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The comedy of some Hi res recordings

anmpr1

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Ouch. In digital terms, 8 bit / 30khz.
Those specs are questionable. At the highest speed it might have hit 14kHz, down 3 or 4, maybe 5 dB. S/N on quarter track portable decks was never good. Much depended upon tape formulation.

Of historical curiosity, evidently the original photo of Joni with Wollensak showed her then husband. For the album, he was airbrushed out. LOL

jm1.jpg
 

Blumlein 88

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snip.....
But no CDs, and no 44/16. Why should there be? Nobody seemed to like them much once the 90s novelty wore off.

More than 90% of recording in pro studios is done 44.1/24 for music, and 48/24 for everything else. Where is the Hi-res going to come from en masse?

Hi-res is the market that won't quite die, and yet won't catch on either.
 

andreasmaaan

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@Bluemootwo I've now gone through that meta-study in more detail and read each of the studies to which it refers in which a statistically significant result among trained listeners was obtained, which are summarised in table form in the meta-study:

1604163694637.png


Here are my study-by-study comments:

Jackson 2014 and 2016

I couldn't find the 2016 study anywhere. It may not have published due to a failure to pass peer-review. The 2014 study did find that subjects were able to distinguish between high-res content and content that had been downsampled to 44.1kHz/48kHz and truncated or quantised using rectangular dither to 16 bit. Unfortunately, the study conditions are unrealistic, because it is not standard practice among mastering engineers to truncate or quantise with rectangular dither when mixing down to 16/44 (as this results in unnecessarily high levels of noise and/or distortion when compared with the industry-standard practice of using noise-shaped dither).

Kanetada 2013A and 2013B

Couldn't find the papers. They were conference papers presented here, and as such were not published or peer-reviewed, to my knowledge.

Mizumachi 2015

Available here. The authors took a high-resolution recording and truncated/downsampled it to 16/48 in Matlab. As per Jackson 2014, since proper dithering was not applied when the audio was downmixed, conclusions regarding audibility of artifacts in the "quasi-CD quality" versions used in the study cannot be extrapolated to normal CD/redbook audio.

Yoshikawa 1995

Available here. The authors tested subjects' ability to differentiate between pulse trains that had been low-pass filtered at 20kHz vs pulse trains that had been low-pass filtered at 40kHz. No statistically significant ability to differentiate was found for all test conditions other than one, namely where the pulse train was of 0.125s duration. This finding is summarised in this box plot:

1604163536815.png


I can't fault this experiment. It seems that, with pulse trains of 0.125s duration, subjects were able to discern to a statistically significant extent between signals that were low-pass filtered at 20kHz vs signals that were low-pass filtered at 40kHz, albeit only just crossing the threshold of statistical significance .

Theiss 1997

Available here. A number of procedures/stimuli were used to test the hypothesis that subjects would be able to more accurately localise sound signals bandlimited to 48kHz (corresponding to a sampling rate of 96kHz) vs sound signals bandlimited to 24kHz (corresponding to a sampling rate of 48kHz). A number of stimuli were used:
  • Impulse trains - results were not statistically significant.
  • White noise - results were not statistically significant.
  • Music - results were not statistically significant.
And the authors conclude: "The hypothesis that an increase in sampling rate will result in an increase in spatial resolution can be rejected from the experimental data given above."

An additional experiment was then carried out with three subjects to test the hypothesis that a music signal (a Brahms piano recording) sounded different at 96kHz/24bit than at 48kHz/16bit (downmixed using traingular non-noise shaped dither). For two subjects, results were not statistically significant. One subject, however, was able to discern correctly in 16 out of 17 trials (P=0.014%). Further investigations were attempted to separate out whether the high success rate was attributable to the lower sample rate or the lower bitrate, but the equipment apparently failed so the results were inconclusive.

Again, this finding cannot IMHO be extrapolated to standard mastering practices IMHO, because non-noise-shaped triangular dither was used, which results in a perceptually higher noise floor than noise-shaped dither used in standard mastering practice.

My 2c

Firstly, the 60% figure is clearly grossly misleading. 60% of trained listeners were able to discern differences in the subset of tests in which trained listeners were able to discern any difference at all. There were many studies/tests in which trained listeners were not able to discern any difference, and these are strangely not accounted for in the meta-study authors' 60% figure.

Secondly, in those studies in which statistically significant results were obtained, confounding choices to use simple truncation or non-noise-shaped dither were made, rendering it difficult to extrapolate from these to real-life cases in which redbook audio is dithered with noise-shaping. In the only study in which this issue was not present, the stimulus was not music, but rather 0.125s pulse trains, and even in that case, the result was only just statistically significant.

Of course, there is no substitute for reading these studies yourself instead of simply relying on my analysis/interpretation.

My takeaway would be that these studies demonstrate that redbook audio is skating very close to thresholds at which noise or other artefacts may become (marginally) audible in specific listening conditions, although they do not quite establish that properly-processed redbook crosses these thresholds with music as the program. Having said that, I do think 24bit/48kHz would be a more prudent standard, as it would provide a greater buffer and would, in particular, insure against substandard recording/mixing/mastering practices.

However, assuming industry standard practices are followed, I see no direct evidence that 16/44.1 doesn't (just) ensure no audible degradation.

Of course, for recording/mixing/mastering, higher sampling/bitrates should always be used, as these provide digital "headroom" for processing at the various stages before final mixdown.
 
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Frank Dernie

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Please let us skip the politics. It is Halloween.
Indeed. 2 of my grandchildren are dressing and making up, and applying makeup to their parents and my wife.
They absolutely love halloween, we missed out on it as children since it wasn't a "thing" here when I was young :(
 

CDMC

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Indeed. 2 of my grandchildren are dressing and making up, and applying makeup to their parents and my wife.
They absolutely love halloween, we missed out on it as children since it wasn't a "thing" here when I was young :(

I realized earlier this week that 2020 has even managed to ruin the perfect halloween, a Saturday with a full moon.
 

Frank Dernie

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I realized earlier this week that 2020 has even managed to ruin the perfect halloween, a Saturday with a full moon.
Due to Covid restrictions all our Halloween shenanigans are going to be in our house today. My wife has been devising some brilliant stuff, she is exceptionally good at that.
 

StefaanE

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Also, has anybody actually tried communism yet?
Most of the regimes purporting to be are nothing of the sort but dictatorships with no chance of changing the government and the elite as privileged as they are in capitalist countries and the oligarchs just like the billionaires in capitalist countries.
No true Scotsman...;)
 

mhardy6647

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I do not know when you had one of these but I remember when the original in the series came out in the late 1950s and it was quite a revelation at the time. Sure, fascination with it faded although it provided much enjoyment for a while.
Much more recently -- a dump find on the "Yankee Swap Pile" at the Harvard (MA) town dump transfer station.
I think you're probably aware of the time-honored New England tradition of the swap pile -- probably the thing I miss the most of our nearly three decades in the lovely little town of Harvard.


No transfer station nor swap pile in the town where we now live in Northern NH.
 

Kal Rubinson

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No transfer station nor swap pile in the town where we now live in Northern NH.
We have a "free table" at our local transfer station. I've made contributions but, so far, no withdrawals.
 

mhardy6647

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We have a "free table" at our local transfer station. I've made contributions but, so far, no withdrawals.
I am pleased to say that I did both over the years. I refer to the concept as dump karma.
Our daughter and son-in-law live in a town here in Northern NH with a good dump (transfer station). It has served them well, and they, too, practice -- ahem -- quid pro quo whenever possible. Due to the vagaries of COVID-19, they had no swap pile this year, though.
 

Phorize

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Time out. Come on folks. I have better things to do than remove political messages. You all should know better! :(

Sorry for creating work, I’ve given myself a slap on the wrist. In my defence I had just binge watched 5 hour long episodes of the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House and wasn’t feeling usual self:rolleyes:
 

Sukie

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Sorry for creating work, I’ve given myself a slap on the wrist. In my defence I had just binge watched 5 hour long episodes of the Netflix series The Haunting of Hill House and wasn’t feeling usual self:rolleyes:
You've got the Haunting of Bly Manor to enjoy next!
 

firedog

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More than 90% of recording in pro studios is done 44.1/24 for music, and 48/24 for everything else. Where is the Hi-res going to come from en masse?

Hi-res is the market that won't quite die, and yet won't catch on either.

As far as your quote goes it is correct, and certainly correct for most genres of "popular" music.

But hi-res is firmly entrenched in classical and some other small market share genre's. Typical classical recording today is 24/96; it's also almost the only style where there are actually new DSD recordings being produced. There are some very well known conductors and orchestras that record in DSD. So no, hi res isn't going to be mass market, but certainly in the classical market and audiophile market it seems to be here to stay, and has even become the standard.
 

Phorize

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This forum gets a lot of new users who assertively spew nonsense in an attempt to "set this place straight". The result is that often what should be healthy caution instead tilts towards suspicion, frustration and even mild aggression/patronization. I think it's unavoidable. As long as the messengers don't mind taking a few bullets, and things don't turn into a mud fight, it's all good.



Because:

- CDs. There will always be CDs! :D

You’ve hit the nail on the head. As if by magic, the bad explanation is exposed as nonsense by applying it with equal ineffectiveness to all and any phenomena:

-Dodos. There will always be dodos!
 

Don Hills

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...
The reasoning seems to have shifted from “there can be no difference in sound you wally and apologise for suggesting so” to “there are hard-to-discern differences which trained ears can sometimes hear”. Well, either something is impossible or its not. I didn’t say the differences are obvious to me (although I did say the seem obvious to my son); I just thought there was discernible differences which, for me, are not about measurement but are about pleasure. I often (not always, but often) find a hi res streamed piece of music more satisfying and pleasant to listen to than a CD quality piece.
...

I did smile when I saw your choice of track for comparison with your son. As has been pointed out, you need to look very carefully at the provenance of the two different sample rate versions. Personally, I'd never trust a comparison of two sample rates that I hadn't prepared myself.
 
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