Audio Myths Workshop

[johnrrrrrr]

Yeah,,the Womb is like the toilet of recording forums

Everyone who was constantly in the corner as a child is in there. All they do all day is find things to disagree with...and then complain about them to the point of absurdity. In short...if you want demented opinions from people who dont play nice with other people ..go to the Womb

[sinzero]

Yeah,,the Womb is like the toilet of recording forums

Everyone who was constantly in the corner as a child is in there. All they do all day is find things to disagree with...and then complain about them to the point of absurdity. In short...if you want demented opinions from people who dont play nice with other people ..go to the Womb

that's a poor representation of The Womb. There are many cool people on there, not only that, they do know their stuff. Maybe you don't like their antics (i don't care for some of it) but there are people like charles dye and otek (especially) who will go a long way to be helpful

it's a very different atmosphere over there but saying if you want demented opinions from people who don't play nice with other people ..go to the Womb is so, so far from the truth

they get along just fine too

[Nokenoku]

There are good people and bad people in every forum.
Some forums show tendencies in one direction though ...

[A.M. Gold]

There's a lot of crap around here, too.

One thing I can say is that the relatively small group of regulars there all have real AE experience. Not all of them are full time recording industry pros but there are very few total NuB's that talk much around there and if they do they get sniffed out pretty quickly.

[A.M. Gold]

Well now I see that the thread got locked over there which is a bit surprising because it wasn't really all that nasty. Argumentative, but not totally insulting.

It's also extremely rare for threads to get locked over at the Womb. And I wanted to respond to something Ethan said.

Oh well, I guess we can move it over to here...

[Meffy]

It's also extremely rare for threads to get locked over at the Womb. And I wanted to respond to something Ethan said.

Oh well, I guess we can move it over to here...

Kinda depends on whether it's more of the same or someone proceeds to actual proper testing. Acrimony without end, without point isn't particularly useful. Discussion that leads somewhere, OTOP... well. *shrug*

[A.M. Gold]

Well they weren't just firing back and forth calling each other wrong and stupid. They were raising some technical points. The fact that Ethan shrugged most or all of them off didn't phase me because that's extremely common when engineers and scientists disagree. I wanted to see how the debate progressed. Zoesch in particular called Ethan's presentation "unscientific" and I wanted to know what his basis for that was but he never got a chance to follow up.

I do have a personal dog in this fight because I don't agree that there is nothing noticeably wrong with consumer grade digital audio and I'm frankly a bit surprised that anyone would claim that that position must essentially be delusional because they have supposedly proven that it's technically impossible.

[Meffy]

One of my favorite book titles is Richard Feynmann's "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" :-}

[sinzero]

locked!

i've been going over there for about 3 years now and it's the first lock I can remember. Very rare for sure

dwoz was the last to post and "announced" the lock. Seems kinda biased being he was one of the biggest dissenters

anyway, it would have been cool if a few would have taken up the offer to blind test. Slau did but nothing came of that

[A.M. Gold]

One of my favorite book titles is Richard Feynmann's "What Do You Care What Other People Think?" :-}

Well, in addition to that it's more or less irrelevant because, unless the vinyl market continues to make some kind of meteoric comeback, digital isn't going anywhere, and there doesn't seem to be a big outcry for more releases at DVD audio quality.

OTOH, if I have been somehow delusional or hallucinatory all these years in disfavoring CD sound quality, it would interest me to know that. And I wouldn't be alone by a long shot. To me, that in itself is a very compelling issue.

Ethan didn't say there was something slightly wrong with CD audio, he said there was nothing wrong whatsoever with it.

I posted an anecdote on the other forum about a woman in her early 50's who was one of the first people I personally heard complain about CD sound quality. She was a piano tuner and a classical music buff but definitely not an audiophile and she didn't have an expensive hi-fi system. She went in for a CD player because she was under the impression they sounded great, crystal clear, etc. This was in '92 and I was a poor student and hadn't gotten into CD's yet.

She came back a week later and said she had already given up on CD's. She hated the sound, particularly with classical stringed instruments, which she said sounded "screechy". She knew what strings sounded like after years of hearing them live and she played violin herself. She tried again to like the new CD player and, AFAIK, never got over her problem with the sound.

To me, that raises a red flag. Why would she just randomly not like the sound of something that purportedly has perfect sound reproduction capability?

This was a woman who was WAY out of the loop when it came to the kinds of things hi-fi connoisseurs would be debating about. If, say, obscure 17th century poetry had been loaded with innuendo that was saying CD's sucked, she would have been influenced by that, but I don't see how she would have been heavily conditioned by any other kind of anti-CD propaganda at that point. If she had, she most likely never would have bought the player in the first place because that wasn't a big area that she threw money around in. She was more of a book collector.

[tony tony chopper]

To me, that raises a red flag. Why would she just randomly not like the sound of something that purportedly has perfect sound reproduction capability?

it's not because it can perfectly reproduce something that it's necessarily what's put on it. If it was decided to put overcompressed stuff on a CD, then the overcompression is perfectly reproduced.

You have a weird logic.

[Nokenoku]

I do have a personal dog in this fight because I don't agree that there is nothing noticeably wrong with consumer grade digital audio and I'm frankly a bit surprised that anyone would claim that that position must essentially be delusional because they have supposedly proven that it's technically impossible.

Sorry, I don't understand that sentence. What do you mean?

I posted an anecdote on the other forum about a woman in her early 50's who was one of the first people I personally heard complain about CD sound quality. She was a piano tuner and a classical music buff but definitely not an audiophile and she didn't have an expensive hi-fi system. She went in for a CD player because she was under the impression they sounded great, crystal clear, etc. This was in '92 and I was a poor student and hadn't gotten into CD's yet.

She came back a week later and said she had already given up on CD's. She hated the sound, particularly with classical stringed instruments, which she said sounded "screechy". She knew what strings sounded like after years of hearing them live and she played violin herself. She tried again to like the new CD player and, AFAIK, never got over her problem with the sound.

To me, that raises a red flag. Why would she just randomly not like the sound of something that purportedly has perfect sound reproduction capability?

To me this story is totally meaningless.

There could be 100 reasons of why she did not like what came out of her boxes. Maybe the boxes themselfs? Maybe the DA of the CD-player, maybe bad made recordings, maybe she just liked the sound of her old tape-deck or whatever, etc. etc. etc.
What makes you so convinced, that it was the digital 16bit/44kHz-Format?



I think there aren't as many people/pros thinking 16bit/44,1kHz isn't enough as your impression is. Expectation bias again ... you got this opinion somehow, and now you just see what you expect to see (aka people having this same opinion).

Again the question:
Is it really the majority of pros, who think, that 16bit/44,1kHz would not be enough as end-medium for playback, or is this just your impression?
This is one thing you should really ask yourself and try to be true to yourself, since your only argument for your claims so far were "Most pros say so." and "Some people say so, even if they had no reason."

Both arguments would be weak arguments if they'd be true, but to me it's not even clear, that they actually are true. I wouldn't base an opinion on something like that.

[deaf dunderkwac]

edit
I posted an anecdote on the other forum about a woman in her early 50's who was one of the first people I personally heard complain about CD sound quality. She was a piano tuner and a classical music buff but definitely not an audiophile and she didn't have an expensive hi-fi system. She went in for a CD player because she was under the impression they sounded great, crystal clear, etc. This was in '92 and I was a poor student and hadn't gotten into CD's yet.

She came back a week later and said she had already given up on CD's. She hated the sound, particularly with classical stringed instruments, which she said sounded "screechy". She knew what strings sounded like after years of hearing them live and she played violin herself. She tried again to like the new CD player and, AFAIK, never got over her problem with the sound.

a whole lot of research on converters was done around that time... I could hardly listen to any cd mastered before 96 or thereabouts. But converter technology rsearch increased and a-d converters got much better- the consumer stuff now is far better then most the pro stuff available back then.
The problem of only paying attention to past issues is they eventually get resolved. Esp. when it has to do with computer tech.

[A.M. Gold]

I can completely accept that it may have been the quality of her CD player, but it wasn't her imagination, and it wasn't at all meaningless. She bought a bunch of CD's and classical CD's are never "overcompressed". They are almost always cleanly recorded with an ear towards maximum fidelity.

And there weren't "100 possible reasons" why she complained about it and ultimately went back to tapes and LP's. She didn't like the sound of her digital system for classical music, period.

Was it a crappy CD player that caused that? Quite possibly, but the corollary to this story is that I ended up agreeing with her after my own listening experiences. I still don't like the sound of string ensembles or orchestras on CD.

[Gamma-UT]

I still don't like the sound of string ensembles or orchestras on CD.

I'm curious, other than live, what format are you using to listen to orchestral material?