[Audio_Empire[_2_]]

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
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"Audio_Empire" wrote in message
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On Tuesday, February 19, 2013 6:41:31 AM UTC-8, Andrew Haley wrote:

He wasn't asking for more assertions, but evidence.

I'd like to recommend that you read Resolution Below the Least
Significant Bit in Digital Systems with Dither by Vanderkooy and
Lip****z. This very famous paper (available on the Internet if you
search for it) comes to the same conclusion as Dick Pierce: dither
effectively turns [all of] the signal distortion caused by quantization
into wide-band noise. If you can find any fault in that paper, it
would be interesting to see you present it here.

They say:

We feel that the audio community in general does not yet understand
the nature of quantization error in digital systems, and in
particular the beneficial effects of adding an appropriate amount of
dither. We shall show that dither really does remove the "digital"
aspects of quantization error, leaving an equivalent analog signal
with high resolution and some benign wide-band noise.

Isn't that "benign wide-band noise" essentially below the threshold of
audibility?

"It depends"

I would think that it would be. Can someone address this question?

This is controversial, it depends on who you believe. If you believe
Fielder, he said that 120 dB dynamic range is an absolute requirement. If
you believe Krueger, he says that 88 dB suffices. If you believe Vanderkooy
and Lipchitz, 16 bit media can have an effective perceived dynamic range on
the order of 120 dB.

I say that at least two facts support Krueger:

(1) Three well-funded attempts have made to raise the performance of
mainstream prerecorded media to 93 or 96 dB/ They have all had enough time
to prove themselves in the marketplace. They all failed to gain even a tiny
fraction of critical mass in the mainstream marketplace.

(2) All three attempts included legacy sources with 93-96 dB actual
dynamic range, and nobody made a specific complaint based on "Just
listening". Technical measurements proved the existence of the lapses in up
to 50% of the so-called hi rez media.

Due to a peculiar competition between record companies of late, which
has been named "the loudness wars" by the industry press, most modern
CD releases (and even re-releases) are so drastically compressed in
volume that they have less dynamic range than a cheap LP of the
1970's.