How Science Got Sound Wrong


I don't believe I've posted this before or if it has been posted before but I found it quite interesting despite its technical aspect. I didn't post this for a digital vs analog discussion. We've beat that horse to death several times. I play 90% vinyl. But I still can enjoy my CD's.  

https://www.fairobserver.com/more/science/neil-young-vinyl-lp-records-digital-audio-science-news-wil...
128x128artemus_5
David, you posted something earlier that resonated (no pun) with me.  You said...

So how does the brain measure this timing? By the latest research, it appears to have 2 mechanisms, one, that works on higher frequencies, higher than the wavelength of the head’s size, that is based on group delay / correlation, i.e. the brain can match the same signal arriving to both ears and time the difference and another mechanism for lower frequencies, that can detect phase, likely by a simple comparator and timing mechanism. The two overlap.
  
Phase hmmm.  If a point source of sound has a given freq range and originates as all freq at zero phase AND, air is dispersive as is all mediums, more phase change at different freq could be interpreted as farther.  Ok.  Well I was curious and looked at the phase plots of my speakers.  Phase varies fairly smoothly from about -40 deg at 50 hz to about +34 deg at about 500 hz and is flat after that for about 2 more octaves.  30deg is considered alot and over the most "important" freq to humans, this is twice that.  Point is, IF phase is used by our brains/ears to judge distance (rather than just delays for orientation),  especillay at low freq, with speakers doing that how is "depth" and what we call staging not affected negatively?  In my field, as I suspect audio is, phase is usually ignored as it's a nearly intractable problem for the most part.  I wonder if sampling/digitization etc and its issues could end up being a red herring as they pertain to this topic of natural (organic) sound.  

This doesnt address the source (CD or vinyl) question and their imaging differences but maybe someone can interject the phase aspects of the two to possibly add to the discussion. 
Your brain measures the phase difference of the same signal reaching both ears. Errors in phase of a sound primarily from one speaker will not affect the measurements. Errors in phase from a sound from both speakers only matters if the phase shift is significantly different between the speakers, I.e. mfg variation.


And yes it is a red herring that keeps being raised by people who don’t understand how how digitization and analog reconstruction works and the math behind it.
That article was very entertaining, especially this little nugget. That’s gold, jerry, gold!!

“Put another way, if a sensitive, world-acclaimed innovator denounces his industry and its technology for undermining human dignity and brain function, something big is up. Who could be more qualified than a world expert — with loads of experience and no incentive to fib — to call the alarm about widespread technological damage.”
atdavid,
And yes it is a red herring that keeps being raised by people who don’t understand how how digitization and analog reconstruction works and the math behind it.

>>>>>>Well, no wonder nobody understands. 🤗 That’s GOLD, Jerry, GOLD!
The problem is GK, is that he is Not a world expert, not even remotely on the underlying topic of this whole article. He is an expert on physics and and neurobiology. He is absolutely not an expert on digitization, digital signal processing and reconstruction. Everything he says about human hearing and perception we can assume is 100% right and it makes no difference as the whole premise of his article is underlying flaws in timing in a multi channel audio system that frankly are not there. No expert in signal processing would have ever made the fundamental flaw(s) he did.


I find it disappointing that once again you have made posts that carry absolutely no relevance or information and add nothing to the discussion but appear to be only attempts to hear yourself talk. Feel free to use your obviously extensive free time to find a scientifically relevant paper ( i.e. something published and reviewed) that shows what I said to be false. If you can’t do that, then please go troll elsewhere. There are people here that actually want to learn.