- Joined
- Feb 23, 2016
- Messages
- 20,833
- Likes
- 37,770
Ok, I will quibble a little, Serge. I agree that 44k/16 is a more than adequate distribution medium, although I personally would not describe it as "perfectly" adequate.
I also have trouble with "transparent". To me there are degrees of transparency. It is not a binary, true/false description. We may think something is transparent, until we hear something else we consider more transparent, in which case our standards shift. Personally, this has happened to me frequently in audio, usually with slight degrees of greater apparent transparency over the years, but not so much in recent years. The forward pace in audio has definitely slowed, I believe, except for some schiity backsliding, among other alarming mini trends.
As to your tests, I am unclear on their specifics. But, within whatever limits they may have, I accept them as totally credible, as I do you personally. Except, other very experienced recording engineers have done similar comparisons involving RBCD, hirez PCM or DSD vs. mic feeds, and they reach very different conclusions. Some stake their careers at substantial equipment expenditure upgrade levels in preferring recording and distributiion in hirez because they view it as sounding superior. Some of those guys are also very credible to me.
And, I have my own comparisons along with friends, hopefully all of us with discerning ears, of RBCD vs. various types of hirez at different sampling frequencies/formats from the same digital master. You and I do not agree that RBCD cannot be bettered, albeit slightly, but still noticeably and preferably. Note that native analog or RBCD recordings are not likely to reveal much difference for all the reasons cited in this thread about upsampling.
The 2016 Joshua Reiss meta analysis, carefully read, including looking carefully at the individual tests he summarized, can be looked at in various ways, depending on the reader's established viewpoint. To my mind, it demonstrates that some people, particularly those with prior training in what to listen for, can discern a difference with reasonable statistical significance with hirez, though not a preference which was not normally part of the testing. Others, of course, may read it as indicating such a small overall difference so as not to be worthwhile. And, some individual tests, excluding even the infamous, poorly conducted Meyer-Moran, do not show much discrimination of hirez for whatever reason.
https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/journal/?ID=591
Hirez is no panacea, and there is no slam dunk case to be made for it. In the slow evolution of audio, it might be a mere blip at substantial expense and inconvenience to many for not much improvement. But, others of us hear the improvement and value it.
There are other factors to consider in this. Early processing software did its work at the native rate of the file. Some processing will leave audible artifacts done this way. If upsampled, processed and downsampled you don't have the same artifacts. Or if you record and process at 96 or 192 you have lesser levels of artifacts. One of the most aggregious is compression. We know how commonly that is employed. It causes lots of aliasing. Modern processing software upsamples, processes and down-samples such processing. Some even has that as a variable where you can select anything from no upsampling to 64x or more.
So you could compare a wire connection to a straight-thru 44.1 khz ADC/DAC conversion and it be transparent. Yet recording and processing at 44.1 and 192 could give rather different end results. Once people in the business record at both rates and hear a difference they will of course have a firm opinion about it. Even as a listener, you may have heard recordings at different rates from the same master and similar effects may be present so it will sound subtly different.
Just as an example here are portions of a sweep, done at 48 khz in the first example and 384 khz in the second. Top is the sweep, and bottom is the sweep after a rather gentle 1.5:1 compression ratio without upsampling. Now the background goes to gray at -110 db so most of this is low in level. Portions of the 44.1 khz version are above -70 dbFS while none of the 384 khz version are above -95 dbFS or so. And remember this is only 1.5 to 1 compression which is not much at all.
Compression at 44.1 khz sample rate.
Compression done at 384 khz sample rate.
Sorry about not getting the image the same size. Not trying to be deceptive just a mistake.