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I'm not familiar enough with the author's work to know if his credentials merit it, but to me his tone is unbelievably snobbish and offputting.

by z3ugma 12y ago

jdhawk 12y ago
Probably because the people he is offending are (stereotypically) a notoriously snobby and off-putting group...audiophiles.
- shmerl 12y ago
  Real audiophiles aren't offended since they totally agree with him.
sp332 12y ago
He founded xiph.org, created the Ogg container, and helped write Vorbis and Daala. His creds are pretty much the best. Edit: For a less-snobbish presentation, try watching his Digital Show & Tell video https://www.xiph.org/video/ https://www.xiph.org/video/
- TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
  I wouldn't say being a data compression geek makes anyone a master of DSP or of psychoacoustics. The basic issue with 16-bit is that low level details like reverb tails and hall ambiences or very quiet musical passages get the equivalent of 14-bit (f) 12-bit (mf) to 8-bit (ppp) sampling. This sounds noticeably grainy and digital. It's not about total dynamic range or sine waves, it's about the fact that human ears can do really neat source separation tricks. We can hear quiet elements in a mix without too much difficulty. If those elements are sampled at less than 16 bits - which they will be, if the maximum resolution is only 16-bits - we can hear that too. So 24-bits gives you effortlessly smooth sound for quiet passages and quiet details. 16-bits doesn't. (Dither helps a lot, but it only takes you so far.) Why are there still people who pretend this isn't relevant? It's not a difficult point to understand, and it shouldn't be controversial. Edit - the technical misunderstanding is a lack of appreciation of the different properties of the absolute theoretical noise floor of a converter, and the fact that quantisation noise isn't like analog noise. It's actually more of a hyper-objectionable and nasty sort-of-nonharmonic distortion. So as the bit resolution goes down, the sound doesn't just get buried in noise it also gets more and more obviously distorted.
  - mmastrac 12y ago
    If this is so relevant and obvious, why not put up two files: one 192/24 and one 48/16 and allow people to run their own double-blind test as he notes in the article? If you could produce a repeatable test where some number of people can tell that one is better, that would be a powerful argument. He's argued that people have done this test over and over, and nobody can ever tell the difference.
    - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
      Firstly people haven't 'done this test over and over.' There's been exactly one serious sort-of peer-reviewed paper in the AES journal, and that paper compared high-res commercially mastered audio sources of possibly questionable parentage with a 44.1/16 downconversion. It also included SACD, which isn't a fixed bit depth linear PCM technology, and has been justifiably criticised for it. I'm not aware of any tests that compare raw high-res unprocessed recordings with downsampled content. Secondly, a fair comparison would be 48/16 and 48/24. Personally I'm not very sold on high sample rates. I know there are technical reasons why it's easier to make antialiasing filters sound transparent at 96k than it is at 44.1k, and in practice it's not easy to pull apart practical design from theoretical limits. (Nyquist is only ever an ideal. No hardware is ever Nyquist-perfect.) Basically psychoacoustics is hard. Ears are ridiculously sensitive, brains are occasionally delusional, and marketing people lurk everywhere. It's extremely difficult to pull apart fact from reality. But that's no excuse for having a misleadingly superficial understanding of the theory - which the original article does.
    - retrogradeorbit 12y ago
      The problem with this approach is no one (except professionals) have properly treated rooms. There is no way anyone, on any equipment, can make any critical decisions about audio in an untreated room. Ok, I over exaggerate. But my point stands. Unless you've fully gone to town on room treatment, no one is going to be able to tell. The room will sound like ass even with a million dollar speaker system. What you need to do is get those files, and send people down to a professional mix studio. Then AB them in there. Get people to sit in the sweet spot. Then you'll have a decent result. Thing is, people have done this very test in professional listening spaces. And the results are always fascinating (and some people can tell!). In fact it's one of the most fun aspects of a professional facility! Audio shootouts!
huuu 12y ago
He knows what he is talking about. But I think his tone is somewhat snobbish because he is a little tired of the nonsense that is spread about music theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Montgomery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Montgomery
- justathrow2k 12y ago
  Nitpick here, but I think you mean signal theory or something else? Music theory is an entirely different can of worms.
Confusion 12y ago
I guess his exasperation with audiophiles must be leaking through. Since I feel the same way the tone actually resonates with me and only signals confidence in the correctness of the facts presented.
baq 12y ago
I've had an exactly opposite feeling - I've read a piece of text written by a guy who's tired of explaining people that more isn't better (and in some cases is worse).
lttlrck 12y ago
I felt the tone was authoritative.
retrogradeorbit 12y ago
Not just his tone! Check out the self styled experts in these threads who despite never having been in a professional facility, nor actually tried the experiments themselves in such a facility, are none the less totally sure about what their outcome would be, and that anyone who disagrees is wrong.

I'm not familiar enough with the author's work to know if his credentials merit it, but to me his tone is unbelievably snobbish and offputting.

by z3ugma 12y ago

I'm not familiar enough with the author's work to know if his credentials merit it, but to me his tone is unbelievably snobbish and offputting.

jdhawk 12y ago

Probably because the people he is offending are (stereotypically) a notoriously snobby and off-putting group...audiophiles.

shmerl 12y ago
Real audiophiles aren't offended since they totally agree with him.

sp332 12y ago

He founded xiph.org, created the Ogg container, and helped write Vorbis and Daala. His creds are pretty much the best. Edit: For a less-snobbish presentation, try watching his Digital Show & Tell video https://www.xiph.org/video/ https://www.xiph.org/video/

TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
I wouldn't say being a data compression geek makes anyone a master of DSP or of psychoacoustics. The basic issue with 16-bit is that low level details like reverb tails and hall ambiences or very quiet musical passages get the equivalent of 14-bit (f) 12-bit (mf) to 8-bit (ppp) sampling. This sounds noticeably grainy and digital. It's not about total dynamic range or sine waves, it's about the fact that human ears can do really neat source separation tricks. We can hear quiet elements in a mix without too much difficulty. If those elements are sampled at less than 16 bits - which they will be, if the maximum resolution is only 16-bits - we can hear that too. So 24-bits gives you effortlessly smooth sound for quiet passages and quiet details. 16-bits doesn't. (Dither helps a lot, but it only takes you so far.) Why are there still people who pretend this isn't relevant? It's not a difficult point to understand, and it shouldn't be controversial. Edit - the technical misunderstanding is a lack of appreciation of the different properties of the absolute theoretical noise floor of a converter, and the fact that quantisation noise isn't like analog noise. It's actually more of a hyper-objectionable and nasty sort-of-nonharmonic distortion. So as the bit resolution goes down, the sound doesn't just get buried in noise it also gets more and more obviously distorted.
- mmastrac 12y ago
  If this is so relevant and obvious, why not put up two files: one 192/24 and one 48/16 and allow people to run their own double-blind test as he notes in the article? If you could produce a repeatable test where some number of people can tell that one is better, that would be a powerful argument. He's argued that people have done this test over and over, and nobody can ever tell the difference.
  - TheOtherHobbes 12y ago
    Firstly people haven't 'done this test over and over.' There's been exactly one serious sort-of peer-reviewed paper in the AES journal, and that paper compared high-res commercially mastered audio sources of possibly questionable parentage with a 44.1/16 downconversion. It also included SACD, which isn't a fixed bit depth linear PCM technology, and has been justifiably criticised for it. I'm not aware of any tests that compare raw high-res unprocessed recordings with downsampled content. Secondly, a fair comparison would be 48/16 and 48/24. Personally I'm not very sold on high sample rates. I know there are technical reasons why it's easier to make antialiasing filters sound transparent at 96k than it is at 44.1k, and in practice it's not easy to pull apart practical design from theoretical limits. (Nyquist is only ever an ideal. No hardware is ever Nyquist-perfect.) Basically psychoacoustics is hard. Ears are ridiculously sensitive, brains are occasionally delusional, and marketing people lurk everywhere. It's extremely difficult to pull apart fact from reality. But that's no excuse for having a misleadingly superficial understanding of the theory - which the original article does.
  - retrogradeorbit 12y ago
    The problem with this approach is no one (except professionals) have properly treated rooms. There is no way anyone, on any equipment, can make any critical decisions about audio in an untreated room. Ok, I over exaggerate. But my point stands. Unless you've fully gone to town on room treatment, no one is going to be able to tell. The room will sound like ass even with a million dollar speaker system. What you need to do is get those files, and send people down to a professional mix studio. Then AB them in there. Get people to sit in the sweet spot. Then you'll have a decent result. Thing is, people have done this very test in professional listening spaces. And the results are always fascinating (and some people can tell!). In fact it's one of the most fun aspects of a professional facility! Audio shootouts!

huuu 12y ago

He knows what he is talking about. But I think his tone is somewhat snobbish because he is a little tired of the nonsense that is spread about music theory. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Montgomery http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Montgomery

justathrow2k 12y ago
Nitpick here, but I think you mean signal theory or something else? Music theory is an entirely different can of worms.

Confusion 12y ago

I guess his exasperation with audiophiles must be leaking through. Since I feel the same way the tone actually resonates with me and only signals confidence in the correctness of the facts presented.

baq 12y ago

I've had an exactly opposite feeling - I've read a piece of text written by a guy who's tired of explaining people that more isn't better (and in some cases is worse).

lttlrck 12y ago

I felt the tone was authoritative.

retrogradeorbit 12y ago

Not just his tone! Check out the self styled experts in these threads who despite never having been in a professional facility, nor actually tried the experiments themselves in such a facility, are none the less totally sure about what their outcome would be, and that anyone who disagrees is wrong.