Re: [linux-audio-user] Re: Digital Fidelity

> There *is* generational loss in the digital domain, as well as in the
> analog domain.
> Sorry.
> If you think the subtle differences I hear are auditory hallucination or
> self-hypnosis, and you can't hear them yourself - I can't convince you
> otherwise - I see no reason to even try.

unless you can detect them in a double blind test, they do not exist.
this has been hashed to death in audiophile journals for ten years, with
those claiming that double blind tests are not needed resorting to all
kinds of completely bizarre and utterly dubious statistical theories.

> But there is a big difference between saying that this loss is negligible
> and insignificant, and saying it simply does not exist.
> There are some physical laws working against your premise here but I won't
> go into them - I don't want to take this thread OT yet again and turn it
> into a discourse on physics.
>
> There are others - professional audio engineers - who also hear these kind
> of differences, but I guess they must all be into metaphysics, hocus-pocus
> and self-delusion as well. (A lot of money in that.)
> Here are a few articles that touch on this subject, and say a lot of what I
> have been saying:
>
> http://www.johnvestman.com/digital_myth.htm
> http://www.johnvestman.com/digital_myth2.htm

first, audio CD "copies" are not "digital file copies" at all. audio CD
playback mechanisms have error correction built in, and it is certainly
true that making a copy of an audio CD may not result in a
"perfect" (ie. bit-level) copy.

however, this is not because of the nature of the CD medium (although
errors are possible on them; hence the error correction mechanism for
playback). if you instead store your audio files on a CD as a data disk
using an ISO9660 file system, then any file copies you do *will* be bit-
for-bit perfect. this is why you will see cd ripping software such as
cdparanoia sometimes run massively slower than "realtime" - rather than
using the CD player's audio-based error correction mechanism, it
accesses a lower level of the firmware, and is notified of sector read
failures. it then re-reads them over and over until it either works or
cdparanoia becomes convinced that the disk is unreadable.

copying from one .wav to another .wav on a hard drive will never, ever
produce any difference of any kind, and if you claim otherwise, you are
either completely ignorant of how digital audio works or being
deliberately ridiculous.

> But John is not alone in his views - there are other working professionals
> who also hear these kind of differences, but I don't feel like taking the
> time to track anymore of it down, since I don't think there is any interest
> in this subject here, and as they say: "A man convinced against his will,
> is of the same opinion still."

find me one person who can do this in a double blind situation, and we can take it seriously.

finally, there is nothing going on in the open source side of digital audio that is technically any different from
anything happening in the proprietary side, except that the proprietary side has a few cool algorithms for stuff like dithering.
your complaints are not specific to open source digital audio, but are about about digital audio in general.
although we have a few wizards of the DSP here, you'd better off in a more general forum (which i am sure will roast claims like
"i can hear the difference between two digital copies" as vigorously as anyone here)

--p
Received on Tue Feb 28 00:15:10 2006