Skeptoid: Digital vs Vinyl, Podcast casts its skeptical eye on digital audio Options

[rick.hughes]

Skeptoid: Digital vs Vinyl

[splice]

@-h, I happen to agree with almost everything you wrote. Where I beg to differ is in the "striving for exotic systems". I believe we should strive, but not because it raises the price. Some people have the disposable income to indulge their desires to own exotic systems. Their investment pays for the R&D that eventually filters down to "affordable" systems.

[knutinh]

@-h, I happen to agree with almost everything you wrote. Where I beg to differ is in the "striving for exotic systems". I believe we should strive, but not because it raises the price. Some people have the disposable income to indulge their desires to own exotic systems. Their investment pays for the R&D that eventually filters down to "affordable" systems.

I dont believe that the world needs much more R&D on regular, high-bandwidth 2-ch playback. I don't believe that most such products contribute by a lot of "R", some seems to be pretty light on "D" as well.

I'd like to see more attention on the capture and rendering of spatially realistic audio and reference playback behaviour (absolute loudness, frequency response etc).

-k

[Woodinville]

I'd like to see more attention on the capture and rendering of spatially realistic audio and reference playback behaviour (absolute loudness, frequency response etc).

-k

That, in a nutshell, is precisely the place where "stereo" falls light-years short.

[knutinh]

I'd like to see more attention on the capture and rendering of spatially realistic audio and reference playback behaviour (absolute loudness, frequency response etc).

-k

That, in a nutshell, is precisely the place where "stereo" falls light-years short.

I've been a member here for some years. These discussions about minute differences between different stereo media never seems to end. Although it can be interesting to follow them due to the energy put into the science of perception as well as the art of debating, I think that the mind and time of those who choose to contribute could have been better spent elsewhere.

Common for these discussions all is that:
1. They usually cannot be confirmed using blind listening
2. When compared to the scale of modifications caused by recording technicians, loudspeaker (placement) etc, they tend to seem irrelevant

Compare this to the case with spatial reproduction. We know that humans can sense the direction of a sound source to within 5 degrees or 1 degree or something thereabout - in a sphere surrounding our head. No doubt further limited in many ways, this nevertheless suggests that sound reproduced over 2 loudspeakers in a room will never be anything but a crude approximation to most general soundfields encountered in real-life. The indeterminacy of the playback setup further means that the sound engineer have no accurate idea of what the playback really will sound like, and is therefore limited in the amount of "tricks" or "compensation" she can apply to the severe limitation that 2 channels represent.

We have all of this cheaply available dsp-power in our hands, and shelf-meters of science on perception. Instead of using this to improve listening experience in a significant way, we argue over audibility of stuff that is 40dB or 96dB below the signal, and playback mechanisms that are too fragile and cost-inefficient to ever become sensible mainstream audio playback systems.

-k

[Nessuno]

We know that humans can sense the direction of a sound source to within 5 degrees or 1 degree or something thereabout - in a sphere surrounding our head. No doubt further limited in many ways, this nevertheless suggests that sound reproduced over 2 loudspeakers in a room will never be anything but a crude approximation to most general soundfields encountered in real-life.

True in general, but every "real life" musical experience comes from musical sources in front of the listener, unless you want to reproduce the player's own experience, so the two channel approximation all in all is not so crude.

[DonP]

True in general, but every "real life" musical experience comes from musical sources in front of the listener, unless you want to reproduce the player's own experience, so the two channel approximation all in all is not so crude.

Ambiance of the venue aside, you can distinguish between live performances where the sound is coming directly from each performer's instrument and/or mouth, and those where it all comes from a speaker or stack on either side of the stage.

I have heard some very engaging 5.1 concerts where the rears had some music reflections, but the surround was mostly audience sound.