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

On Mon, 2006-02-27 at 19:16 +0000, Dan Mills wrote:
> On 27 Feb 2006, at 18:11, Maluvia wrote:

>
> > 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.
>
> I don't buy it, sure I buy jitter being a issue at the DAC, but that
> is ONLY an issue with conversion to or from analogue, it cannot be an
> issue with the storage or with digital transfer between storage
> devices where either the data recovery is OK is it is not. If the MD5
> hashes match the data is probably identical.....
>

    Don't just do the MD5. Do a bit by bit comparison. I read the
articles that were linked. There were some reasonable points but some
of it was just voodoo. Not a single double-blind test or bit by bit
comparison in the lot.

> > 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.
>
> If the diff returns nothing then the files are identical, at least as
> far as the computer is concerned (or diff has a bug). Sure hard disks
> have a specified bit error rate, but it is fairly close to zero, as
> the fact that these things work at all can attest.
>

    Exactly.

> > 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
>

    My favorite part was where he raised the computer off of the floor
and the playback sounded better. I've put systems in P3s, ships, and
small survey launches where the vibration is ridiculous. We record
multibeam sonar, LIDAR, and sidescan sonar among other things. I have
yet to see any bits falling off of the systems. While they're vibrating
like crazy I've done digital copies of hundreds of GB of data without
losing or changing a single bit (I have to do complete comparisons so we
don't lose or corrupt any data). I find it very hard to believe that
moving the CPU off of the floor will change the bits in any way.

> > I was tryng to bring about a constructive discussion concerning
> > digital
> > fidelity and how best to improve it - but it seems like it has
> > elicited
> > more of a 'hold-the-fort' response instead.
> > That's too bad, because I am just interested in making good music
> > sound as
> > good as it possibly can, and demonstrating that independently produced
> > music - with OSS tools to whit - can equal or rival commercially
> > produced
> > music with their multi-million (billion?) dollar recording studios and
> > engineering departments.
>

    I appreciate the discussion and I'm not interested in holding the
fort (since, according to Tape-Op, no one is making analog tape anymore
I think the fort is pretty safe ;-) I think the difference here is one
of semantics. The use of the word fidelity, which has a strict meaning,
seems to be in error. I think that tape sounds really good but Gene may
be right - I may just be conditioned that way (I also salivate when
anyone rings a bell - I wonder why). Fidelity is an objective term
though and has very little to do with "sounding better".

> The real win however is better rooms, instruments, mikes and TALENT.
> Seriously there are recordings that I will quite happily listen to
> that have probably less then 50db SNR and are gone by 8Khz, any
> modern recording chain can do better then that by a huge amount but
> if the talent on either side of the mic doesn't know what to do with
> itself then you will not get a result.
>

    Amen. Now, if I could just find some talent...

-- 
Jan 'Evil Twin' Depner
The Fuzzy Dice
http://myweb.cableone.net/eviltwin69/fuzzy.html
"As we enjoy great advantages from the invention of others, we should be 
glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and 
this we should do freely and generously."
Benjamin Franklin, on declining patents offered by the governor of 
Pennsylvania for his "Pennsylvania Fireplace", c. 1744