[LAU] edirol fa101 on differant rate that 48k ?

[fons at kokkinizita.net]

On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 04:39:39PM -0500, Ricardus Vincente wrote:
> On Thu, 2010-11-18 at 21:37 +0100, fons at kokkinizita.net wrote:
> > Two years or so ago there was an in interesting 'engineering report'
> > published in the AES journal. It reported on the results of a long
> > series of listening tests involving hundreds of listeners, all of 
> > then selected for their interest in high quality audio. 
> > 
> > For these tests the authors used 'audiophile' DVD-A recordings 
> > (mostly classical music and jazz IIRC), all of them 24-bit, 96
> > or or 192 kHz, and had the listeners compare them to a version
> > transcoded to CD standards (44.1 kHz, 16 bit). Two results 
> > emerged from this:
> > 
> > 1. Nobody could hear any difference between the original recordings,
> > reproduced using the best equipment available, and the transcoded
> > versions. 
> > 
> > 2. Almost all listeners preferred the 'audiophile' recordings to
> > other versions of the same music released on CD. 
> > 
> > The latter result is quite surprising, but given the first one it
> > says nothing at all about the merits of higher sample rates. It is
> > just the result of the 'audiophile' recordings (targeted at a very
> > critical niche audience) being produced with more attention to audio
> > and musical quality than the average CD.
> 
>  Points 1 and 2 seem to be in conflict.  I can't draw any conclusions
> from those two statements without more information.
> 
>  At what point did the listeners say they preferred the "audiophile"
> recordings?
> 
>  I don't have any links to the study that I read about, but in a study
> conducted a few years ago, among hundreds of people that included audio
> engineers, audiphile home listeners, people with no audio background,
> etc... the data showed that when asked, the group correctly guessed
> which source was 24/192 (as opposed to 16/44.1) something like 50.1% of
> the time, with the audio professionals only being slightly higher.

50% - a random guess - is the expected result if you can't hear any
difference.
 
>  Anyway, I would like to understand the two points you mentioned better.
> They don't seem to make sense to me.

There really is not conflict at all. What the test showed was that
the preference for the audiophile recordings was not the result of
better sound quality due to higher sample rate or sample size, but
of the audiophile recordings being produced with more attention to
musical and acoustic authenticity and less commercial compromises
than the average CD.  

Ciao,

-- 
FA

There are three of them, and Alleline.