Violinists cannot differentiate between Stradivarius and new violins. Not so golden after all: What’s more, no one has tested whether violinists themselves can truly pick up the supposedly distinctive sound of a Strad.
The common wisdom is that they can, but Fritz and Curtin showed that this isn’t true. “Many people were convinced that as soon as you play an old violin, you can feel that it’s old, it’s been played a lot, and it has a special sound quality,” says Fritz. “People who took part in the experiment said it was the experience of a lifetime when we told them the results. They were fully convinced they could tell the difference, and they couldn’t.” The test was a true “double-blind” one, as neither the players nor the people who gave them the violins had any way of knowing which instrument was which.
It seems to me reading through the article, that just about everything had been done to eliminate bias by double blind testing. There are some issues with the study. Psilocybin mushrooms improve hearing? QUOTE (Nick E @ Apr 20 2007, 18:08) I suppose that could be tested in controlled experiments.
I can't see it happening, since this would risk the health of the participants, so what reputable academic institution would undertake such experiments? I can't help but think of the 1955 Panorama special in which Christopher Mayhew took mescaline and filmed the results. QUOTE (FloggedSynapse @ Apr 20 2007, 21:29) First off mushrooms do not damage your health - that's rubbish. It's possible that you could physically harm yourself as a result of psychological effects. QUOTE (marcan @ Apr 20 2007, 22:11) I have also notice that more than 10 hours of mix in the studio can give me a very good perception of the details ... but then I can miss the consistency and the balance of the track. I do wonder whether the issue here is down to concentration levels. QUOTE (FloggedSynapse @ Apr 20 2007, 22:46) Firstly that is an assumption on your part, and secondly... well... it's just plain dumb.
I'm on a horse. Video Presentations: A Digital Media Primer for Geeks. 24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed. Also see Xiph.Org's new video, Digital Show & Tell, for detailed demonstrations of digital sampling in action on real equipment!
Articles last month revealed that musician Neil Young and Apple's Steve Jobs discussed offering digital music downloads of 'uncompromised studio quality'. Much of the press and user commentary was particularly enthusiastic about the prospect of uncompressed 24 bit 192kHz downloads. 24/192 featured prominently in my own conversations with Mr. Young's group several months ago. Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space. There are a few real problems with the audio quality and 'experience' of digitally distributed music today. 24/192 solves none of them. First, the bad news. Www.lavryengineering.com/documents/Sampling_Theory.pdf. Www.meridian.co.uk/ara/coding2.pdf. 24bit vs 16bit, the myth exploded! It seems to me that there is a lot of misunderstanding regarding what bit depth is and how it works in digital audio.
This misunderstanding exists not only in the consumer and audiophile worlds but also in some education establishments and even some professionals. This misunderstanding comes from supposition of how digital audio works rather than how it actually works. It's easy to see in a photograph the difference between a low bit depth image and one with a higher bit depth, so it's logical to suppose that higher bit depths in audio also means better quality.
This supposition is further enforced by the fact that the term 'resolution' is often applied to bit depth and obviously more resolution means higher quality. So 24bit is Hi-Rez audio and 24bit contains more data, therefore higher resolution and better quality. When recording, an Analogue to Digital Converter (ADC) reads the incoming analogue waveform and measures it so many times a second (1*). 24/192 Music Downloads are Very Silly Indeed. Also see Xiph.Org's new video, Digital Show & Tell, for detailed demonstrations of digital sampling in action on real equipment!
Articles last month revealed that musician Neil Young and Apple's Steve Jobs discussed offering digital music downloads of 'uncompromised studio quality'. SoX - Sound eXchange. Forums - Portal. Boston Audio Society - ABX Testing article. From the BAS Speaker Aug.
-Sept. 1984 The Digital Challenge: A Report by Stanley P. Lipshitz University of Waterloo Waterloo, Ontario Canada Some readers may be unaware of the background to the "digital test" in which Ivor Tiefenbrun participated on February 23, 1984 [1-4]. To summarize briefly: Tiefenbrun has been quite outspoken about the inadequacies of digital audio recordings and the systems on which they are made, and his organization, Linn Products Ltd., was instrumental in publishing an analysis of the Sony consumer PCM-F1 digital audio adapter [5] outlining their objections.
I therefore challenged the "anti-digital" community in general, and Tiefenbrun in particular, to participate in a blind listening test of the PCM-F1 to give them the opportunity to substantiate their claims of poor sound. The test took place in the home of the local Linn distributor, Mr. The second test, also single-blind, used a Linn "Kan" loudspeaker as the undriven transducer. Ambisonic.Net - where surround-sound comes to life.