It's interesting how the "Sine" looks when zoomed in:
Watch the video by the xiph.org guy. Playing 'connect the dots' as audacity does it is the wrong way of rendering sampled signals. The correct way is to use sinx/x interpolation since this is what you'll get after putting the signal through a brick-wall filter that cuts off at nyquist frequency. Audacity can do this for you using Tracks->Resample and choosing a high sample rate.
When generating a 10kHz square wave, select "Square, no alias" and you'll get something that doesn't look like a square but is the correct band-limited approximation of a band-limited 10kHz square.
I followed a bit of the excitement for a while over high bitrate compressed audio files (.flac etc) thing. We mere individuals can now supposedly access what is as close if not a direct copy of the original studio mix by the recording artist. Some are released with the assurance you hear what the original mix which will always sound better being the studio recording, not some now-considered degraded version 16bit 44.1k music CD sold by the music industry that they adopted when vinyl records and cassette tapes went away...
I followed a bit of the excitement for a while over high bitrate compressed audio files (.flac etc) thing. We mere individuals can now supposedly access what is as close if not a direct copy of the original studio mix by the recording artist. Some are released with the assurance you hear what the original mix which will always sound better being the studio recording, not some now-considered degraded version 16bit 44.1k music CD sold by the music industry that they adopted when vinyl records and cassette tapes went away...
And a good lot of studio recording a mixed with Yamaha NS10 studio monitor speakers which are actually not all that great (some say terrible), they are just "the standard". So unless you listen on the same speakers, you aren't getting the same mix anyway regardless of how perfect your file format is.
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story
I followed a bit of the excitement for a while over high bitrate compressed audio files (.flac etc) thing. We mere individuals can now supposedly access what is as close if not a direct copy of the original studio mix by the recording artist. Some are released with the assurance you hear what the original mix which will always sound better being the studio recording, not some now-considered degraded version 16bit 44.1k music CD sold by the music industry that they adopted when vinyl records and cassette tapes went away...
And a good lot of studio recording a mixed with Yamaha NS10 studio monitor speakers which are actually not all that great (some say terrible), they are just "the standard". So unless you listen on the same speakers, you aren't getting the same mix anyway regardless of how perfect your file format is.
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story
And a good lot of studio recording a mixed with Yamaha NS10 studio monitor speakers which are actually not all that great (some say terrible), they are just "the standard". So unless you listen on the same speakers, you aren't getting the same mix anyway regardless of how perfect your file format is.
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story
In essence, a 16-bit 44.1kHz recording (even uncompressed) is quite dead as far as the sound quality is concerned. All kinds of voodoo around it it is just painting of that dead body with various colours so it somewhat better resembles a living thing. Guys just did design another way to sell that postmortem colouring, good luck to them!
In essence, a 16-bit 44.1kHz recording (even uncompressed) is quite dead as far as the sound quality is concerned. All kinds of voodoo around it it is just painting of that dead body with various colours so it somewhat better resembles a living thing. Guys just did design another way to sell that postmortem colouring, good luck to them!
I respectfully disagree. 44.1 kHz 16 bit audio can sound fantastic.
I followed a bit of the excitement for a while over high bitrate compressed audio files (.flac etc) thing. We mere individuals can now supposedly access what is as close if not a direct copy of the original studio mix by the recording artist. Some are released with the assurance you hear what the original mix which will always sound better being the studio recording, not some now-considered degraded version 16bit 44.1k music CD sold by the music industry that they adopted when vinyl records and cassette tapes went away...
And a good lot of studio recording a mixed with Yamaha NS10 studio monitor speakers which are actually not all that great (some say terrible), they are just "the standard". So unless you listen on the same speakers, you aren't getting the same mix anyway regardless of how perfect your file format is.
https://www.soundonsound.com/reviews/yamaha-ns10-story
In essence, a 16-bit 44.1kHz recording (even uncompressed) is quite dead as far as the sound quality is concerned. All kinds of voodoo around it it is just painting of that dead body with various colours so it somewhat better resembles a living thing. Guys just did design another way to sell that postmortem colouring, good luck to them!
I respectfully disagree. 44.1 kHz 16 bit audio can sound fantastic.
If it does for you, good! Doesn't for me though, even at its best (and I've designed some very decent CD-players and DACs).
Cheers
Alex
Unless you think science is an hoax.
Unless you think science is an hoax.
The science of human sound perception is to a large degree a hoax, as there are no reliable and correct tools and methods exist (and please don't start on DBT and ABX etc - these a flawed on so many points) . We are measuring what we can measure and not what we need to measure in the sound quality area, and we can not quantify the actual result of our listening to music - which is emotional and mostly subconscious. The majority of audio measurements is a little bit like checking the book contents change by it's weight change. We can detect a missing page but not a change in the text (at least if the amount of ink used stays the same).
Cheers
Alex
Unless you think science is an hoax.
The science of human sound perception is to a large degree a hoax, as there are no reliable and correct tools and methods exist (and please don't start on DBT and ABX etc - these a flawed on so many points) . We are measuring what we can measure and not what we need to measure in the sound quality area, and we can not quantify the actual result of our listening to music - which is emotional and mostly subconscious. The majority of audio measurements is a little bit like checking the book contents change by it's weight change. We can detect a missing page but not a change in the text (at least if the amount of ink used stays the same).
Cheers
AlexI would suggest doing further reading, especially if you think everything can just (simply) be measured (with some tools).
Science is very clear about perception. That whole field is called psycho-acoustics.
Their are billions of papers and books written about the fact that our perception is heavily biased by what we think, see or smell.
It's already well known for many many years that what people claim to hear isn't in line at all with what they should hear.
The only gap we are talking about, is that most people don't want to admit it.
(which is a perfect oppertunity for market to keep using these fairy tale claims)
Personally I don't understand why people get so worked up about it? For some people it's almost like a religion. There is a lot of (angry) emotion involved.
Everybody makes decisions which are only based on subjective feelings, what's wrong with that??
As a scientist or researcher it should be a challenge to disprove or prove things instead?
If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.
It was inevitable that this thread would devolve into mysticism.
But I guess it actually started there, didn't it?
If it can’t be expressed in figures, it is not science; it is opinion.No analysis of perception is perfect, but double blind trials are certainly better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
[...]
So no mysticism required (or even allowed) for me personally when I design electronics for sound. You learn to trust your ears and you learn how to hear problems in the sound. It is almost an unpleasant skill as it spoils the music and denies you the pleasure if the sound quality is flawed in certain respects which you can recognise . And you learn where to look, what to change and how to make a design which will sound consistently good in production, without hiring virgins and producing equipment only on completely moonless nights .