Milind Kunchur

[Purité Audio]

Has his work on 'time smearing' been discredited , I vaguely remember reading an article somewhere,
http://boson.physics.sc.edu/~kunchur/papers/HIFI-Critic-article-by-George-Foster.pdf

Keith

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

It would seem in many ways to be congruent with Bob Stuart's thinking. Reduction of time smearing through both the recording and reproduction chain is one of the stated goals of MQA.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

Has his work on 'time smearing' been discredited , I vaguely remember reading an article somewhere,
http://boson.physics.sc.edu/~kunchur/papers/HIFI-Critic-article-by-George-Foster.pdf

First, it's Milind (although your smartphone may have made that "Milan" ) and second, it's complete nonsense. The good Dr strayed out of his field and drifted into audiophile believer territory.
Yes, it's been long debunked: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,73598.0.html

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

First, it's Milind (although your smartphone may have made that "Milan" ) and second, it's complete nonsense. The good Dr strayed out of his field and drifted into audiophile believer territory.
Yes, it's been long debunked: https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,73598.0.html

Yes, well, hydrogen audio totally debunks everything and everybody but Arnie sooner or later.

Seriously, I am not myself qualified to get into Kunchur's actual experiments as to whether they are good, bad or indifferent or whether they prove or disprove a theory about the audible significance of time smearing. The experiments might indeed be imperfect, as the hydrogen audio crowd seems to say. OTOH, the possible hypothesis, Kunchur or not, about the audibility of time smearing lives on. It might have merit, or it might not in spite of Kunchur. The notion has not been disproven, even if Kunchur's experiments are ultimately found wanting, as far as I know. But, if there is something more reliable than hydrogen audio, I would love to know about it.

Therefore, I think, "complete nonsense" may be a rush to judgement. And, I certainly would not rely totally on just comments in any audio forum, even this one, to be the compelling final say on the matter.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

Yes, well, hydrogen audio totally debunks everything and everybody but Arnie sooner or later.

Believers gonna believe.

Seriously, I am not myself qualified to get into Kunchur's actual experiments as to whether they are good

Then it's no surprise you couldn't comprehend JJs explanations among many others why they weren't. They showed something...just not the premise that 16/44 is inadequate audibly.

The notion has not been disproven

That is not a requirement for the educated sane.

And, I certainly would not rely totally on just comments in any audio forum, even this one, to be the compelling final say on the matter.

Believers gonna believe.

Have you ever noticed that believers of 16/44 "inadequacy" and "time smear" never, ever, ever perform reliable listening tests vs believer formats like Hi Re$ ?
That it's always some completely orthogonal temporal or frequency "test" that "proves" the inadequacy and "smear", etc.? Never 16/44 music vs the elixir music.
Hmmm.

 

[amirm]

I don't think it is fruitful to discuss the paper itself. It requires very high level of knowledge of signal processing and sound which even if one explained, would be lost on the readers.

What we can do is discuss the preface in that link. The paper/research is used as what I call "life west" to try to justify many other experiences. That cannot be done. The research uses special signals (e.g. 7 Khz square wave) to detect certain thresholds. The paper did not, let me repeat, did not use music to demonstrate the same detection thresholds. When we test music, passing such thresholds becomes impossibly hard. That says either music masks such thresholds or that the research's conclusion is wrong.

 

[Blumlein 88]

I don't think it is fruitful to discuss the paper itself. It requires very high level of knowledge of signal processing and sound which even if one explained, would be lost on the readers.

What we can do is discuss the preface in that link. The paper/research is used as what I call "life west" to try to justify many other experiences. That cannot be done. The research uses special signals (e.g. 7 Khz square wave) to detect certain thresholds. The paper did not, let me repeat, did not use music to demonstrate the same detection thresholds. When we test music, passing such thresholds becomes impossibly hard. That says either music masks such thresholds or that the research's conclusion is wrong.

At a minimum his conclusions are wrong because of his filtering. The filtering alters the level of the 7 khz tone enough it would be audible. His positive results Peter out just about where the level difference at 7 khz becomes only .2 dB in size.

 

[Purité Audio]

Thanks for the HA link AJ, do you know if Milund conduct further tests to verify his hypothesis ?
Keith.

 

[AJ Soundfield]

Thanks for the HA link AJ, do you know if Milund conduct further tests to verify his hypothesis ?
Keith.

No. I suspect like with Hawksfords "Essex Echo" nonsense, he eventually heard from a qualified "peer" reviewer (unlike those that had reviewed the paper) and quietly let this die down. He is quite qualified in his actual field of physics, but he confessed to being an audiophile believer http://audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/milan-kunchur.522/#post-14721 (Q7) which can lead to embarrassing consequences like this, when one strays well outside ones expertise.
Best to let sleeping dogs lie. It was bad enough where even JA from Stereophile decided against supporting it, so it ended up in that Brit believer mag.
The real world has long moved on from the "Hi Re$" charade, but of course those with strong pecuniary interests know it is still a solid money maker among the believer fringe, so now we have yet another go after SACD and DVDA. Never mind the bollocks, here comes MQA and the "time smear" bogeyman...again.

 

[Fitzcaraldo215]

Yup, as you said, "believers gotta believe".

 

[Werner]

Regardless the actual experiments, the MK papers' conclusions indicate a deep lack of understanding of the sampling theorem. Which is kind of embarassing.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Regardless the actual experiments, the MK papers' conclusions indicate a deep lack of understanding of the sampling theorem. Which is kind of embarassing.

It is embarrassing. Those who should be most embarrassed are the review panel that let it get published with a couple of obvious errors at a minimum.

 

[ceedee]

Ah yes … the guy who believes the time resolution of 16/44.1 is 23μs.

How the heck did that make it through peer review?? (If it did, that is. I remember reading that it was published.)

 

[j_j]

Regardless the actual experiments, the MK papers' conclusions indicate a deep lack of understanding of the sampling theorem. Which is kind of embarassing.

Indeed, his comments (which have vanished in later text) about time resolution vs. sampling frequency, alone, were enough to suggest there were many problems with the paper.

Using square waves is very tricky. Linearity can surprise you. Slightly different slew rates can surprise you. Various filtering issues can introduce level differences that will surprise you. Different positions for speakers vs. HRTF's can change everything.

If one thinks one can not actually resolve under one sample interval in a proper PCM signal, one would also be arguing that no modern modem can work, no filterbank (dct, mdct, pqmf, qmf, ...) can work, and yet they all do.

Don't forget the reconstruction filter when you build that picture in your head.

 

[audiophile]

Has anyone read some of the recent papers by Prof. Milind Kunchur?

"What differentiates audio interconnect cables?"

"Conversations about audio cables are often based on naïve and misleading concepts such resistance and frequency response. The present work shows that differences in such common parameters are too negligible to explain differences in sonic performance. In the absence of meaningful measurements and parameters, choosing and rating audio cables has understandingly taken place in a ‘wine-tasting” like manner. This work provides a novel perspective and describes subtle electrical behaviors that clearly differentiate cables in ways that could make an audible difference. The experiments provide an objective basis for specifying and rating audio cables and provide some steps in predicting their expected behavior."

"Cable pathways between audio components can affect perceived sound quality“ – Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, in press (2021) Milind N. Kunchur, University of South Carolina

"High-end audio is a subject that is shrouded in controversy. Aside from loudspeakers, consumers exhibit varying degrees of skepticism as to what affects sonic performance. The most contentious ingredient in the chain is the interconnection between components, which concerns both the topology (balanced versus single-ended) and the characteristics of the cable itself. This work shows that two system configurations differing only by the interconnect pathway are audibly discernable, even by average listeners with no special experience in music or audio. To the author’s knowledge, this may represent the smallest change in an audio system proven to be discernable through IRB approved blind listening tests.

The success of these experiments depended first on assembling an audio system with sufficient fidelity to avoid masking the minute differences being auditioned. Secondly, the approach to designing blind listening tests was scrutinized to see what might improve sensitivity. An extended multiple pass (EMP) listening protocol was developed, because preliminary experimentation along with other published observations [22]–[23] indicated that it would be more likely to form a robust and detailed 32 These spectra contain smaller total powers, reflective of their narrower frequency range. They were measured with the oscilloscope set to a 25 MHz analog bandwidth impression of a HEA system’s sound quality compared to a short-segment comparison (SSC) method."

Were they already been debunked somewhere?

 

[SIY]

Has anyone read some of the recent papers by Prof. Milind Kunchur?

"What differentiates audio interconnect cables?"

"Conversations about audio cables are often based on naïve and misleading concepts such resistance and frequency response. The present work shows that differences in such common parameters are too negligible to explain differences in sonic performance. In the absence of meaningful measurements and parameters, choosing and rating audio cables has understandingly taken place in a ‘wine-tasting” like manner. This work provides a novel perspective and describes subtle electrical behaviors that clearly differentiate cables in ways that could make an audible difference. The experiments provide an objective basis for specifying and rating audio cables and provide some steps in predicting their expected behavior."

"Cable pathways between audio components can affect perceived sound quality“ – Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, in press (2021) Milind N. Kunchur, University of South Carolina

"High-end audio is a subject that is shrouded in controversy. Aside from loudspeakers, consumers exhibit varying degrees of skepticism as to what affects sonic performance. The most contentious ingredient in the chain is the interconnection between components, which concerns both the topology (balanced versus single-ended) and the characteristics of the cable itself. This work shows that two system configurations differing only by the interconnect pathway are audibly discernable, even by average listeners with no special experience in music or audio. To the author’s knowledge, this may represent the smallest change in an audio system proven to be discernable through IRB approved blind listening tests.

The success of these experiments depended first on assembling an audio system with sufficient fidelity to avoid masking the minute differences being auditioned. Secondly, the approach to designing blind listening tests was scrutinized to see what might improve sensitivity. An extended multiple pass (EMP) listening protocol was developed, because preliminary experimentation along with other published observations [22]–[23] indicated that it would be more likely to form a robust and detailed 32 These spectra contain smaller total powers, reflective of their narrower frequency range. They were measured with the oscilloscope set to a 25 MHz analog bandwidth impression of a HEA system’s sound quality compared to a short-segment comparison (SSC) method."

Were they already been debunked somewhere?

Kunchur beclowned himself badly in his previous forays into audio, showing a fundamental non-understanding of how digital audio works. I suspect that we’ll find similar flaws here.

 

[audiophile]

I suspect that we’ll find similar flaws here.

This is a subjective opinion
Would be great if somebody pointed out the actual flaws in the papers I posted above

 

[NTK]

This is a subjective opinion
Would be great if somebody pointed out the actual flaws in the papers I posted above

I don't want to waste too much of my life on this. Here is my cursory look at the "cable pathway paper".

Yellow: Measuring RT60 by playing white noise (with his ProAc speakers in a 2-channel setup) and suddenly cutting if off? Anybody see anything wrong with it? (Wikipedia, NTI Audio video)
Magenta: Assessing reverberant vs direct field with white noise by moving around with his mic ... and he concluded that his room is an anechoic chamber! [Edit] And an anechoic chamber with an RT60 value of 0.3 s no less



I'll return to my more preferred activity of watching grass grow

 

[SIY]

I don't want to waste too much of my life on this. Here is my cursory look at the "cable pathway paper".

Yellow: Measuring RT60 by playing white noise (with his ProAc speakers in a 2-channel setup) and suddenly cutting if off? Anybody see anything wrong with it? (Wikipedia, NTI Audio video)
Magenta: Assessing reverberant vs direct field with white noise by moving around with his mic ... and he concluded that his room is an anechoic chamber!

View attachment 124146

I'll return to my more preferred activity of watching grass grow

You are a far more patient person than I am. I started reading, noted the first several references, then closed it.

 

[Frank Dernie]

The success of these experiments depended first on assembling an audio system with sufficient fidelity to avoid masking the minute differences being auditioned.

That old chestnut catch-all

I did start reading but several serious technically flaws meant I did not continue.