Roku Developer Program

[EnTerr]

"squirreltown" wrote:
if you think 24/192 is snake oil, with all due respect you are either:
• full of it
• are taking someone else's word for it
• don't know what to listen for

There is no fourth option. Having been there and seen (um..heard) the ghosts myself, I know they exist.

Please read end-to-end the article i linked to, then view the whole video and only then we decide which option am i (and if you are one of the three or a 4th 🙂 ). I won't disregard your experience (which is "anecdotal evidence", mind you*) - but you will see that double-blind studies have been and are being done with statistically significant number (many hundreds) of people. Your equipment might have been worse than the one used in the trials, sure - unfortunately that means such equipment will get bad results with 24/192 too, not only with 16/48**.

(*) just like Roku random reboots. Sometimes when there is smoke, there is fire.
(**) just like feeding a car with high-octane gas does not substitute for engine rebuild.

[RokuMarkn]

I learned a long time ago not to argue with someone who has strong opinions about audio quality. They may be right or they may be wrong, but generally they are positive they are right and nothing will change their minds, not even blind tests that they participate in.

--Mark

[squirreltown]

"RokuMarkn" wrote:
I learned a long time ago not to argue with someone who has strong opinions about audio quality. They may be right or they may be wrong, but generally they are positive they are right and nothing will change their minds, not even blind tests that they participate in.

Well that's a nice back-handed way of saying that I am full of it.

I responded to EnTerr's comment because of the use of the term "snake-oil" which none of us here need Wiki-whatever to tell us is a fraud, a fake, a mcguffin. I really don't care about this in more then a trivial way anymore but I know that EnTerr is generally well informed, and more to the point he appreciates precise language among other things.

I don't care how many people can't hear a difference. I did, and I'm far from alone in that. Everything is anecdotal until it happens to you.

[TheEndless]

"RokuMarkn" wrote:
not even blind tests that they participate in.

That's the key. A double-blind study of this type) doesn't mean anything to anyone other than the participants. Unless you have the ears that are being tested, you have no idea how those ears interpret sound. How do I know the red you see is the same red I see? I don't.

Take the green square test in this video, and ask yourself why the same couldn't also be true for sound...

[RokuMarkn]

I can't know whether the green you see is the same as the green I see, but I CAN know whether you can distinguish color differences with the same accuracy I do. The same thing is true for sound. Blind testing is the only way to do this, because perception is strongly colored by expectation, even if you are deliberately trying to be impartial.

--Mark

[TheEndless]

"RokuMarkn" wrote:
but I CAN know whether you can distinguish color differences with the same accuracy I do.

Only if I participate in the same test you do, but this was exactly my point. Just because one person can't perceive the difference between two sounds doesn't mean there's no difference between the two sounds. I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell the difference between 24/192 and 24/96, but I'm not prepared to say that squirreltown (or anyone else) can't.

[squirreltown]

"TheEndless" wrote:
I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell the difference between 24/192 and 24/96, but I'm not prepared to say that squirreltown (or anyone else) can't.

To be fair, the difference between 24/192 and 24/96 gets into the area where you need equipment that I could certainly never afford, so I don't want to imply i could hear the difference between those two formats. However, I certainly can hear the difference between 16/44 and 24/48, and really hear it between 16/44 and 24/96. As far as blind tests go, its important to remember that sound happens over time, and the brain needs to "learn" a particular sound to examine it. You can't actually compare two sounds the way you can two photographs by holding them side by side, you have to memorize the first sound, and compare your memory of it to the second. Professionals listen to a particular piece of music many hundreds of times in a row on the same equipment, and after a while you start noticing pretty small details. I don't see how a blind test could be set up to accurately reproduce that effect, unless the differences were huge, which is not the discussion we're having.

[TheEndless]

There's also this, which makes me feel old as hell.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VxcbppCX6Rk
Whether that actually applies to any of this, I have no idea, but it's interesting anyway... 😛

[RokuMarkn]

"TheEndless" wrote:
Just because one person can't perceive the difference between two sounds doesn't mean there's no difference between the two sounds. I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell the difference between 24/192 and 24/96, but I'm not prepared to say that squirreltown (or anyone else) can't.

Agreed. But if 1000 people can't tell the difference between two sounds, I'm prepared to bet that Joe Audiophile can't either. I may lose that bet, but the odds are I won't. Especially if the only evidence is that Joe claims he can hear the difference, and there's reason to believe that Joe is emotionally invested in believing he can hear these differences.

Squirreltown, none of this is directed specifically at you. I'm speaking in general, not of specifically of anyone posting on this board.

--Mark

[TheEndless]

"RokuMarkn" wrote:

"TheEndless" wrote:
Just because one person can't perceive the difference between two sounds doesn't mean there's no difference between the two sounds. I'm pretty sure I couldn't tell the difference between 24/192 and 24/96, but I'm not prepared to say that squirreltown (or anyone else) can't.

Agreed. But if 1000 people can't tell the difference between two sounds, I'm prepared to bet that Joe Audiophile can't either. I may lose that bet, but the odds are I won't. Especially if the only evidence is that Joe claims he can hear the difference, and there's reason to believe that Joe is emotionally invested in believing he can hear these differences.

Squirreltown, none of this is directed specifically at you. I'm speaking in general, not of specifically of anyone posting on this board.

--Mark

I still think it depends on the 1000 people. As with the green square test (I couldn't tell the difference), if none of the 1000 is actually trained to hear the differences, no matter how subtle, then the test isn't a valid sample, since Joe Audiophile presumably is. The only valid blind test is for Joe Audiophile himself to listen to the audio samples, and score significantly higher in identifying the higher quality ones than what could be considered lucky guesses.

(we seemed to have veered wildly off-topic here...)