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"You" is excellent wording here. Who's listening? I've heard the resonable assertion that the most gifted audio engineers in the world cannot distinguish 192 k

"You" is excellent wording here. Who's listening? I've heard the resonable assertion that the most gifted audio engineers in the world cannot distinguish 192 kHz sample rates from a raw line feed, but some can distinguish 96 kHz. I certainly can't. I used to build audio equipment. There were legendary "golden ears" that people would drive hours to meet, for design feedback. Whatever they heard was reproducible blind with other "golden ears". How does this square with the logical assertion that there's a sharp cutoff to our biological ability to hear frequencies? Those tests don't account for our ability to sense the presence/absence of overtones. Now, computers may want better resolution, not to "listen" so much as to better transform in novel ways. Just as "DogTV" recolorizes for its audience, a computer could make the inaudible audible in novel ways. Reconstructing better 3D sound stages. Accurately reconstructing a singer's facial expressions via AI video, rather than simply splatting out something plausible. The whole point of computers are to extend our reach, coevolving in every conceivable way.

mrob 3y ago
>Those tests don't account for our ability to sense the presence/absence of overtones. Overtones are frequencies. If you filter the higher frequencies you remove the higher overtones. The only way you're going to "hear" ultrasound is if it's very loud and you hear audio-frequency distortion generated in your own ear, e.g. like when bats are squeaking nearby. But this isn't useful musically, because everybody's ears distort differently.
- Syzygies 3y ago
  Ok, so despite anecdotal evidence that some individuals can distinguish better-than-CD quality audio, we're questioning the existence of convincing double-blind studies. Yet we accept the varying cutoffs for what frequencies a person can consciously detect in isolation, as proof that we are incapable of perceiving audio information above those frequencies. Are people asserting that an ear removed from a cadaver, hooked up to the best available scientific equipment, measures as a perfect biologically derived low pass filter? Or that we even partially understand how neurons work, when there may be quantum effects to be uncovered a century from now? Intellectual history is a graveyard of models confused with reality.

mrob 3y ago

>Those tests don't account for our ability to sense the presence/absence of overtones. Overtones are frequencies. If you filter the higher frequencies you remove the higher overtones. The only way you're going to "hear" ultrasound is if it's very loud and you hear audio-frequency distortion generated in your own ear, e.g. like when bats are squeaking nearby. But this isn't useful musically, because everybody's ears distort differently.

Syzygies 3y ago
Ok, so despite anecdotal evidence that some individuals can distinguish better-than-CD quality audio, we're questioning the existence of convincing double-blind studies. Yet we accept the varying cutoffs for what frequencies a person can consciously detect in isolation, as proof that we are incapable of perceiving audio information above those frequencies. Are people asserting that an ear removed from a cadaver, hooked up to the best available scientific equipment, measures as a perfect biologically derived low pass filter? Or that we even partially understand how neurons work, when there may be quantum effects to be uncovered a century from now? Intellectual history is a graveyard of models confused with reality.