xiphmont's primary goal appears to be to stop Neil Young from selling 24/192 audio to the general public; that's why he called the page neil-young.html. Sure, few buyers have the ears or equipment to pursue anything beyond the compact disc.
The problem is that many readers of neil-young.html will come away thinking they understand human hearing and digital sampling, when in fact the article is far too sparse on details to understand either; there is no discussion of how sounds are located in 3D space, or of how phase information is recovered. It is amazing that you can completely cover one ear, rub your fingers together behind your head and precisely pinpoint where your fingers are. It is also amazing that "Sampling doesn't affect frequency response or phase" but xiphmont doesn't explain this at all.
And then there's this lovely quote:
"It's true enough that a properly encoded Ogg file (or MP3, or AAC file) will be indistinguishable from the original at a moderate bitrate."
which is provably wrong. I can very reliably pick the uncompressed WAV each try when compared against 320kbps MP3.
My attitude is in support of furthering research in the area of live sound reproduction. As I've said, we are VERY far away right now. It is foolish to believe we understand human musical perception completely today. We cannot even replicate a simple cymbal strike with today's recording and playback technology.
I would encourage the curious to stand in the center of an outdoor arc of 100 horn players, like this (feel free to skip first 48 seconds):
> Therefore, advancing the codecs does advance man's ability to recreate live music more convincingly.
Only where bandwidth and storage are constrained. If we're trying to push the state of the art, it's not going to be with a Zoom H2N.
The best music reproduction systems use lossless compression. Psychoacoustic compression does NOT get us closer to the original performance. I'm stating this as someone who gets 5 out of 5 correct, every time, on the NPR test:
(I'm ignoring the Suzanne Vega vocal-only track due to both its absence of musical complexity and use as test content during the development of the MP3 algorithm.)
While I appreciate xiphmont's codec work, I am dismissive of his open attempt to steer research and commerce in this area.
Why is his article posted as "neil-young.html"? Is that really fair?
> If you want to make a claim that this is somehow relevant to the question, you need to argue why, with sources - or simply ask the author, who might just answer.
Please see chaboud's excellent post above, referencing the work of Georg von Bekesy.
> Your last question is an example of one that rightly deserves to be downvoted
You're referring to my array-of-20kHz-tone-generators experiment? Sorry I don't know the answer, but I haven't done the experiment myself; I was hoping someone here had! Where's the appeal to emotion, though? If the experiment shows a higher sample rate is necessary (that's the whole point of the experiment) it's germane.
It's not obvious that 2 channels of recorded audio aren't sufficient to recreate a convincing stereo image; suggesting that I'm seeking the equivalent of VR is specious.
And you haven't answered my question about the array of 20kHz tone generators. In fact, NOBODY has, and yet the question has been down-voted! How is that even possible? Posing a novel experiment which might invalidate the populist view considered harmful?
TFA's author is not active in the field of advancing man's ability to recreate live music more convincingly, AFAIK; he writes codecs. He believes people shouldn't purchase 192kHz downloads. He's certainly right that most consumers won't be able to tell the difference with their current equipment. But he makes no mention of the interaural time difference in human auditory perception, so he's already not telling the whole story. There is more to learn here, folks, and down-voting a question is an embarrassing failure of these forums. Why aren't posts in support of music piracy down-voted (read above)?
Note that sitting in front of a speaker setup playing a carefully selected recording is not the same as the scenario above. We do not yet have the technology to fool someone walking by a room, especially for orchestral works or even an acoustic drum kit.
interesting viewpoint, however, did you think about the experiment I presented? without an answer, sample rate and cabling cannot be considered equivalent distractions on the road to high fidelity.
and yet, we are nowhere near being able to electronically reproduce a live acoustic music performance. have you ever walked by a bunch of musical sound coming out of a room and thought to yourself, "wow, those live musicians sound great" only to discover it was just a stereo playing? nope.
as engineers we will never solve this problem as long as the "44.1kHz is good enough" dogma is perpetuated.
here's a question. why are frequency and bit depth the only two variables under discussion here? how does the human ear locate a sound in space? suppose I place a series of 20kHz tone generators along a wall (and that I can still hear 20kHz :) and trigger them at different times, and record the session in stereo at 44.1kHz with a standard X-Y mic setup. will I be able to reconstruct the performance?
Yes, exactly; this sounds like profound cognitive dysfunction consistent with either OSA or Upper Airway Resistance Syndrome. If a skeletal abnormality is present it would manifest as a compromised bite relationship, while the more mild UARS could appear with obstruction of the nasal passages.
The problem is that many readers of neil-young.html will come away thinking they understand human hearing and digital sampling, when in fact the article is far too sparse on details to understand either; there is no discussion of how sounds are located in 3D space, or of how phase information is recovered. It is amazing that you can completely cover one ear, rub your fingers together behind your head and precisely pinpoint where your fingers are. It is also amazing that "Sampling doesn't affect frequency response or phase" but xiphmont doesn't explain this at all.
And then there's this lovely quote:
"It's true enough that a properly encoded Ogg file (or MP3, or AAC file) will be indistinguishable from the original at a moderate bitrate."
which is provably wrong. I can very reliably pick the uncompressed WAV each try when compared against 320kbps MP3.
My attitude is in support of furthering research in the area of live sound reproduction. As I've said, we are VERY far away right now. It is foolish to believe we understand human musical perception completely today. We cannot even replicate a simple cymbal strike with today's recording and playback technology.
I would encourage the curious to stand in the center of an outdoor arc of 100 horn players, like this (feel free to skip first 48 seconds):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2EDIDCdy5Es
Once you experience that live, try to figure out how to replicate the input to your two ears. You can't, without 100 brass players.
Interestingly, these two examples of trumpet and cymbal have significant ultrasonic frequency content:
https://www.cco.caltech.edu/~boyk/spectra/spectra.htm
I don't believe it's a coincidence.