file down-rezzed to 16/44.1, pop over to Mark Waldrep's 'challenge' page, here: https://www.realhd-audio.com/?p=6197 . He has carefully prepared 6 sample files (3 of each) and kept their resolution identity anonymous, so you don't know which is which until you look at the 'reveal' page. The files are all 24/96 because after down-sampling, he then resampled back to 24/96.

Of course you can cheat, but if you want to learn, don't cheat, and see what comes of it.

cheers

 

[amirm]

Incorrect. See the controlled test two posts above yours.

Not at all. There is no test to show reduced preference for high-res vs standard. Detection in an (ad-hoc) test is not any evidence of universal comment you made.

 

[amirm]

I'm talking about perceptible / audible quality, in particular on playback with a chain that has significant ultrasonic IMD down into the audible band, which is pretty obvious when that sentence isn't quoted in isolation but instead read in the context of the whole post it's taken from (including my previous post linked therein).

I am not sure what you are talking about. Your claim was outlandish: that conversion of high-res to standard causes audible degradation. The standard claim is that they sound the same so it is quite a bar to show that you actually get better sound when you convert down. I am pretty sure you don't have a shred of evidence to back what you said.

 

[GaryH]

Not at all. There is no test to show reduced preference for high-res vs standard.

I made no mention of preference.

Detection in an (ad-hoc) test is not any evidence of universal comment you made.

I made no such universal comment.

Your claim was outlandish: that conversion of high-res to standard causes audible degradation.

I made no such claim. No idea where you're getting any of this.

The standard claim is that they sound the same so it is quite a bar to show that you actually get better sound when you convert down.

I made no such universal claim:

at worst you'll just get added distortion in the audible band

 

[HarmonicTHD]

Hi there, even though your link is missing I will use this article, (link), which mentions the 64%, although it references Olive, not Toole that you said. In fact you said that Toole found that lowish percentage of people to prefer a flat, anechoic, loudspeaker, frequency response. Now I find you were talking about Olive, headphones, and non-flat frequency curves. @birdog1960 to note that we have strayed well off the topic that you (link) and I (link) thought we were talking about.

Nevertheless, the headphone article, at least the one I am linking above, says:-

Sean Olive, the Harman researcher leading much of the project, provided a further update in late 2019. Across a large and diverse body of listeners, three distinct sub-groups existed:

1. ”Harman Curve Lovers”: This group, which constitutes 64% of listeners, includes mostly a broad spectrum of people, although they’re generally under age 50. They prefer headphones tuned close to the Harman curve.
2. “More Bass Is Better”: This next group, which makes up 15% of listeners, prefers headphones with 3 to 6dB more bass than Harman curve below 300Hz, and 1dB more output above 1kHz. This group is predominantly male and younger — the listeners JBL is targeting with its headphones.
3. “Less Bass Is Better”: This group, 21% of listeners, prefers 2 to 3dB less bass than the Harman curve and 1dB more output above 1kHz. This group is disproportionately female and older than 50.”

IMO it would be very misleading, @HarmonicTHD , to interpret this as only 64% of listeners prefer the Harman (Headphone) Curve. Misleading because it leaves readers eg birdog1960 thinking that 36% don’t care for the curve and there is a huge amount of listener variation. Which is wrong.

In fact, in my words, the above 3 dot points by Dr Olive say that 100% of listeners prefer the Harman Curve to within 1 dB above 300 Hz, but below 300 Hz listeners split into 3 preference groups: 64% prefer the Curve within 2 dB, 21% prefer the Curve modified to -2 dB to -3 dB of bass, and 15% prefer the Curve modified to +3 dB to +6 dB of bass.

The underlined bit IMO is extremely important and gives a clue to how little human preference varies for sound quality in general. And even in the bass it’s the same curve, with tweaks to the level (not to the shape), and 100% of listeners fall into one of the 3 tweaks. IMO overall the message is one of remarkably high consistency in preferences: one only needs to ask a person if he or she is a bit averse to bass, or a bit crazy about bass, or neither, and you can pretty much hand him or her the target curve to look for in headphones. Wow. Even easier, just hand them the standard Harman Curve 100% of the time, and say there is a 1 in 3 chance they might want to apply a bass shelf of plus or minus a few dB to taste. Wow wow. No wonder Dr Toole describes us as stable and consistent measuring instruments.

cheers

First. Sorry forgot the link. Now edited and added.

Secondly. You are absolutely correct, that is why I recommended at the time to birddog to find the article from S Olive / forum post to understand the context. At the time I was traveling and didn’t link the article, I should have done so to avoid confusion.

Thanks btw for the great summary of the key points of the article.

 

[Galliardist]

So, just like others who are convinced / attempt to convince they've identified perceptible differences between hi-res and 16/44.1 CD-quality files, the answer is failure to properly implement basic controls in their testing, namely a clean playback chain (including of course in the ultrasonic band) that doesn't confound the results via downward intermodulation distortion polluting the audible band. So contrary to claims from many, hi-res is not higher quality; if anything the opposite, it's CD-quality with added distortion on playback.

This was the claim you made - I went back and grabbed the quote.
"...it's CD-quality with added distortion on playback"
So let's try and answer that instead.
In order for intermodulation distortion to come back into the audible band, you need a high signal in the claimed ranges - the mid 30s kHz (Oohashi) or in the high 50skHz for the second example.

A normal music signal is way, way down if not zero by the time you hit these ranges. So for well handled PCM it's not going to happen, full stop. If some of the claimed measurements for MQA are correct, then you may get something in the 30kHZ range because the reconstructed signal appeared to be at a higher level than the original.

With the ultrasound from SACD/DSD64? Oohashi used DSD and got a result. I'm not sure it would happen with a normal music signal, but I get modulation when tuning my guitar from other strings that are vibrating at a much lower level, so I won't discount immediately. I tend to think that during the format war, any such effect would have been found and weaponised against DSD, and I can't find anything for that, which makes me want to dismiss the idea.

I would hazard a guess that you might also get it to happen via an aliased signal, by upsampling redbook or 48/24 with no filters, then playing back with the filter set for the upsampled rate. I'm not sure who would make that dumb a mistake.

Regarding the test by Kaoru and Shogo referenced above, they used a highly artificial signal at 31.5kHz and an unusual speaker setup to create the effect (I note that this was referred to by @thewas after you made your claim). If you can find a 31.5kHz signal pulsed at 2kHz in any actual musical content anywhere I'd be surprised. It does act as a kind of "proof of concept" for your claim, but I don't see anything like that ever happening in practice.

And I presume that the corollary to your claim is that downsampling would improve audio quality were it true. That's the place to start, I guess. Is there any evidence for it?

So: I'm not up to dismissing your claim in all circumstances, but it does seem unlikely. I'll wait to see what criticisms come up.

 

[danadam]

So: I'm not up to dismissing your claim in all circumstances, but it does seem unlikely.

Maybe that's why he wrote "if anything", which you seemed to ignore.

 

[Galliardist]

Maybe that's why he wrote "if anything", which you seemed to ignore.

I’ll accept that. Sorry.

 

[bboris77]

Not sure if this is an appropriate catch-all thread for this subject, but is there ANY truth to what a favourite of these forums is suggesting here about various lossless streaming services?

In a nutshell, Paul is agreeing with his viewer that, subjectively, CD versions of the same songs sound vastly different/better to their streamed counterparts from Tidal/Qobuz. He then uses the opportunity to shill his own partial solution to this which I am not really interested in discussing here. I was just wondering whether anyone has ever done any actual measurements/comparisons to see whether there are any measurable differences between original CD versions and lossless versions of songs available on these services.

I know that GoldenOne did a test for MQA test signals on Tidal a while ago, before he got banned here, and he found that there were some differences. That is a totally different discussion as we all know that MQA is not actually lossless and is not optimized for compressing test signals. What I am interested in are actual HiFi Lossless CD-Quality versions of the songs on Tidal. I am also not really interested in listening blind tests because I am fairly sure that nobody could reliably tell those two versions apart.

 

[ahofer]

Not sure if this is an appropriate catch-all thread for this subject, but is there ANY truth to what a favourite of these forums is suggesting here about various lossless streaming services?

In a nutshell, Paul is agreeing with his viewer that, subjectively, CD versions of the same songs sound vastly different/better to their streamed counterparts from Tidal/Qobuz. He then uses the opportunity to shill his own partial solution to this which I am not really interested in discussing here. I was just wondering whether anyone has ever done any actual measurements/comparisons to see whether there are any measurable differences between original CD versions and lossless versions of songs available on these services.

I know that GoldenOne did a test for MQA test signals on Tidal a while ago, before he got banned here, and he found that there were some differences. That is a totally different discussion as we all know that MQA is not actually lossless and is not optimized for compressing test signals. What I am interested in are actual HiFi Lossless CD-Quality versions of the songs on Tidal. I am also not really interested in listening blind tests because I am fairly sure that nobody could reliably tell those two versions apart.

Alan Shaw, over on HUG, has done file comparisons - No difference, of course, once differing masters and volume levels are accounted for.

https://www.harbeth.co.uk/usergroup/threads/streaming-services-technically-compromised-compared-with-cd.80585/

 

[bboris77]

Alan Shaw, over on HUG, has done file comparisons - No difference, of course, once differing masters and volume levels are accounted for.

https://www.harbeth.co.uk/usergroup/threads/streaming-services-technically-compromised-compared-with-cd.80585/

I am waiting for their admin to approve my account as it does not appear this thread is available to the general public.

Thanks for the prompt response though!

 

[Robbo99999]

Not at all. There is no test to show reduced preference for high-res vs standard. Detection in an (ad-hoc) test is not any evidence of universal comment you made.

To be fair though, I can't believe you think Hi-Res music is any better than CD Quality - I remember you even did an article once showing a High Res track that only had excess noise above 20kHz, and your conclusion (or the feeling I got from it) was that Hi Res music only served to take up more disk space, if I recall correctly. I really don't think you're an advocate for High Res music, everything you've posted and reviewed & seem to stand for suggests that you think CD Quality music is the max required.

EDIT: I appreciate my statement doesn't disclude the point you're making, but you're not an advocate for High Res as far as I know, and a cursory read of just your recent posts in this thread could be misconstrued that you are. High Res is bunkum all things considered.

 

[Sokel]

To be fair though, I can't believe you think Hi-Res music is any better than CD Quality - I remember you even did an article once showing a High Res track that only had excess noise above 20kHz, and your conclusion (or the feeling I got from it) was that Hi Res music only served to take up more disk space, if I recall correctly. I really don't think you're an advocate for High Res music, everything you've posted and reviewed & seem to stand for suggests that you think CD Quality music is the max required.

EDIT: I appreciate my statement doesn't disclude the point you're making, but you're not an advocate for High Res as far as I know, and a cursory read of just your recent posts in this thread could be misconstrued that you are. High Res is bunkum all things considered.

That's what Amir states about it:

Summary and Final Thoughts
As I mentioned at the outset, high resolution audio makes a difference. And a huge one at that in the way it gives us access to stereo masters prior to re-mastering for the CD. That path means the music can be free of loudness compression which will have clear benefit, putting aside any additional sonic fidelity due to use of higher bit depths and sampling. Given the fact that CD has no choice but to go away in the future, we as enthusiasts better get behind high resolution audio distribution. Nothing but goodness comes from having more choices of formats for our music.

High Resolution Audio: Does It Matter?

High Resolution Audio: Does It Matter? By Amir Majidimehr [Note: This article was published in the January 2015 issue of Widescreen Review Magazine. This is a slightly revised edition.] Yes! Thought I give you the short answer first in case you are impatient like me. If you have read my...

www.audiosciencereview.com

I don't know if anything has changed since.

 

[Robbo99999]

That's what Amir states about it:

High Resolution Audio: Does It Matter?

High Resolution Audio: Does It Matter? By Amir Majidimehr [Note: This article was published in the January 2015 issue of Widescreen Review Magazine. This is a slightly revised edition.] Yes! Thought I give you the short answer first in case you are impatient like me. If you have read my...

www.audiosciencereview.com

I don't know if anything has changed since.

Cheers for that link. Doesn't that just mean though that Hi Res music only has significance for "library storing" of tracks before converting to different formats for actual consumption. So doesn't that mean High Res is just a potentially important part of the music recording/production side, and is not an important part of the consumption side. ie High Res just allows you to convert more "losslessly" to other formats but doesn't actually benefit the final consumption/listening, in terms of it's not necessary to actually listen to High Res music format, but it instead has it uses further up the music production chain (not at the consumption stage). If that's the case then High Res doesn't have any use for consumers, just for creators/producers/librarians of music, not the consumers.

 

[Sokel]

Cheers for that link. Doesn't that just mean though that Hi Res music only has significance for "library storing" of tracks before converting to different formats for actual consumption. So doesn't that mean High Res is just a potentially important part of the music recording/production side, and is not an important part of the consumption side. ie High Res just allows you to convert more "losslessly" to other formats but doesn't actually benefit the final consumption/listening, in terms of it's not necessary to actually listen to High Res music format, but it instead has it uses further up the music production chain (not at the consumption stage). If that's the case then High Res doesn't have any use for consumers, just for creators/producers/librarians of music, not the consumers.

Sometimes we see strange things thought.
That's a measurement comparing the same DAC at PCM 96Khz and DSD256.
The later has elevated noise (maybe cause of the reduced level,too hot for my ADC) but almost no "grass".
Maybe not audible but given that the test samples are perfect it's worth having a look (Blue=PCM,Yellow=DSD):

Edit:In case someone misunderstood "reduced level",it both applies to PCM and DSD,the levels between them are identical but lower so my ADC doesn't clip recording them (until I get my Cosmos and be done with it).

Edit 2: Whole bandwidth for clearer view.

 

[birdog1960]

More confused than ever. Shortly after joining this forum, I began getting sales emails from Qubuz. Had tried Tidal and wasn't impressed. Now have Amazon Unlimited and certainly enjoy the catalogue and the algorithms seem to be learning my preferences (finally). So, is implied sound superiority snake oil or is their really benefit? Of course, there's an intermediate option between collecting and buying boatloads of CD's and subscribing to an HD service: that is using free spotify, amazon etc. Is that what available evidence suggests? That would be a very big deal to Qubuz and Tidal.

 

[dshreter]

More confused than ever. Shortly after joining this forum, I began getting sales emails from Qubuz. Had tried Tidal and wasn't impressed. Now have Amazon Unlimited and certainly enjoy the catalogue and the algorithms seem to be learning my preferences (finally). So, is implied sound superiority snake oil or is their really benefit? Of course, there's an intermediate option between collecting and buying boatloads of CD's and subscribing to an HD service: that is using free spotify, amazon etc. Is that what available evidence suggests?

There’s not a pat answer to this because it comes down to mastering, and there can be differences between subscription services and what they offer.

I think catalogue and usability trump sound quality for how to select a service right now. Apple has some Atmos content which is cool. Spotify in my opinion has the best device and app ecosystem with a strong catalogue.

 

[ahofer]

There’s not a pat answer to this because it comes down to mastering, and there can be differences between subscription services and what they offer.

I think catalogue and usability trump sound quality for how to select a service right now. Apple has some Atmos content which is cool. Spotify in my opinion has the best device and app ecosystem with a strong catalogue.

For classical music, I’d say Idagio is best for catalogue and search, but last place for streamer integration (it uses airplay). Of the widely-integrated apps, Qobuz is probably best, although there are issues with track accessibility thru Roon.