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Bobby Owsinski wrote:
> You know, I've followed Dan's claims and newsgroup threads and I must
> admit that he presents a good case. But having done a fair amount of
> 192k recording (as well as recording the same program and 44.1, 48, 96
> and 192k), I can tell you that everyone involved in these recordings are
> always very partial to the 192, especially after hearing the same
> program at a lower rate.
>
> In fact, I had a long talk with the owner of a hi-tech LA rental company
> at AES that told me that most of his classical and movie scoring clients
> are now recording at 192 despite the scientific claims of the
> engineering community. As he said, "When Yo Yo Ma and John Williams ask
> for it, there must be something to it".
>
> It still seems to me that most people who diss the format haven't had
> much listening experience with it and go merely on the basis of what
> they believe is academically correct (which it might not be because of
> skewed or overlooked or even unknown data).
>
> That being said, we've been recording all projects at 96k for about 5
> years now (from before the time where it became convenient), and I now
> personally feel that the difference over 48k is not nearly enough to
> justify the extra disc space and hassle. There is a huge jump in
> quality (mostly in the mids and air) at 192k though, in my opinion.
One point that Dan made was that he did not question that some people
were hearing "something" in some instances. It is just that that
"something" must be "something else" besides the sampling rate.
It cannot be the "192K". Humans cannot hear anything in the 48 KHz to
96 KHz audio range. Nor can most speakers reproduce it. There may be
differences in various filter designs (which have nothing fundamentally
to do with sample rate), contributing totally different things, or
something else between Brand X @96KHz and Brand Y @192KHz particular
choice of equipment, if there is a perceivable difference.
Another important point that he brought up that I don't think was
emphasized enough is that you cannot just take a 192K converter, then
operate that same converter at 96K and make a judgment. The filters in
that converter were designed to work at 192K, and may deliver a
substandard performance at 96K.
I myself challenged Dan to do some lab work. Take the best 96K
converter product and compare it with the best 192K converter product.
And I said he should go one step further: Take a 192K converter
product, literally rip out the chip, and shoehorn in a 96K chip, so that
nothing is different except the chip. Then do the lab work on that.
Regarding listening tests, if you are comparing 11 KHz sampling rate
with 44.1 KHz sampling rate, then you do not need a double blind test.
Anyone off the street can hear the obvious. But the more subtle the
difference becomes, the more you need double-blind testing before
jumping to a conclusion.
You cannot make judgments based on "Yo Yo Ma and John Williams". This
is just my point. If you do not do a double-blind test, then you will
read what you want into it. It is human nature. Even if you put Arny
Krueger in front of it in person, without a double blind test, he will
come to some unfair conclusion, because even he is human. So am I. How
many people here have caught yourselves tweaking the wrong EQ knob on
the mixer (the knob for an adjacent channel strip, which was not on),
and imagined that you were doing something, before you realized
something was not right? How many have (hopefully unintentionally)
reached for the wrong stage monitor knob in response to a request on
stage and asked if that was better, and heard back, "Yes, that's better.
Thanks."?
So it becomes more anecdotal hearsay that drives the vicious cycle.
Where did "Yo Yo Ma and John Williams" get the idea that it was better?
And now that they perceive it is the "192K" we accumulate market momentum.
That last point feeds into my next one (actually, another one of Dan's,
for I am parroting many of his points). Why is the industry having this
discussion now? Where was the science and engineering work to
demonstrate that it could even in theory make a difference, *before*
people started designing things, let alone building them and presenting
them to studio clients, so that now we have "Yo Yo Ma and John Williams"
expecting the studios that they go to to have this "technology"?
The professional audio industry needs to be grounded on solid science
and engineering first. Otherwise, we are going to end up having gold
plated power plugs and oxygen-free power cords as a requisite demanded
by clients who claim to have golden ears and have convinced themselves
that it makes a difference.
I can say that Ohm's Law dictates that current is directly proportional
to voltage and inversely proportional to resistance. You could come
back and say that you understand what I am saying but that your
experience dictates that there are subtle differences to the contrary.
My response would be that your experience is either imagined, or that
there are other factors involved. In any case, I will insist that Ohm's
Law holds.
I think I mentioned this example in one of the forums before, but my
sister's husband is a mechanical engineer. He designs jet aircraft
engines for GE, not electronics. One Christmas we were together and he
told me that he was checking the headlight of his automobile with an
Ohmmeter, and the resistance was almost zero. It basically showed as a
dead short. Yet the bulb worked, and did not quickly drain the battery
or blow a fuse. Why was this, he asked? I had the answer on the tip of
my tongue for him, of course. Ohm's Law was not invalid in this
scenario, and there was no reason to question the quality of the
Ohmmeter. It was something else. It was that the resistance of the
filament of an incandescent light bulb rises quickly and dramatically
with temperature as it lights up.
In the same way that I would assume Ohm's Law was valid and not quickly
jump to a conclusion otherwise, I will say that the Nyquist Theorem is
valid and 192K sample rate is just allowing us a frequency response to
96KHz, which is useless for audio A/D and D/A converters. Either the
difference in a listening test between 192K and 96K is imagined, or it
is due to something else, and we should zero in on that, rather than the
sample rate.
Let me close with this question: For those who are going to buy into
192K sample rate, are you also going to be consistent and demand
microphones and speakers that have a flat frequency response to 96 KHz?
If there is "something" about 192 KHz sample rate that makes a
difference, then where is the push for the microphones and speakers to
match? Why then do you trust the sound quality of the recordings that
are done with today's speakers and microphones, most of which only go up
to 20-something KHz?