

What Does A Song That Costs $5 Sound Like? - joe_bleau
http://www.npr.org/blogs/therecord/2013/09/11/219727031/what-does-a-song-that-costs-5-sound-like

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dietrichepp
It would be nice if someone could demonstrate that DSD sounds better than PCM
in a double-blind experiment. Just as a sanity check, you could record the PCM
from the DSD output to discover whether PCM is perceptually transparent.
Advocates of DSD are often skeptical of double-blind experiments, which itself
is a red flag.

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busterarm
> Advocates of DSD are often skeptical of double-blind experiments, which
> itself is a red flag.

Exactly. There's a lot of wackos out there in the music biz though. People
have religious beliefs about certain products/technologies/sounds without any
solid reasoning behind it.

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alan_cx
Whats wrong with that? We don't question tastes in art, why audio? I don't
need logic or research or the agreement of others, I just know what sounds
right to me, and that _is_ perfectly solidly reasonable. Ears are as weird and
personal as eyes, as is our interpretation. You wont necessarily hear what I
hear. On top of that, over time they change.

No need for words like wacko and religious. Unless of course you doing mind if
I fire back with a few judgmental words of my own?

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Dylan16807
I think you have a different sort of 'taste' in mind than busterarm does.

It is a very reasonable thing to prefer record over CD. They have different
sounds, people have different likes, easy, done.

But if someone tells you they prefer the look of HDMI when you use gold-plated
wires, they're clearly deceiving themselves, because as a digital signal there
is no difference whatsoever.

So the important question to ask is whether people _can_ hear the difference.
I will accept that some people have better/different ears from others, but the
best way to demonstrate that ability is a double-blind test.

Your standard is what 'sounds right'. Well, if you can _reliably_ tell me that
X technology sounds better than Y technology, without labels on the two sets
of headphones in front of you, then great, that's all I wanted. I don't need
any kind of research showing that a format is objectively 'better'. I just
want someone to show that it's objectively _different_ to human ears.

If someone says they have a preference, but doesn't actually prefer either one
in a blinded test, then the labels 'wacko' and 'religious' fit.

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busterarm
Right. I'm trying to refer to the self-deception that people have when it
comes to audio gear. A really common example is how many musicians and
audiophiles end up buying power filters and claim they make the sound better.
Often these people don't need the power filters and you can prove with
documentation and test equipment that they a) don't need them and b) aren't
doing anything to the sound. Are you playing out live in random clubs? Sure
get a power filter (but that's not as important as a surge protector). Are you
playing at home with modern wiring and not overloading your circuit? Don't
waste your fucking money.

So many musicians end up developing biases about what certain equipment is
supposed to sound like. There are a few videos floating around comparing
guitar amp/cab modeling gear to the real thing. A lot friends of mine have
trouble picking them apart or getting them right in a blind listening test.
Frequently the model has some tweaks that make it sound better... or a better
description would be to say that it sounds more like what the musician expects
that gear to sound like. Some amp X was used on such and such album and has Y
sound and the model sounds like that amp does on the album.

I'm frequently right in these blind tests and I end up telling people is that
it's because I don't care about the gear and don't have any preconceived
notions about what it should sound like. I just listen to the timbre and make
my best guess.

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__david__
So DSD is just storing [the equivalent of] the digital pulse part of a class-D
amplifier? That seems completely pointless...

My feeling is there's a one to one transform between the 1 bit world and the
multi-bit world, which means that they're mathematically the same and any
perceived differences are merely the result of poor A/B testing.

~~~
busterarm
Pretty much spot on here.

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qdog
It sounds a lot like someone making money. You play these over your $150,000
speakers with $10,000 speaker wire and you can pretty much hear the money
hitting the table.

I heard this story on my way to work this morning and was just shaking my
head. There are probably going to be a lot of people wanting to try out this
newfangled $50 album, though.

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busterarm
Whether DSD is even good or not is still something hotly debated. It's not at
all suitable for editing. I'm really scratching my head why NPR reported a
story that is so one-sided.

The fact-checking here is poor. They're presenting it as DSD vs MP3 when
really it's DSD vs PCM.

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voltagex_
But no one's talking about FLAC/DSD for archiving and MP3 for casual
listening... which should be the point.

The history of music (even if you don't like today's pop) should not be stored
in 320 kilobit/s CBR.

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brianpgordon
The very fact that 5.6MHz sampling rates are even a thing intended for human
listening makes me doubt this lady's sanity.

~~~
glassx
It is intended for encoding, not for hearing.

Here: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-
density_modulation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulse-density_modulation)

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r0h1n
Here is a link to what must apparently be the new range of Sony hi-fi
equipment the article talks about (but doesn't link to) in the first
paragraph: [http://www.whathifi.com/news/sony-launches-high-
resolution-a...](http://www.whathifi.com/news/sony-launches-high-resolution-
audio-product-range-and-hi-res-downloads-site)

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Buge
Are people even able to audibly tell a difference? Like in an ABX test?

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coin
Audiophile (the unhealthy obsession with audio) has made it on NPR

