[Audio Empire]

On Wed, 7 Mar 2012 16:12:03 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):


BTW, Arny. Welcome back. We've missed you!


(b) Those in the know realize that sampling rates of 88.2, 96, 176.4, 192,
and 384 KHz have merit simply because they move the Nyquist frequency WAY
out
of the audio passband and that 88.2KHz is probably quite far enough with
96
and above merely being overkill.

Let's face it, digital filtering has improved to the point where such
humungeous (2 cotave) guard bands serve no purpose at all.

While digital filtering is , as you say, very good, the precognitive nature
of the digital filter makes "pre-ringing" a condition that doesn't exist in
analog filtering. If one were to use a high sample rate (say, 88.2 KHz), then
gentle, analog filtering could be done therefore eliminating the pre-ringing.


2) His characterization of "golden ears" shows a basic lack of
understanding
of the actual meaning of the term. He's right that nobody has the kind of
super hearing that he characterizes as being the definition of the
golden-eared audiophile. But it's a strawman argument because "super
hearing"
is not what being "golden-eared" is all about. Most audiophiles these days
are over fifty. They certainly do not have super hearing. Many can't hear
much over 12 KHz, and if they have been exposed (either in their careers
or,
more likely, being exposed to loud electronic rock-n-roll in their youth)
they may not hear that wide a frequency response, and yet they still
posses
"golden ears". How is that possible, I hear some of you ask?

My answer is: denial. Case in point. A few weeks ago I was sitting next to a
reasonably well-known *name* in high end audio at a listening session. I was
complaining vigorously about the audible hum and noise. A number of people
around us shared my concern but Mr. name said that he heard nothing wrong.

OK, this, of course can happen. The title "Golden-eared Audiophile", is,
after all, self-annointed, and as such often gets applied to people who are,
to quote Clint Eastwood as 'Dirty Harry' , "...legends in their own minds."
OTOH, I have known more than a few audiophiles who have developed a fine
sense of listening acuity and can hear many things that the average listener
doesn't hear. There is a big difference between between "can't hear" and
"doesn't hear" Real Golden Eared types understand this difference and many of
them realize that being golden-eared does NOT in any way disqualify one from
being susceptible to sighted and other kinds of expectational bias. Golden
Ears are useful tools, to be sure, but when comparing things, they are no
substitute for the well executed bias-controlled test.

Because all the
term "golden ears" means is that some sound enthusiasts care enough about
the
sound of music to have trained themselves to listen for artifacts in
reproduced music and the equipment used to reproduce it and to identify
and
quantify those artifacts. Things like ragged frequency response, different
types of distortion and their origin, problems in recordings and the
ability
to tell a real stereo recording from a multi-channeled mono one. That's
all
it is.

I'm on both sides of this argument. To some degree effectiveness at audio is
about both raw ability but it is also, and perhaps more preeminently as you
seem to be saying, about identifying the various sounds in what you hear.
However, through the magic of sighted evaluations there is also a large
subset of audiophiles and professionals whose hearing seems to be mostly in
their wallets. Any time you want to you can expose them with a blind test,
whether stealthy or in the open. Many have become too crafty to trap that
way. It's not a homogenious world out there.

Amen there. The old "this costs 10-times what that costs, so this must be
better" syndrome is hard to fight. That's why DBTs are so important. OTOH,
some people just want nice things and would buy the 10X component even if a
DBT showed both units to perform identically.

When my friend J. Gordon Holt was in his late 70's, he could still
listen to a stereo system and tell you exactly what was wrong with it!
Things
like: the phono cartridge is mis-tracking, the speakers have boomy bass,
the
room has standing waves, The amplifier has high-frequency distortion, the
speakers are out of phase (a common one), etc., etc., etc.

Of course, and us blind testing advocates agree that a lot of problems like
those don't need blind tests to identify or prove. These can all be faults
and artifacts that are well above the well-known thresholds of audibility,
or not.

Yep. Listening and Objective or bias-controlled testing are not mutually
exclusive concepts. They need to be used together in order to make truly
informed music system selections and to stay away from the snake-oil.

3) He is right about 24-bit. It is a much better CAPTURE format than is
16-bit simply because it allows the recordist more headroom. 32-bit
floating-point recording is even better. The ideal LPCM capture format
would
be 32-bit/88.2KHz. It moves the Nyquist frequency well outside the
passband,
and it gives the engineer lots of headroom.

On balance, if you know what you are doing you can make great-sounding
recordings with 16/44. 24 bits gets you 144 dB dynamic range, but in fact
audio gear that performs at the even *just* 20 bit level is still not sold
on every street corner. There are few live venues and recording studios that
have even 13 bits of acosutical dynamic range.

In a studio environment, this is absolutely true. However it is less true in
location recording. The ability to have plenty of headroom is more than just
a luxury. Sometimes it is the difference between success and failure -
especially if you are recording a group cold.

4) What he really should be attacking is the high-resolution audio content
provider's' insistence on using FLAC to deliver the files. FLAC is so
flawed
that the way that these sites use it, it's anything but lossless!

I don't know about that. In my tests and usage FLAC has proven itself to be
bit-perfect and sonically ideal. However, I have to admit that its
relatively gentle approximately 2:1 compression is not why I like it or use
it. What I like about FLAC is its support for tagging that thoroughly
eclipses what legacy .wav files support.

Well a lot of research has been done by a Dr. Charles Zeilig whose tests seem
to show that FLAC algorithms vary all over the place and different settings
yield different quality results. Apparently FLAC-Zero and FLAC-8 sound
significantly poorer than does the WAV file from which it was compressed.

Otherwise, the article is good reading and should be de riguer for anyone
contemplating purchasing high-res downloads.

Especially when combined what is known about 50% of extant so-called hi rez
recordings having been through low-rez (typically analog recording)
production steps that limit their as-delivered performance to something like
12 bit resolution and CD format bandpass, but with more response variations.

I don't think that the fact that many of the sources for so-called Hi-Rez
downloads are analog tapes is particularly important, but I do think that the
fact that many recordings being sold as 24-bit 96 KHz and above are really
red book masters that have up-sampled to 24/96 is a rip-off and those guilty
of selling up-sampled standard resolution digital files as true high-rez
should be punished. To put that another way:

Digitizing an analog master tape with a 24-bit/88.2 KHz (or higher )ADC to
yield a "high-rez" copy is OK, but up-sampling a standard resolution digital
master to 24/88.2 KHz or higher is cheating. Of course, that's just my
opinion, you understand.