2 Nov
2002
2 Nov
'02
12:02 a.m.
[ CD's, DAT, DVD, etc. ]
Umm, actually I'd heard nearly the exact opposite
opinion voiced on more
than one occasion, namely, that higher-sample rates are basically an
audio industry ploy to sucker rich yuppies wth $5000 USD power
[ ... ]
i'm with dgm on this one (even if i was once a rich yuppie with $5000
USD buying power :)
i'd also like to propose that anyone claiming that SACD, or 48kHz, or
96kHz or 192kHz or anything else "sounds better" do so only when they
can present the results of a double blind test. scientific literature
is full of ample documentation of how non-double blind testing is
essentially worthless, in domain after domain after domain. how
arrogant can the audio world be to imagine that its any different?
if you think that a particular audio technology is better than
another, then test it using double blind techniques. if you can
reliably detect the improvement, you'll have done more to convince us
than just about anyone else to date. these tests have not been done in
Mix, they have not been done by any "audiophile" publication i have
heard of ... it appears that they have not been done. i wrote to Mix
to complain about their review of the new ProTools HD system. it was
full of references to the much wonderfully improved quality of the
192kHz sampling rate, yet they didn't even do blind testing, let alone
double blind. "Ok, now this is ProTools at 192kHz, how does that
compare to that last one we just heard". They said, basically, "yeah,
but we didn't have time for that, and we don't ever have time for
that."
i don't care what the theoretical arguments are for any technology: if
you can't demonstrate that the improvement can be reliably heard by a
majority of humans in double blind testing, i'm not interested.
--p