> These people who claim they have golden ears and can hear the difference between analog and digital, well, it turns out you couldn’t.
That's not fair because they didn't have both analog and digital records to compare.
A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire
281–290 of 367 posts
Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire
#282Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the time people will argue that vinyl has "warmth" and this makes it subjectively better. This is true, but it's actually because of the pleasing distortion record players add to the music. Being distortion, even if it improves your listening experience (and this depends on genre, though it generally does), it is certainly objectively worse in terms of accurate reproduction.
I still think that "warmth" is a way to describe not actually hearing the separate digital samples subconsciously, and just hearing the sounds gliss into each other. I also think it's an anachronism that comes from way back when the digital sample rate was often a lot lower (and people would insist that their live digital effects sounded as good as analog, when you could sometimes even consciously hear the samples ju…
You cannot hear samples, or the "steps" between them. This is a silly idea that comes from people seeing pictures of the waveform as it is digitally captured and imagining they can hear it.
You cannot, it is impossible.
Even with an unrealistically low sample rate (say 500Hz instead of 44.1kH), this will not sound like 500 beats per second as the "steps" occur, but rather will just sound extraordinarily dull, as the Nyquist frequency has dropped to 1kHz, a fairly low tone, and all info above that has been lowpassed away.
When the signal is changed to analog by the DAC in order to come out of a speaker, the "steps" become smooth curves like any analog waveform. You cannot hear "digital steps" because they cannot be audible - sound is vibration, and it cannot be made into steps in the analog realm.
Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the "warmth" generated by from literally any possible analog circuit can be reproduced digitally. Physics doesn't care about people's beliefs, but sadly many people also don't care about physics.
In theory. In practice, if I give you a random analog box, transforming it into an accurate DSP algorithm it's an extremely difficult problem. Which is why people instead of doing that, they recreate the "idea" (reverb, delay, ...) digitally, but it's not a copy.
I've heard the recent Kemper Profiler uses advanced analysis to generate fairly convincing simulations of analog equipment, given its response to specially designed test signals. I haven't tested it myself though.
Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not the person you replied to, but Hotel California’s Hell Freezes Over version is generally very well regarded in mastering. If I’m not mistaken one of those A/B/X test websites also tested that, and while I was using a very simple pair of headphones, the difference was noticeable.
Why not. https://abx.funkybits.fr/test/the-eagles-hell-freezes-over-h... (obviously there's a bug on the tracks display after round 1)
(fixed)
Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire
#285Earlier quoted context omitted.
if your DAC is a DAC, truly (that is not a high bar) then the audio that comes out of it is a perfect reproduction of the audio that went into the ADC that produced the digital audio, provided it is a true ADC (also not a high bar at all). Nyquist theory proves it. The Ogg people have a fantastic video explaining this. Technology Connections on YouTube has a video about it as well (the Ogg video explains things bette…
Audiophiles sometimes claim they can hear artefacts of the "low" sample rate 44.1 kHz, and only 16 bit samples. Nowadays there exists audio files recorded in up to 96 kHz with 24 bit samples.
The sample rate 44.1 kHz is objectively "low" in the sense that if you have to want a passband of 20 kHz, then extremely sharp low-pass filters must be inserted before the ADC.
So sharp low-pass filters are extremely difficult to implement as analog filters with reproducible characteristics.
Even when they are implemented as digital filters, as in most modern equipment, i.e. the audio ADC uses a much higher sampling frequency and its output signal is interpolated and decimated digitally to 44.1 kHz, it is still difficult to design the very sharp low-pass filter so that it will not introduce any audible artifacts on transient signals (the sampling theorem is based on ideal non-realizable filters).
Raising the sampling frequency to be distant from the 40 kHz minimum value removes all difficulties with the design of the low-pass filters making it easy to guarantee that the digital signal reproduces exactly the analog input.
When the audio CD format has been designed, the digital technology was much less advanced and storing a lot of bits was a far more difficult task than later.
So they have made the trade-off of requiring very expensive analog low-pass filters in order to minimize the amount of bits stored on the disc and transmitted over the digital interfaces, because the digital processing and storage was even more expensive anyway.
Nowadays, it is much more convenient to just use higher sampling frequencies for audio signals.
Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire
#286Earlier quoted context omitted.
The encoders of today create really good mp3 even at 192kbps (at 128kbps not so much which is a shame as a lot of internet radios use that). Do you have a favorite rock track we can do an ABX test with?
Not the person you replied to, but Hotel California’s Hell Freezes Over version is generally very well regarded in mastering. If I’m not mistaken one of those A/B/X test websites also tested that, and while I was using a very simple pair of headphones, the difference was noticeable.
> Hotel California’s Hell Freezes Over version is generally very well regarded in mastering.
Never heard this, but I know the original track is used for reference in studios from LA to NY, and is generally regarded as among the best mixes ever engineered.
Another commenter suggested high end audio equipment and $10K monitors... not necessary. With any off the shelf hifi, $100 worth of equipment, one can easily hear mp3 high frequency problems. Focusing on the cymbals just makes it obvious.
Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
if your DAC is a DAC, truly (that is not a high bar) then the audio that comes out of it is a perfect reproduction of the audio that went into the ADC that produced the digital audio, provided it is a true ADC (also not a high bar at all). Nyquist theory proves it. The Ogg people have a fantastic video explaining this. Technology Connections on YouTube has a video about it as well (the Ogg video explains things bette…
This is trivially correct if you assume: Perfect reproduction means error less than some threshold e. “True” means has enough sampling frequency and accuracy to ensure the error threshold is less than e.
There's always a threshold though.
Proof by contradiction: if there's no threshold, then sound fidelity can in theory be infinitely precise. But nature does not work that way - at Planck length distance breaks down, at the width of a carbon atom the resolution of a vinyl surface ends, etc.
Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire
#288"In the world of audiophiles — where provenance is everything and the quest is to get as close to the sound of an album’s original recording as possible — digital is considered almost unholy." Out of context of the rest of the article, this is total nonsense. While some in the audiophile scene like going analog, none of them debate against the truth that objectively , vinyl is far lower quality. Vinyl doesn't have ne…
if your DAC is a DAC, truly (that is not a high bar) then the audio that comes out of it is a perfect reproduction of the audio that went into the ADC that produced the digital audio, provided it is a true ADC (also not a high bar at all). Nyquist theory proves it. The Ogg people have a fantastic video explaining this. Technology Connections on YouTube has a video about it as well (the Ogg video explains things bette…
As both a sound and an electrical engineer the issue here is the if. Many DACs claim 24 Bits, while their power rails are so noise that they will meaningfully reproduce much less. The you'd also have jitter on the DAC clock etc.
Just because it says 24 bits on the datasheet of the used DAC IC doesn't mean your circuit will output a voltage that represents your input with 24 bits of precision. Designing and layouting PCBs with high precision DACs on them is certainly something where a lot mistakes can be made.
But you are right, if the PCB is done correctly, the signal exiting the DAC would indeed be an truthful representation of the digital data.
That being said: nowaday reaching enough precision for even the most critical listener should be not that hard/expensive.
Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
So it's been many years since I looked at this stuff, but the reason for higher sample rate isn't to do with humans being able to hear over 20khz. If you sample at 44khz you need a high pass filter at 22khz to avoid aliasing. Since that's pretty close to 20khz, it needs a pretty sharp drop off. Having a filter with a sharp drop off can introduce artifacts. With 96khz sampling rate, you don't need as a sharp drop off…
Anything above 44 is problematic because lots of systems have non-linear responses and will create audible intermodulations of the ultraharmonics. Monty (of xiph) has an article on the subject (well on 24/192 but it applies all the same) which goes into the gory details: https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
Interesting video on sample rate effects during digital music production
https://youtu.be/-jCwIsT0X8M
Re: A Phoenix record store owner set the audiophile world on fire
#290"In the world of audiophiles — where provenance is everything and the quest is to get as close to the sound of an album’s original recording as possible — digital is considered almost unholy." Out of context of the rest of the article, this is total nonsense. While some in the audiophile scene like going analog, none of them debate against the truth that objectively , vinyl is far lower quality. Vinyl doesn't have ne…
> While some in the audiophile scene like going analog, none of them debate against the truth that objectively, vinyl is far lower quality. You conveniently forget history. Audiophiles embracing digital media is a relatively recent thing. It was vinyl and everything analog until about 10-15 years ago when it became
Many decades ago, before the appearance of any digital audio, most audiophiles agreed that vinyl sucks badly, because the records are degraded after each listening (by mechanical abrasion).
When the audio CD's appeared, their main claimed advantage was not that they offer a superior sound over vinyl (early units had actually modest characteristics, with 14-bit DACs, modest low-pass filters, and possibly also low accuracy and high jitter of the sampling frequency), but that you can play the digital disc as often as you want without quality degradation.
Before digital audio, real audiophiles also had a tape recorder, and as soon as they bought a new vinyl disc, they played it only once, to transfer it to a magnetic tape, and then they stored the disc safely and they played only the tape, for fear of degrading the vinyl disc when listening to it.
At that time, most audiophiles believed that vinyl discs that have been played more than 3 times are no longer suitable as a master source from which to make a copy on a tape, as they were already too degraded in comparison with a new vinyl disc.