Continuing with CDs?

Two different arguments here though - lossy compression is audible, no argument there. Superspectral audio perceivably better than redbook CD sampling, I have a problem with.
By the way the paper cited above is what’s called a meta-analysis, in which the findings of other studies are combined in a common statistical framework to draw inferences. So - no new data, and quality entirely depends on the quality of the studies chosen for the analysis. Several of the papers it draws on are familiar, discredited and commercially motivated “findings” which in many instances were not peer reviewed. Garbage in, garbage out.

i went to the gas thread and heard the offending beeps, so i'm feeling a little relieved! seems my hearing is good to at least 10khz

one of my fears is that one day i'll be watching a hollywood blockbuster and there'll be a big explosion and afterwards there will be that high pitched ringing to indicate the main character's got hearing loss - except i won't be able to hear the ringing because my own hearing loss has progressed too far

all this is discussed in the AES paper i linked to earlier. people of course are free to dismiss it as total bs, but i like to think of it as a new area of scientific pursuit that hasn't been fully fleshed out yet.

Temporal fine structure [73] plays an important role in a variety of auditory processes, and temporal resolution studies have suggested that listeners can discriminate monaural timing differences as low as 5 microseconds [31–33]. Such fine temporal resolution also indicates that low pass or antialias filtering may cause significant and perceived degradation of audio when digitized or downsampled [54], often referred to as time smearing [74]. This time smear, which occurs because of convolution of the data with the filter impulse response, has been described variously in terms of the total length of the filter’s impulse response including pre-ring and post-ring, comparative percentage of energy in the sidelobes relative to the main lobe, the degree of pre-ring only, and the sharpness of the main lobe. [41, 42] both claim that human perception can outperform the uncertainty relation for time and frequency resolution. This was disputed in [75], which showed that the conclusions drawn from the experiments were far too strong.

I feel like all of that has been debunked already by the extremely knowledgeable posters itt, e.g.:

"The articles I've skimmed on this suggest that humans are sensitive to time-domain inaccuracies of the order of a few microseconds; but redbook digital has time-domain resolution in the order of picoseconds."

enough people don't love cd sound, though, that the determination of why they don't like it -- and it could be a combination of reasons -- almost becomes secondary. as we migrate to streaming services, and it's just as easy to click on the hi-res file as the normal resolution file, the rationale that people are falling for marketing gimmickry becomes less persuasive.

you can't really debunk what people hear, or tell them they're not hearing it.

lol sure you can!

you seem to be confusing "subjective" and "objective" a lot here

ok true, but what is the point?

but to your specific point, time-domain resolution can be as precise as can be, but if there's pre-ringing then you're still going to perceive the sound before it happens.

granted this is a microscopic effect that might alter or flatten the "soundstage" or the illusion of three-dimensionality in music. which is yet another thing that some people say doesn't exist.

"The articles I've skimmed on this suggest that humans are sensitive to time-domain inaccuracies of the order of a few microseconds; but redbook digital has time-domain resolution in the order of picoseconds."

Wait, how does 44.1kHz become trillionths of a second?

Anyway the issue is in encoding and reconstruction, not resolution of the format.

Wait, how does 44.1kHz become trillionths of a second?

Here you go:
https://troll-audio.com/articles/time-resolution-of-digital-audio/

(Sorry for all the random links - it's been 30+ years since I studied this stuff, have to Google the formulae these days :) )

there is no such thing as "cd sound", redbook audio is transparent. if the cd sounds bad it's because someone pressed a bad sounding master onto it

matttkkkk, in this thread there's a download link for multiple audio clips with jitter, so you can hear what it sounds like. it's the same phenomenon as wow and flutter in vinyl playback
https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=107423.msg879764#msg879764

needless to say, nothing to worry about with good equipment and a quality recording (if there's jitter in the master tapes of course it'll also be there on the CD, that's what transparency gets you). and by good equipment i don't mean "you can't buy it for less than $100", i mean "not defective due to poor engineering"

It's marvellous how this thread has gone - rather recently in fact - from "do you buy CDs?", "do you like buying cheap CDs in charity shops?", "do you think it's worth keeping some CDs as well as streaming?" - to ... levels of mathematical discussion about the nature of sound, recording, playback and the human ear that not only beyond most people's comprehension but even beyond the range of most people's sensory capacities.

I don't understand most of it, but I like it.

xpost to birdistheword, and somehow merging this thread with the blue oyster cult one, i saw boc in a long island club -- probably the last time i saw them with allen lanier in the band -- and happened to be standing next to eric bloom's audiologist. i think we bonded when we noticed each other putting in our earplugs. his were much fancier than mine though.

Just to throw in a neuroscience factoid: we are indeed sensitive to microsecond differences between ears, and it is in fact highly related to head position - we experience it as the azimuth of the perceived source (i.e. delay one ear's audio by a few microseconds and it's perceived as spatially shifted away from the delayed side). This tells us a lot about the unbelievably precise structure of the superior olive nucleus in the brainstem, which is extremely sensitive to these time differences and uses them to spatially "tag" an audio source, and absolutely nothing about the perception of "sound" which happens in an entirely different system, let alone the experience of "music" or "timbre" or whatever.
Here's a source for anyone interested: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12708617/

also xxxp I do understand jitter, my arguments apply to systems functioning as designed, I don't disagree that errors are audible!

Also, just to say, I wouldn't want anyone to feel defensive about their format preferences - it's fine that all of this stuff is out there, multi-channel PCM Blu-ray, SACD, boutique labels doing straight-to-"tape" 32/352k, vinyl with a download code, cassette, whatever (I'm even seeing refurb eight-track pop up in my Instagram). There may be some tiny benefit to high-res playback, and 24/96k FLAC is lower bandwidth than streaming HD video, so why not.

I'm a bit dubious when "improvements" are couched in terms of "fixing problems" with CD audio that are not inherently part of the format. The biggest problem with CD, from the industry's PoV, is that it has no copy protection, and most efforts to give us something "better" have been driven by trying to fix that.

MQA seems egregiously bad in this regard; I haven't investigated Tidal, but once an album appears in MQA format, do you have a choice to stream anything else? If not, and you don't have the right hardware, you're getting 13-14 bit resolution and a shedload of ultrasonic imaging (which might sound fine!). That seems objectively bad to me. Practically everything made in the last 10-15 years can play FLAC/WAV/AIFF/MP3/OGG/AAC/ALAC, but you have to get something *else* to unfold MQA to "full" quality. Dodgy.

I've happily bought into many audiophile myths in the past, which is maybe why I'm a bit touchy about this stuff now! External valve stage to "sweeten" (aka distort and roll off) my "bright" and "fatiguing" CD player? Take my money. Carbon fibre cables? HDCD? If that little LED comes on, it must be good.

the "fixing problems" remark came not from me but from jim austin, editor of stereophile, probably the largest circulation hi-fi magazine in the world. he's a physicist and formerly an editor at 'science' magazine. this of course does not mean he is right, but his statement is backed up by AES research. his past statements on MQA have been extremely measured, almost to a fault, taking special care to present the negative commentary along with the positive. (the 'positive' being that most people who have actually heard it think it sounds terrific.) he is not crazy, and per my limited reading of his work, not persuaded by snake oil. but...i hear you. people have every right to be suspicious of proprietary formats.

if you read his review of that component i linked to (which accepts MQA but doesn't do the special-sauce decoding), he had a more favorable opinion of its SACD output than its MQA output of the same track.

in my own experience, extended cd listening sessions can leave me with an aftertaste -- not quite a ringing in my ears but a sensation akin to it -- that i do not at all experience with vinyl. normal caveats apply. this could totally be an effect brought about by my particular playback systems. or it could all be in my head. nonetheless.

I generally only listen to vinyl by monitoring through my audio interface at 24/44.1 and it sounds nice the way vinyl does. I can even appreciate an AAA cut that way. So... some large part of what makes vinyl nice has nothing to do with it not being digtial ;-)

yeah no doubt. i have nothing against digital per se. it's just that, and i have to phrase this delicately for fear of being bombarded, but in my experience redbook format cd is not perfect. whether it's tickling something primordial in my superior olive nucleus, who knows? but i would welcome a digital format that doesn't do that. whatever 'that' is.

I think CD audio is both fine and also not perfect. From what I gather of the filtering issue it's objectively imperfect and even if you believe there's no audible effect it wouldn't have been an issue at all if they'd gone with 48kHz.

The turn in this thread is making me count my blessings that I spent nearly every cent I earned beyond rent and food on eight thousand CDs (and a thousand-odd download-only 320kbps albums) I listened to and enjoyed, instead of on gear to listen to music I wouldn't have owned and would've apparently found fatiguing to hear.

re Jim Austin as an editor at Science: "I joined Science magazine in 2001 as an editor for their online careers publication Science's Next Wave." i.e. not involved in peer review or research publication for the journal itself.

if mqa sounds good to tsf in a way that CDs don't, then that's alright with me, i think. i'd certainly like to try mqa but don't want to buy expensive hardware and subscribe to tidal. i feel i've definitely had 'digital fatigue' or whatever in the past, but i don't listen to too much music in one sitting nowadays. i'll probably go with qobuz if i ever get into streaming, which i won't

You can find great DACs for around $100 even less open box on eBay, this is great DAC and headphone amp, size of a USB drive

https://www.crutchfield.com/S-VouKSq7e7uW/p_703DGNFLYB/AudioQuest-DragonFly-Black-v1-5.html?XVINQ=GLX&awkw=199634283625&awat=pla&awnw=g&awcr=102161537545&awdv=m&awug=9019659&gclid=Cj0KCQiAmKiQBhClARIsAKtSj-k8urTDbsw3TgJePKm1u3oExTd39oU12E2LgZy_8QQCpoJwHQrZQxcaAu0TEALw_wcB

oh yeah i have tried really fancy DACs and have a pretty mid-fi one right now. sort of in the same camp as michael jones in having tried a lot of the audiophile abracadabra. have built a lot of gear too. i just don't feel like paying $$$ for one that supports MQA (and it seems there's like two versions of MQA support?) also the idea of a DAC for MQA that you can't DIY rubs me the wrong way too.

imo DACs all sound pretty similar to my ears so I'm pretty happy with a mid-fi unit that I know will outresolve my ears.

FWIW, Audio Science Review have done tests on a bunch of thumb-drive DAC/hp-amps, and found that a £10 Apple USB-C -> minijack dongle was right up there in terms of performance. 113dB SINAD, very flat FR - it just couldn't drive high impedance headphones very well (I'm sure the USB sticks are better in this regard). But amazing what a few quid gets you on the DAC side these days.

oh man Audio Science Review is a real rabbit hole

it's interesting and I like trying to objectively measure things and seeing a $5000 one get smoked by a $150 one off amazon. I have a Schitt Modi 3+ that he reviewed well (especially notable after his semi-feud w/Schitt prior)

I do find the commenters there fairly psychotic especially when they are so adamant that, say, actually listening to equipment sounds with your ears is less objective than quibbling over .001 percent differences in reading of metrics well outside the realm of human hearing

but was very helpful in shopping for a DAC and I've been happy w/the $100 one I got

recently Darko.Audio said he not going to review DACs anymore because he thinks there's just not enough difference in them anymore to bother and reposted a list of around 15 that he likes and said they are all good

yeah there's this strand of thought for all audio equipment to just be a 'wire with gain' that's especially prevalent with the Audio Science Review crowd. let me have my distortions, damnit!

oh yeah and the dreaded "ESS hump" those guys are obsessed with lol

I love reading about this stuff, but like to remind myself that for the first two-thirds of my life I happily loved music that I listened to on A. a factory-installed car stereo cassette player B. a Sanyo boom box or C. the headphones that came packed in with my $50 CD Walkman

> I love reading about this stuff

here's a good intro, also available in video format if you prefer watching to reading:

https://wiki.xiph.org/Videos/Digital_Show_and_Tell

actually it might be preferable to watch the 20 min video instead because it's possible to listen to the examples

thanks! also goes to show how near-impossible it was pre-Internet age to gain an understanding of this stuff

Decided to move away from Sonos a few months ago & got addicted to ASR while rebuilding a system with a bit of flexibility. There's a lot of knowledge there though I think i just liked watching engineers getting furious. But really it saved me some money, & a lot of brainspace wasted on purchasing decisions - between the reviews and the arguments it was very reassuring about what's almost certainly good enough (in my case pi streamer/schiit modi/cheap power amp - and this thread persuaded me to add a DVD player as a cd transport for the DAC because why not).

Between this thread and getting back in with my hardcore audiophile pal from post-grad days (and his ridiculous £50k system), a dormant part of my brain has been nudged and now I have Luxman “suckface” amps and SME tone arms in my IG feed.

I even had a Hi-Fi shop dream last night. There was a DAC the size of an office photocopier (with little portholes where you could seen ribbons of thick cable) - the Finesse Model Three, only £6500. “My Apple dongle is functionality identical”. “I agree,” said the shop manager. QED. Case closed.

This thread periodically makes me think I should go down the server/DAC route but my laptop/phone/Chromecast is so efficient I always go for the path of least action. But...

just bought one of these lovely little DACs (right before the price went up apparently) https://www.schiit.com/products/modi-1
have been reticent to buy one, but this will allow me to run my tv, pc, and cd player into one input on my input-light vintage receiver.

i'm looking at R2R DACs as a result of this thread. so much distortion but apparently the warmth is out of this world!

ah, i see upper missipp has the same one
xp

The DAC of my dreams is a French R2R DAC. It’s only 4250 euros. I forget if that includes shipping.

But love tube amps so I would.

The other “wire with gain” Apple DAC is in the Airport Express later models (looks like a white AppleTV), of course one can stream to it losslessly at 44/16.

https://www.kenrockwell.com/apple/airport-express-audio-quality-2014.htm

I've been wanting something for streaming audio that doesn't require me to turn on my TV. The most appealing thing I've seen is the Cambridge CXN, which has a little screen of its own and lists for $1099, or slightly less than the total cost of my whole system. I think it was Darko who said it was also a good DAC and so I said "hey, two in one!" (I don't really have any problem with my Onkyo receiver's DAC, except that there's a switch that clicks every time it recognizes a different source so that I always miss the first two seconds of audio from a CD.)

Those Airports work flawlessly with a good network connection. They also do optical out if you want to put it to a “better” DAC. Trapped in the iOS / macOS ecosystem but that’s true for me anyway.

I have two Cambridge Audio receiver/amps and been very happy (the only reason I've had two is because the first one got fried when my house got struck by lightning)

it's a shame that apple stopped providing optical outs with their products circa what, 2015, 2016?