18 Nov
2010
18 Nov
'10
11:23 p.m.
On Thu, Nov 18, 2010 at 04:39:39PM -0500, Ricardus Vincente wrote:
On Thu, 2010-11-18 at 21:37 +0100,
fons(a)kokkinizita.net wrote:
50% - a random guess - is the expected result if you can't hear any
difference.
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. 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.