The MASM Forum

I stumbled over this on the internet, very respected producers, singers and songwriters talking about a new audio format, PONO.
A 24bit / 192kHz sound format that brings back the feel of the vinyl days......

Do they really don't know the difference between, "dynamic range compression" ( see loudness war ) and "lossy music data compression" ?
Do they really think a human being can hear beyond 20 kHz frequency ?
I bet Neil Young and his "friends" can talk with bats too.  :biggrin:

I couldn't believe it, are they brainwashed or just stupid ??????  :badgrin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xH8I0LUjrqw  you must watch this !!!! at 6:38 they are explaining the differences of mp3, CD and PONO  :eusa_boohoo:

Have a look here, http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html  :icon14:

What's next ???  infrared and ultraviolet in videos ?  :dazzled: :dazzled:

Googling for hifi cables review gold copper is about as much fun as doing it for tin foil hat  :biggrin:

Yeah, "audiophile bulls**t"...... they spent a lot of money believing all those nonsense.......  :biggrin:

Dunno if I agree siekmanski, off the top of my head; don't know much about it but here are some counter-thoughts

Young people can, in fact, hear over 20K in actual tests. I mean, they play the high tone and u can hear it directly. When older u can't do that but still it might be "subliminal"ly effective Or, not... but I wouldn't be surprised.

in the old days we all "knew" that more than 33 frames/second video was wasted, to human eye that's smooth motion. Based on lab tests where subjects couldn't tell the difference. But in fact HDTV shows that all the way up to 60 fps makes a difference, and I verify that with my own software. Even beyond 60 seems there's a difference, the word that occurs to me is "glutinous", it has an oily smooth motion that is definitely not there at 33 or (maybe, IMHO, without studying it much) even at 60. This proves to me that very subtle sensory differences, not (evidently) measurable in the lab, can affect human perception.

If I have this right Pono's at 24 bit, 192 Khz? These numbers don't seem utterly excessive, compared to 16 and 44.1? You have a lot more experience in these things so I'm not disputing directly, just some words of caution. I was a professional expert in video rates 30 years ago and, as I say, extremely wrong; the whole industry's common wisdom was incorrect, as we see today.

Also - those are some big names on that video! Niel Young has always been a whack job and his latest stuff that I've heard ("Walk With Me") is sheer garbage. Not to diss his great songwriting ability but that has little correlation with good sense, let's face it. However some of those other people I find it hard to ignore. Elvis Costello AFAIK is very solid and sensible. Guys like Elton John, Dave Grohl, Bruce Springsteen, Sting ... surely not all of them have been hyped? All great musicians but (much more important in this context) seem to be intelligent solid people, (as I happen to know Elvis Costello is).

Then there's the question of money, again I can't believe they're all bs'ing just to make a few bucks on Pono? On average they already have lots of money. Out of friendship for Niel Young? Again hard to believe.

If you insist they're all wrong the best explanation I can think of, the Pono sample was simply played louder than the MP3 being compared. Also they gave them the best dope to listen to pono, inferior stuff for MP3. Yeah, it's possible, but ...

Then of course there's the natural tendency to figure, anything hyped so heavily must be garbage. Almost always true, but not, in fact, always.

Bottom line, I wouldn't be so sure if I were you. Again u know a lot more about it but, as your comment about 20K reveals, sometimes an expert is too confident in his expertise! I know from personal experience a young person can hear all the way up to, don't remember exactly, less than 23K ... Definitely, it was over 20K.

One good thing, within a year or whatever the truth about it will be clear to everyone, as millions listen to it w/o volume and chemicals influencing judgement

QuoteYoung people can, in fact, hear over 20K in actual tests. I mean, they play the high tone and u can hear it directly. When older u can't do that but still it might be "subliminal"ly effective Or, not... but I wouldn't be surprised

Babies maybe..

They know there facts  http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

Quotein the old days we all "knew" that more than 33 frames/second video was wasted, to human eye that's smooth motion. Based on lab tests where subjects couldn't tell the difference. But in fact HDTV shows that all the way up to 60 fps makes a difference, and I verify that with my own software. Even beyond 60 seems there's a difference, the word that occurs to me is "glutinous", it has an oily smooth motion that is definitely not there at 33 or (maybe, IMHO, without studying it much) even at 60. This proves to me that very subtle sensory differences, not (evidently) measurable in the lab, can affect human perception.

Yes you're right 24 fps was enough for smooth video but, back then tvs and monitors had a larger response time ( and after glow ) then nowadays.
So we now see lower frame rates as jerky on modern equipment.

age does have a lot to do with it
of course, the crap that many younger people listen to doesn't really require the best equipment - rofl
most of us forum members are older, and can't hear much past 16 KHz

and, there is something to the IMD info in the link
when a 10 KHz note beats with a 2 KHz note, it produces sum and difference tones at 8 and 12 KHz (probably 30 DB down)
but "bring back the sound of vinyl" is strictly a step backwards

as for gold connectors....
i can see it for something like a guitar, where constant movement is involved
even so, give me nickel or silver   :P
one advantage of gold is anti-corrosion, that's about it
problem is, the plating is so thin, and gold is malleable, it'll wear quickly

Maybe it wasn't over 20K but I definitely thought as old as 10 years I could hear up to 20K. Could be mis-remembering, admittedly.

Yes, they know their facts. About math or equipment no problem, but human ear facts are not so nail-downable. Also, talking about the other end, u can feel bass frequencies at not-too-loud volume.

Then there's the "space" of the recording. By turning your head, u know, u can locate sounds pretty well in space; and do so automatically, without thinking about it. Are frequencies an inch apart correlated exactly right? Have they tested such things? Could higher sampling rates have an impact?

Another topic, imperfections. Audio scientists focus on perfection of sound and recordings; human listeners can and do also respond to imperfections. For instance a guitar is never quite in tune; as u press on the strings it wavers a bit; doesn't sound right otherwise; one reason why keyboard guitar sounds are never convincing (altho I've heard some that try to mimic the effect). Admittedly if recording is accurate it should reproduce imperfections just as well as "perfections" ...

The point is I can imagine technicians failing to consider these 3 examples of subtleties (they weren't mentioned, of course, in that very informative ref you give), and who knows what else

Bottom line u (and that ref) could be 100% right; no skin off my nose, it's fine with me. But I'll reserve judgement until I (and millions of other guinea pigs) hear it. Humans have a way of fooling (lit., making fools of) technicians ...

i recall older Crown amplifiers had fairly flat response to 100 Khz, with low distortion
surely, they had a reason for attaining that goal
and, believe me, they sound very nice   :biggrin:

(http://s12.postimg.org/3ued2nuj1/ED150ajpg.jpg)

That's an example of the sort of thing I mean. A flat response at a particular frequency, "bad" from the engineering point of view, for some reason might sound better to a human listener. And it may only apply to that particular amp, given all its other unique characteristics; may only apply to certain listeners. Or, not, what do I know? But I'll bet that sort of thing is true, and won't be understood by engineers for a long time.

Here's another example (there are thousands no doubt). The majority of those Pono fans we saw on the video are high on something (let's face it). Do the audio scientists test people in that condition? No. Is it possible it changes the frequency response - or, simply, the response - of the human ear, and brain, to the music? Yes. Could it possibly make the ear more acute? Well, maybe but I doubt it, more likely the exact opposite. Believe me I'm not in favor of drugs. But the point is: here's a major, important factor in the way those people hear the music, that the engineers have never tested; never even thought of!

Humans have a way of being much more - and, much less - than the experts can imagine

One nice thing about the Masm32 forum is that we can jump from profound philosophical debates with an agnostic touch (http://masm32.com/board/index.php?topic=4081.msg45221#msg45221) straight into deeply religious issues :t

Is it worth paying for premium cables? (http://www.pcpro.co.uk/features/376468/is-it-worth-paying-for-premium-cables)

QuoteOver the years, researchers and reviewers have carried out numerous experiments to test whether listeners really do consistently perceive some audio cables as better than others. Some results have suggested that cables can indeed improve sound quality: earlier this year, the Audio Society of Minnesota conducted a series of blind tests with more than 50 participants, and found a slight overall preference for the sound from more expensive hi-fi cables. Another interesting test was carried out by AVReview in 2008: here, most participants couldn't hear a difference between an £8 cable and a £500 one, but one panel member did consistently get it right.

Equally, though, there are plenty of tests in which no difference is detected between cables. Back in 1995, Sound & Vision magazine carried out a series of tests that led it to conclude firmly that "there is no basis for the commonly held notion that cables make a difference in the sound of audio systems".

More recently, users of the audio enthusiast forum Head-Fi found themselves unable to reliably spot the difference between a cheap Radio Shack cable and far more expensive premium cables. And in 2008, in one notorious blind test, a room full of audiophiles failed to spot the difference between premium audio cables and coat-hanger wire.

For the fans of sober facts, there is also a dedicated Speaker Wire (http://www.roger-russell.com/wire/wire.htm) page by Roger Russell. Caution, he is pulling your leg: "It may be a total shock to some people to know that a typical 8-ohm four layer woofer voice coil contains about 120 feet of number 28 solid copper wire."

And he quotes, further down:

QuoteIt reminds me of the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem Ozymandias but for speaker wire it translates to "Look upon my expensive wires ye mighty and despair."

:P

Hesitate to voice opinion on cable issue, I know the great faith many audiophiles have: "Spend thee more gold and silver, and thee shall hear the voice of the living god from thy speakers". OTOH go to radio shack and the devil will hiss from the same speakers. (Parenthetically, Radio Shack is going out of business, end of an era)

But, as a working musician, it sounds (no pun intended) like the debate misses the point. The reason you want the best guitar cables (for instance) is not that you get a better sound under normal conditions; there's no difference. Instead, two things. First, better quality cables stand more abuse. Especially the plugs, which will break / come loose readily on cheap cables. Second, there can easily be stray electromagnetic fields on stage, usually manifesting as 60 cycle hum (50 cycle in EU). The better cables have better shielding (and of course twisted pair coax configuration) to eliminate hum entirely in many circumstances where the cheap ones won't. You should in any case be careful laying out cables, try not to cross and wind, use straight lines etc (good sound men know how to do this) to reduce not only hum but stepping on them, tripping over etc.

How much does that apply to your living room? Not being an audiophile (don't mean to denigrate anyone's religion) I don't know in detail, but such practical reasons probably apply much less than on stage. So from my half-relevant experience cheap audio cables are prob just as good as expensive

BTW this brings up the point, if and when I hear Pono I'm the last guy to tell the difference, if there is one. And, the last to care. My only point in all this is, I don't trust "expert's" judgment beyond limited technical issues.

Another example I thought of, the Nyquist criterion depends on exact sine waves, theoretically and practically. Of course music can almost be decomposed into sine waves, but is it exact? The hysteresis present in real air, at real varying temperatures, and all the other non-linearities of stubborn reality, shows the answer is "no, not exactly". To the extent that real music varies from precise sine waves, to that extent Nyquist doesn't apply

the 28 awg (or whatever size) copper wire is wound on a somewhat massive core
it will dissipate heat rather nicely

8 ohm (or 4 or 16 ohm) systems are low impedance (duh)
that means lower voltage and higher current
it doesn't hurt to have a little beef at higher power levels
you don't want to melt the insulation - lol

i remember, many years ago, seeing a semi truck pulled off to the side of the road
the cab was on fire
guy had a 1000 watt CB rig (i.e. illegal), powered with some less-than-adequate 12-volt wiring   :lol:

Into my 20s I could hear 28k and that was tested with a signal generator. Good nick vinyls would go over 30k if you had decent equipment and any decent power amp would produce 100k within a couple of DB. A CD clipped at 22.5k sounds OK and its usually a lot more quiet than a vinyl but they don't have the frequency range of a good vinyl. Digital audio tape does better than both. I used to tune the cross over notch on a class AB power amp that I used to build at 100k and YES you can hear the difference.

Even as you get older and loose frequency range in your hearing, you can still hear the shaping on lower frequency sounds if you have the higher top end wave shaping.

Hi Hutch,

QuoteInto my 20s I could hear 28k and that was tested with a signal generator.

Are you sure it was measured in Hz or was it the samplerate ?

If you resample 192kHz to 48kHz sample rate ( integer division by 4 ) you don't produce any intermodulation distortion and humans can't notice the difference between the two.
How to resample 48kHz to 44.1kHz so we can put it on a CD without introducing intermodulation distortion ?
In fact this is really simple:
1) Find the first common integer divisor for the resampling ratio.

48000/44100  = 1,08843537414966
160/147      = 1,08843537414966

48000*147/160 = 44100

2) Now oversample the 48000Hz audio data 147 times, do this with a sine interpolator to prevent intermodulation distortion. ( sine wave is a pure signal without harmonics )
3) Now pick every 160th sample from the audio data and you have a perfect 44.1kHz copy.

Now let's talk about the bit depth,

The bit depth has no impact on the frequency response, only on the signal to noise ratio (SNR)
24bit digital audio has a theoretical maximum SNR of 144 dB, compared to 96 dB for 16bit.

Digital sound is representated as 0 dB as loudest.
For 16bit -96 dB is complete silence.
For 24bit -144 dB is complete silence.

With 16bit we can cheat and fool our brain to add dither and so increase the effective dynamic range.
The perceived dynamic range of 16-bit audio can be as high as 120 dB with noise-shaped dither, taking advantage of the frequency response of the human ear.

120dB is greater than the difference between a mosquito somewhere in the same room and a jackhammer a foot away.... or the difference between a deserted 'soundproof' room and a sound loud enough to cause hearing damage in seconds.

44.1kHz 16bit  audio is enough to store all we can hear, and will be enough forever. !!!!!!

The Fletcher-Munson curves shows how we perceive sound at different frequencies and sound pressure levels:

(http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/FletcherMunson_ELC.svg/714px-FletcherMunson_ELC.svg.png)

The only thing what Neil Young and "friends" have to do is blame the producers. They started the "Loudness War" and thereby ruined the sound.
They use multiband compressors to make the sound as loud as possible. Much of it is clipped and sound awful, just to be the loudest on the radio.

I can of course record this message and upsample it to the 88kHz - 192kHz range and ask Neil Young to listen to it on his PONO player and ask for a response.  :biggrin:

Hi,

Quote from: rrr314159 on May 19, 2015, 06:26:37 PM
Another example I thought of, the Nyquist criterion depends on exact sine waves, theoretically and practically. Of course music can almost be decomposed into sine waves, but is it exact? The hysteresis present in real air, at real varying temperatures, and all the other non-linearities of stubborn reality, shows the answer is "no, not exactly". To the extent that real music varies from precise sine waves, to that extent Nyquist doesn't apply

   Yeah, that always bugged me.  The Nyquist criterion is always
quoted to justify sampling rates.  And it works for sine or square
waves.  Feed it a cosine wave and it fails 100%.  As real world
sound should have a random phase angle, sampling at the Nyquist
rate should therefor have 50% distortion.  But that is never
discussed or even mentioned.  Annoying.

   Not that I should care in the real world, due to frequency loss,
and tinnitus adding hiss and whistles.  And most audio devices
currently sold not being hifi anyway.  The remote to my radio
died recently, so I went back to where I bought it, they can't
replace the remote, and they no longer sell radios.

Cheers,

Steve N.

A couple of years ago a friend of mine bought a 192kHz sample rate capable sound card and he also said he could hear above 20kHz.
I made a proggy for him that did a mono frequency sine sweep from 20Hz to 96kHz on the left output channel and connected it to the right input channel.
With a FFT of both channels on screen, I proved to him that the sound card produced IMD below 20kHz and convinced him that this was the reason he could here signals above 20kHz
Proof was shown on screen. It turns out we both could hear nothing above 16 kHz ( we both thought we had golden ears hahahaha... )

Here's some stuff to read about human hearing:

D. R. Campbell, University of Paisley: http://media.paisley.ac.uk/~campbell/AASP/Aspects%20of%20Human%20Hearing.PDF

College of Santa Fe Auditory Theory: http://www.feilding.net/sfuad/musi3012-01/html/lectures/007_hearing_II.htm

At the bottom of the page:

You Need to Know
•Human hearing: 20Hz - 20kHz
•Healthy young children may have a full hearing frequency range up to 20,000 Hz,
•by the age of 20, the upper limit may have dropped to 16,000 Hz.
•From the age of 20, it continues to reduce gradually to approximately 8,000 Hz by retirement age.

siekmanski,

I think you're being 2 dogmatic about this issue. A few considerations,

all these ref's are simply repeating the same info, in the same words: they all got it from one source. So no point in "multiplying entities unnecessarily" :) It's like i don't buy somebody's argument, so they xerox it and send me 12 copies

I believe them all! Same thing I've heard for many years: "normal healthy child up to 20k, age 20 16k, age 60 8k". I don't doubt it's true for normal people. So - what would be the limit for exceptional people? Consider any other human ability: IQ, visual acuity, height, archery, basketball, swimming, you name it: exceptional is always far above normal. "Normal healthy children" have an IQ up to, what, 120? Exceptional is 200. Normal healthy height, male: 6'2"? Exceptional, over 7'. And so forth.

having thought about it, I'm quite sure a pediatrician told me I heard beyond 20K at age 10 or so; think it was 22K. Today, I tested myself at age 63. I can hear 13K clear as a bell, after that not sure but I think the speaker's at fault not me. It hurts, starting at 11K or so. The pediatrician told us I was exceptional, "20K is the usual limit". But he didn't write a paper on me! He'd seen such before - it wasn't a real big deal. So really exceptional may indeed be as high as 28K.

So - are all these papers u reference (really, just one paper, repeated) lying? No. They're clearly not interested in the q. of exceptional range, they're only mentioning normal range then moving on to the topics they care about - all the rest of audio processing. Note, they don't even mention a variance; it's just not something they're concerned with.

***** Above is not too important

Music is a lot more than just pitch! You're ignoring transients (percussion, note attack), without which music is not music (except maybe Gregorian Chants). Fourier transforms are irrelevant to "clicks". The key question is, how quick a transient can be heard? Like percussion, and note attack: a quick click. At 44.1 u get 22 microseconds, but not reliably. It could "fall thru the cracks", or not be reproduced well. So it probably does a good job with clicks down to, maybe, 100 mics or so. So, how fast a click can a human respond to?

Quote from: WikipediaMechanotransduction by stereocilia is highly sensitive and able to detect perturbations as small as fluid fluctuations of 0.3 nanometers, and can convert this mechanical stimulation into an electrical nerve impulse in about 10 microseconds

- 10 microseconds - corresponding to 100KHz! But this ref has a note, "citation needed". And, does it even apply to this question? Dunno. Can't find any more data on "clicks". But u need to cover this base if you really want to analyze the topic.

One more problem, entire theory of fourier transforming, Nyquist absolutely depends on linear response. With a non-linear receiver it's invalid. Well, human brain is significantly nonlinear. Here's a good paper Auditory abstraction from spectro-temporal features to coding auditory entities (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3503225/) from 2012 (already old!).

Quote from: Chechik & NelkenHowever, A1 participates in coding more complex and abstract aspects of auditory stimuli without coding well the frequency content, including the presence of a distinct sound or its echos. [9] Like lower regions, this region of the brain has combination-sensitive neurons that have nonlinear responses to stimuli.[5]

- note, "nonlinear". This paper also makes it clear that sounds beneath conscious awareness, in the inferior colliculus and medial geniculate body of the thalamus, affect emotions (like, in music) directly via the amygdala.

Don't misunderstand. I don't trust Niel Young; I don't care how many famous musicians say Pono is great, I don't trust them either; I'll trust my own ears. Or better, wait a couple years and see what people think of it. The type of analysis you're attempting in such uncertain areas as aesthetics and cortices is, let's say, more difficult than u think.

Quote from: WikipediaThere is a large degree of individual variation in the auditory cortex, as noted by biologist James Beament, who wrote, "The {auditory} cortex is so complex that the most we may ever hope for is to understand it in principle, since the evidence we already have suggests that no two cortices work in precisely the same way."

Quote from: WikipediaThe complexities of contemporary neuroscience are continually redefined. Thus what is known now of the auditory system has changed in the recent times and thus conceivably in the next two years or so, much of this will change.

Quote from: wikiThe auditory cortex plays an important yet ambiguous role in hearing. When the auditory information passes into the cortex, the specifics of what exactly takes place are unclear.

- Humility in the face of the unknown: highly recommended

You are right about repeating the same info. ( I feel a bit ashamed about this, let me carried away a bit too much )
Certainly there are exceptional people that have exceptional hearing skills, I don't argue with that.
It's true, we don't know exactly everything how the brain functions.
At several universities this audio phenomena has been studied, ABX tests (44.1kHz and 192kHz) showed the same results as flipping a coin.
But this will always be a subject of discussion. ( see the Audio Forums )
I still believe that ( and maybe I'm wrong ), PONO is just another marketing stunt to let us buy new speakers, bigger hd's, new amplifiers and we have to re buy our music library again.

it can be hard to sort out the BS, that's for sure - lol
when digital TV came out, everyone wanted to sell you a new antenna
well, the old antenna is probably ok   :biggrin:

Quote from: siekmanskiI still believe that ( and maybe I'm wrong ), PONO is just another marketing stunt to let us buy new speakers, bigger hd's, new amplifiers and we have to re buy our music library again.

- Agree, I'd put the odds definitely in favor of a marketing stunt, maybe 90 to 10 ... no way I'll buy it for at least a year or two. If it's worthless should be dead by then. Even if turns out to be good, I probably won't get it; rather make my own music than listen to someone else's no matter how well it's reproduced. Just wanted to make my point about, u might say, "unlimited potential" of human beings

[edit] admittedly there's also the "unlimited gullibility" of human beings

Quote from: rrr314159 on May 20, 2015, 12:53:58 PM- Humility in the face of the unknown: highly recommended

Absolutely! I've always been fascinated by telepathy, for example. I'm agnostic, as usual, but I wouldn't be surprised at all if it worked 8)

However, common sense is also a fascinating concept :biggrin:

Btw, the guy I quoted above (http://masm32.com/board/index.php?topic=4245.msg45232#msg45232), Roger Russell, was (is?) the Director of Acoustic Research at McIntosh Labs (http://www.roger-russell.com/) and the originator of the well-known McIntosh loudspeakers, and thus might have had an interest to sell you expensive cables. He refrains from doing so, though.

I've always been fascinated by telepathy, for example.

- often u can read someone's asm question and know what he's trying to say better than he (or she) does - particularly when they're a newbie. Almost as if u "read their mind". Does that qualify? :biggrin: