[Audio Empire]

Attended an AES seminar today given by John Vanderkooy of the University of
Waterloo, Waterloo Ontario entitled: "A Digital-Domain Listening Test for
High-Resolution Audio"

Vanderkooy maintained that he has no doubt, after many ABX and DB tests
performed at the University that "...some people can, reliably, and in a
statistically meaningful way, detect the differences between 16-bit, 44.1 KHz
audio and the same program material recorded at 24-bit and 176.4 or 192 KHz."
He also added that there are also many people who CANNOT hear these
differences in a statistically meaningful way, so the jury is still out on
the efficacy or need for high-resolution digital audio.

Several comments made by Mr Vanderkooy that I found very interesting: (1) He
felt that 44.1 KHz was chosen too hastily as the standard and that the
industry would have done better to settle on 48 KHz. (2) If one is mastering
in high-resolution with an eye to the resultant product being Redbook CD,
then it would be better to use 176.4 Khz than to use 192 KHz because 176.4 is
an exact multiple of 44.1.

During the Q&A session which followed Mr. Vanderkooy's presentation, a number
of recording engineers in the audience voiced opinions about working with
high-resolution masters. Several said that in their experience, the session
musicians preferred high-resolution capture overwhelmingly, stating that in
playback, they found the instruments to sound more like what they heard when
actually playing the instruments than did the same material captured at
16/44.1. One British recording engineer from TELDEC stated that harmonically
rich instruments like violin, cymbals, and marimbas sound threadbare and
missing in harmonic richness when captured at standard CD resolution. He used
an example that when these instruments are playing, there are harmonically
related ultrasonic sounds at say, 24 KHz and 27 KHz (chosen as an example to
illustrate the point) that "beat" in the air to form a 3KHz difference signal
and without good wide-band recordings, these harmonically related "beats" are
lost in playback. I wanted to ask this guy after the session "if this 3KHz
difference signal is formed in the air of the venue between the instrument
and the microphone, was it not simply picked up by the microphone at that
time? Certainly, any good condenser mike can pick-up any 3KHz sound in the
room and even 16-bit/44.1 KHz can certainly quantize it, why does he feel
that it is necessary for the process to preserve the ultrasonic harmonics
that form this "beat" frequency?" But he got away from me before I was able
to catch up with him.

All in all a very enlightening and interesting paper. I have a copy of it and
believe me I will study it carefully of the next few days to glean as much as
possible from it.

[Edmund[_2_]]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message ...
Attended an AES seminar today given by John Vanderkooy of the University of
Waterloo, Waterloo Ontario entitled: "A Digital-Domain Listening Test for
High-Resolution Audio"

Vanderkooy maintained that he has no doubt, after many ABX and DB tests
performed at the University that "...some people can, reliably, and in a
statistically meaningful way, detect the differences between 16-bit, 44.1 KHz
audio and the same program material recorded at 24-bit and 176.4 or 192 KHz."
He also added that there are also many people who CANNOT hear these
differences in a statistically meaningful way, so the jury is still out on
the efficacy or need for high-resolution digital audio.

Several comments made by Mr Vanderkooy that I found very interesting: (1) He
felt that 44.1 KHz was chosen too hastily as the standard and that the
industry would have done better to settle on 48 KHz. (2) If one is mastering
in high-resolution with an eye to the resultant product being Redbook CD,
then it would be better to use 176.4 Khz than to use 192 KHz because 176.4 is
an exact multiple of 44.1.

During the Q&A session which followed Mr. Vanderkooy's presentation, a number
of recording engineers in the audience voiced opinions about working with
high-resolution masters. Several said that in their experience, the session
musicians preferred high-resolution capture overwhelmingly, stating that in
playback, they found the instruments to sound more like what they heard when
actually playing the instruments than did the same material captured at
16/44.1. One British recording engineer from TELDEC stated that harmonically
rich instruments like violin, cymbals, and marimbas sound threadbare and
missing in harmonic richness when captured at standard CD resolution. He used
an example that when these instruments are playing, there are harmonically
related ultrasonic sounds at say, 24 KHz and 27 KHz (chosen as an example to
illustrate the point) that "beat" in the air to form a 3KHz difference signal
and without good wide-band recordings, these harmonically related "beats" are
lost in playback. I wanted to ask this guy after the session "if this 3KHz
difference signal is formed in the air of the venue between the instrument
and the microphone, was it not simply picked up by the microphone at that
time? Certainly, any good condenser mike can pick-up any 3KHz sound in the
room and even 16-bit/44.1 KHz can certainly quantize it, why does he feel
that it is necessary for the process to preserve the ultrasonic harmonics
that form this "beat" frequency?" But he got away from me before I was able
to catch up with him.

All in all a very enlightening and interesting paper. I have a copy of it and
believe me I will study it carefully of the next few days to glean as much as
possible from it.

I mis one little detail here, a listening session with results.

Edmund

[Audio Empire]

On Sat, 6 Nov 2010 10:12:18 -0700, Edmund wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message
...
Attended an AES seminar today given by John Vanderkooy of the University of
Waterloo, Waterloo Ontario entitled: "A Digital-Domain Listening Test for
High-Resolution Audio"

Vanderkooy maintained that he has no doubt, after many ABX and DB tests
performed at the University that "...some people can, reliably, and in a
statistically meaningful way, detect the differences between 16-bit, 44.1
KHz
audio and the same program material recorded at 24-bit and 176.4 or 192
KHz."
He also added that there are also many people who CANNOT hear these
differences in a statistically meaningful way, so the jury is still out on
the efficacy or need for high-resolution digital audio.

Several comments made by Mr Vanderkooy that I found very interesting: (1) He
felt that 44.1 KHz was chosen too hastily as the standard and that the
industry would have done better to settle on 48 KHz. (2) If one is mastering
in high-resolution with an eye to the resultant product being Redbook CD,
then it would be better to use 176.4 Khz than to use 192 KHz because 176.4
is
an exact multiple of 44.1.

During the Q&A session which followed Mr. Vanderkooy's presentation, a
number
of recording engineers in the audience voiced opinions about working with
high-resolution masters. Several said that in their experience, the session
musicians preferred high-resolution capture overwhelmingly, stating that in
playback, they found the instruments to sound more like what they heard when
actually playing the instruments than did the same material captured at
16/44.1. One British recording engineer from TELDEC stated that harmonically
rich instruments like violin, cymbals, and marimbas sound threadbare and
missing in harmonic richness when captured at standard CD resolution. He
used
an example that when these instruments are playing, there are harmonically
related ultrasonic sounds at say, 24 KHz and 27 KHz (chosen as an example to
illustrate the point) that "beat" in the air to form a 3KHz difference
signal
and without good wide-band recordings, these harmonically related "beats"
are
lost in playback. I wanted to ask this guy after the session "if this 3KHz
difference signal is formed in the air of the venue between the instrument
and the microphone, was it not simply picked up by the microphone at that
time? Certainly, any good condenser mike can pick-up any 3KHz sound in the
room and even 16-bit/44.1 KHz can certainly quantize it, why does he feel
that it is necessary for the process to preserve the ultrasonic harmonics
that form this "beat" frequency?" But he got away from me before I was able
to catch up with him.

All in all a very enlightening and interesting paper. I have a copy of it
and
believe me I will study it carefully of the next few days to glean as much
as
possible from it.

I mis one little detail here, a listening session with results.

Edmund



It was a presentation of an AES paper about listening test methodology for
high-resolution, There were no listening sessions conducted at that time.

[Andrew Haley]

Audio Empire wrote:
Attended an AES seminar today given by John Vanderkooy of the
University of Waterloo, Waterloo Ontario entitled: "A Digital-Domain
Listening Test for High-Resolution Audio"

Vanderkooy maintained that he has no doubt, after many ABX and DB
tests performed at the University that "...some people can,
reliably, and in a statistically meaningful way, detect the
differences between 16-bit, 44.1 KHz audio and the same program
material recorded at 24-bit and 176.4 or 192 KHz." He also added
that there are also many people who CANNOT hear these differences in
a statistically meaningful way, so the jury is still out on the
efficacy or need for high-resolution digital audio.

Interesting.

It's probably not the wordlength, for reasons that Vanderkooy himself
and Lip****z explained in their classic paper: the only difference
would (in theory) be a slight rasing of the noise floor.

So, more probably it's the sample rate. Maybe a few people have
hearing above 22kHz, and this is significant in the tests. Maybe it's
the anti-alias filtering, but these days the filters can be made
almost arbitrarily good, so I think that's rather unlikely. But
there's one other possibility: the ear itself is significantly
nonlinear. If you were to play the 24kHz and 27kHz signals at a high
level, a difference tone might well be audible.

Andrew.

[Audio Empire]

On Sun, 7 Nov 2010 06:18:28 -0800, ScottW wrote
(in article ):

On Nov 6, 8:21=A0am, Audio Empire wrote:
Attended an AES seminar today given by John Vanderkooy of the University =
of
Waterloo, Waterloo Ontario entitled: "A Digital-Domain Listening Test for
High-Resolution Audio"

Vanderkooy maintained that he has no doubt, after many ABX and DB tests
performed at the University that "...some people can, reliably, and in a
statistically meaningful way, detect the differences between 16-bit, 44.1=
KHz
audio and the same program material recorded at 24-bit and 176.4 or 192 K=
Hz."
=A0He also added that there are also many people who CANNOT hear these
differences in a statistically meaningful way, so the jury is still out o=
n
the efficacy or need for high-resolution digital audio.

Several comments made by Mr Vanderkooy that I found very interesting: (1)=
He
felt that 44.1 KHz was chosen too hastily as the standard and that the
industry would have done better to settle on 48 KHz. (2) If one is master=
ing
in high-resolution with an eye to the resultant product being Redbook CD,
then it would be better to use 176.4 Khz than to use 192 KHz because 176.=
4 is
an exact multiple of 44.1.

Did he say recording and mastering in hi-rez with a final redbook
product is also
audible? That is, IMO, the important question.

No. That wasn't discussed, but my experience says no. There are real reasons
for recording in hi-res. It allows for more headroom of course, and this is
useful in production. Also, the more bits, the smaller the quantization
error, and low quantization error means lower distortion and smaller amounts
of random white noise that gets generated by the process and added to the
recording. Translating hi-res to RedBook "normalizes" the headroom, of course
(most translation software does this automatically ), but the advantages in
quantization error reduction are lost during the translation from more
smaller "steps" to fewer larger ones.

[Arny Krueger]

"Audio Empire" wrote in message

Attended an AES seminar today given by John Vanderkooy of
the University of Waterloo, Waterloo Ontario entitled: "A
Digital-Domain Listening Test for High-Resolution Audio"

Vanderkooy maintained that he has no doubt, after many
ABX and DB tests performed at the University that
"...some people can, reliably, and in a statistically
meaningful way, detect the differences between 16-bit,
44.1 KHz audio and the same program material recorded at
24-bit and 176.4 or 192 KHz." He also added that there
are also many people who CANNOT hear these differences in
a statistically meaningful way, so the jury is still out
on the efficacy or need for high-resolution digital
audio.

Several comments made by Mr Vanderkooy that I found very
interesting: (1) He felt that 44.1 KHz was chosen too
hastily as the standard and that the industry would have
done better to settle on 48 KHz. (2) If one is mastering
in high-resolution with an eye to the resultant product
being Redbook CD, then it would be better to use 176.4
Khz than to use 192 KHz because 176.4 is an exact
multiple of 44.1.

I sent a copy of the above to John Vanderkooy, and his private emailed reply
included the word "misquote", and not in a good way. Suffice it to say that
the above in no way represents the talk that he thought he gave.

[Audio Empire]

On Sun, 7 Nov 2010 19:40:14 -0800, Arny Krueger wrote
(in article ):

"Audio Empire" wrote in message

Attended an AES seminar today given by John Vanderkooy of
the University of Waterloo, Waterloo Ontario entitled: "A
Digital-Domain Listening Test for High-Resolution Audio"

Vanderkooy maintained that he has no doubt, after many
ABX and DB tests performed at the University that
"...some people can, reliably, and in a statistically
meaningful way, detect the differences between 16-bit,
44.1 KHz audio and the same program material recorded at
24-bit and 176.4 or 192 KHz." He also added that there
are also many people who CANNOT hear these differences in
a statistically meaningful way, so the jury is still out
on the efficacy or need for high-resolution digital
audio.

Several comments made by Mr Vanderkooy that I found very
interesting: (1) He felt that 44.1 KHz was chosen too
hastily as the standard and that the industry would have
done better to settle on 48 KHz. (2) If one is mastering
in high-resolution with an eye to the resultant product
being Redbook CD, then it would be better to use 176.4
Khz than to use 192 KHz because 176.4 is an exact
multiple of 44.1.

I sent a copy of the above to John Vanderkooy, and his private emailed reply
included the word "misquote", and not in a good way. Suffice it to say that
the above in no way represents the talk that he thought he gave.


That's funny. I have a recording of the paper he gave, and all of those
things were said in the course of the event by him and the others mentioned.

[Andrew Haley]

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Audio Empire" wrote in message



I sent a copy of the above to John Vanderkooy, and his private emailed reply
included the word "misquote", and not in a good way. Suffice it to say that
the above in no way represents the talk that he thought he gave.

I'm sure we all look forward to seeing the paper. I hope that someone
will post a link here when it becomes available.

Andrew.

[Harry Lavo]

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Audio Empire" wrote in message

Attended an AES seminar today given by John Vanderkooy of
the University of Waterloo, Waterloo Ontario entitled: "A
Digital-Domain Listening Test for High-Resolution Audio"

Vanderkooy maintained that he has no doubt, after many
ABX and DB tests performed at the University that
"...some people can, reliably, and in a statistically
meaningful way, detect the differences between 16-bit,
44.1 KHz audio and the same program material recorded at
24-bit and 176.4 or 192 KHz." He also added that there
are also many people who CANNOT hear these differences in
a statistically meaningful way, so the jury is still out
on the efficacy or need for high-resolution digital
audio.

Several comments made by Mr Vanderkooy that I found very
interesting: (1) He felt that 44.1 KHz was chosen too
hastily as the standard and that the industry would have
done better to settle on 48 KHz. (2) If one is mastering
in high-resolution with an eye to the resultant product
being Redbook CD, then it would be better to use 176.4
Khz than to use 192 KHz because 176.4 is an exact
multiple of 44.1.

I sent a copy of the above to John Vanderkooy, and his private emailed
reply
included the word "misquote", and not in a good way. Suffice it to say
that
the above in no way represents the talk that he thought he gave.

How about telling us what was misquoted. Denial by assertion and vague
reference just doesn't work.

[Arny Krueger]

"Harry Lavo" wrote in message

"Arny Krueger" wrote in message
...
"Audio Empire" wrote in
message
Attended an AES seminar today given by John Vanderkooy
of the University of Waterloo, Waterloo Ontario
entitled: "A Digital-Domain Listening Test for
High-Resolution Audio"

Vanderkooy maintained that he has no doubt, after many
ABX and DB tests performed at the University that
"...some people can, reliably, and in a statistically
meaningful way, detect the differences between 16-bit,
44.1 KHz audio and the same program material recorded at
24-bit and 176.4 or 192 KHz." He also added that there
are also many people who CANNOT hear these differences
in a statistically meaningful way, so the jury is still
out on the efficacy or need for high-resolution digital
audio.

Several comments made by Mr Vanderkooy that I found very
interesting: (1) He felt that 44.1 KHz was chosen too
hastily as the standard and that the industry would have
done better to settle on 48 KHz. (2) If one is mastering
in high-resolution with an eye to the resultant product
being Redbook CD, then it would be better to use 176.4
Khz than to use 192 KHz because 176.4 is an exact
multiple of 44.1.

I sent a copy of the above to John Vanderkooy, and his
private emailed reply
included the word "misquote", and not in a good way.
Suffice it to say that
the above in no way represents the talk that he thought
he gave.

How about telling us what was misquoted.

I don't have access to the origional text or any recording of what was said
a the session. So I can't tell you exactly what was misquoted, only that the
speaker says that certain statements are misquotes of what he said.

Denial by assertion and vague reference just doesn't work.

My only assertion is empirical and inarguable: I forewarded certain text
that was posted on RAHE and this was the origional speaker's response.

There's nothing vague about the text that I referenced, since I reproduced
it in its entirety.

[Audio Empire]

On Mon, 8 Nov 2010 16:51:00 -0800, Dick Pierce wrote
(in article ):

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Audio Empire" wrote in message

Attended an AES seminar today given by John Vanderkooy of
the University of Waterloo, Waterloo Ontario entitled: "A
Digital-Domain Listening Test for High-Resolution Audio"

Vanderkooy maintained that he has no doubt, after many
ABX and DB tests performed at the University that
"...some people can, ...

Several comments made by Mr Vanderkooy that I found very
interesting: ...

I sent a copy of the above to John Vanderkooy, and his
private emailed reply included the word "misquote", and
not in a good way. Suffice it to say that the above in no
way represents the talk that he thought he gave.

Well, without seeing the alledged quote from Mr. Vanderkooy,
or withoutn hearing from Mr. Vanderkooy himself, I would
have to say that this constitutes unsubstantiated hearsay.

We all know the accepted conventions about publically
quoting private emails withoutbthe author's permission.
The problem is that if you accept such conventions, then,
in the public space, those quotes can't and thus don't
exist. Saying he said something without revealing exactly
what he said is of little if any use.

And I understand quite well if Mr. Vanderkooy might not
want to address these points directly on this forum, given
what a sewer hole high-end audio discussions often quickly
degenerate in to.

All that being said, I would say I have to dismiss any
claims of the content of private communications without
actual attributable quotes or direct participation as
rumor or hearsay, at best at the same level as claims
of hearing things under non-rigorous conditions: anecdotal.

In this discussion, the same rogor should be applied to
all claims, otherwise it's whatever anyone says that goes.



Good point. I concur. However, I do strongly suggest that interested parties
read Mr. Vanderkooy's paper #8203 " A Digital Domain Listening Test for High
Resolution".

Although his spoken words at the presentation, (not to mention his comments
during the Q&A session that followed) are. of course, somewhat different than
the written words in the paper, the paper, nonetheless is very interesting
and informative, and explains his position quite well.