{"id":120,"date":"2012-10-01T14:41:32","date_gmt":"2012-10-01T12:41:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theband.at\/?p=120"},"modified":"2012-11-13T17:44:38","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T15:44:38","slug":"why-high-definition-digital-audio-matters","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/?p=120","title":{"rendered":"Why High Definition digital audio matters"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today I found a very well-researched, well written article on xiph.org<\/a>, that basically said that 16\/44.1k should be enough for everybody.<\/p>\n

I was slightly irritated, because I’m a firm advocate of DSD and 24\/96k; having heard, and been able to spot the differences many times.<\/p>\n

The author, Monty, argued that the human hear is unable to hear frequencies above 20k.<\/p>\n

He cited the usual, well known studies on the subject, and was kind enough to include how they arrived at their conclusion.<\/p>\n

And here is what he got wrong: The studies, upon close and unmerciful inspection, show only that the human ear is incapable of hearing sinus waves<\/strong> above 20k. Well, I’m not going to argue with that, we’re not bats, spot on!<\/p>\n

If you know how a Fourier Transform <\/a>works than you probably already know where I’m going here,\u00a0 but if not, read on:<\/p>\n

Any waveform, says Fourier, can be divided into sine and cosine waves of different frequencies, that combined yield the analysed waveform.<\/p>\n

A square wave of 10k would have a 10k sine basic and then a 20k sine on top of that, and a 40k and so on, until it becomes a square wave<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now if you chop off the frequency band at 20k, it just doesn’t look anything like a square wave, and doesn’t sound like one either.<\/p>\n

But square waves are about as common in nature as sine waves, so that isn’t much of an argument in the favor of 96k sampling.<\/p>\n

But, … transients: sharp, short spikes of audio, happen very often in nature and in music, particularly in modern music. And here 44.1k adds severe distortion<\/a>, making placid hills out of sharp spikes, while also adding pre- and post ring to the spike, courtesy of oversampling digital anti-aliasing filters.<\/a><\/p>\n

Now Monty goes on and cites a study by the AES that revealed candidates were only guessing\u00a0whether something was 96k or 44k in an ABX blind test.<\/p>\n

Why? Hard to tell, but reproduction equipment could be the main culprit here. Cheap amplifiers, headphones and loudspeakers often have very poor time-domain fidelity. Meaning? They smear a short, sharp transient all over the place. Making a better time-domain resolution undetectable.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

David Blackmer, the eminent founder of DBX, wrote an excellent article on the subject in 1999. Here is a link<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To sum it all up: We need high-def digital, but we also need to focus more on time-domain fidelity. Here’s were the audio equipment industry is not delivering today, mainly because nobody cares. You get a pair of pretty flat frequency response headphones fo 5$, but headphones with great time-domain reproduction are hard to find and expensive.<\/p>\n

For loudspeakers Meyer Sounds HD-1 come to mind, at 7000\u20ac a pair…<\/p>\n

Happy listening.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today I found a very well-researched, well written article on xiph.org, that basically said that 16\/44.1k should be enough for everybody. I was slightly irritated, because I’m a firm advocate of DSD and 24\/96k; having heard, and been able to spot the differences many times. The author, Monty, argued that the human hear is unable […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tech"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":122,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions\/122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dubidu.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}