How Science Got Sound Wrong

that clearly show that a digitized system can carry within it relative timing information that is well beyond the sample rate. The whole premise of the article is that the timing is limited to the sample rate. That is false. That makes the whole premise of the article also false.

not so fast.
the limit, mathematically... is ..fairly high

The real world of jitter, quantization noise, dither, etc, decreases that quite drastically. The idea of micro temporal differentiation across channels hits the intrinsic limits of the real world 16/44 rather quickly.

As one tries to ’draw’ or ’write’ that micro differential that is above 1/ 22,000 of a second..., it’s capacity to express itself brickwalls on the capacity of the system to micro-resolve signal.

One might say that the noise floor and distortion limits of not just one but both channels together (in excess of 2x distortion, ie, two channels in action, together) begin to be expressed as inter channel timing limits...

So it is nowhere close to being as the mathematics make it out to be.

We also know that noise floor... it wanders all over the place, is signal dependent, and each channel is different. So yeah, well over 2x distortion in the inter channel temporal domain. And a few other problems, not really all that well addressed in the real world.

We hear it in the given dac as indistinct and hazy imaging spread/smear. Especially under complex loading. Not so much a problem with simpler signals. When the song gets busy the worst of the given dacs --get hazy, bright, congested, etc..

The math says nice things. The real world says it is dog poo.

the article tells you why this is all so important. Eg, the MSB range of fine limits means the micro expression amplitude perfection which the ear is built on and out of...is not possible in a peak situation of micro timing differential in an actual 16/44 dac.

Yet, it is by the peaks that we recognize these differences and this is the part where the dac falls down. So, not just the noise floor limits for the body of the signal (complex mid to high level harmonics) but the inability of the MSB area of dac signal expression to subdivide fine enough.

One might even say that delta-sigma was an attempt to fix this problem but was executed so poorly that it sounded worse than R2R.

The math says nice things. The real world says it is dog poo.

Yup. Exactamundo mister audio. First digital was "perfect sound forever" then digital had "lossless codecs" then "oversampling" then "Direct Digital Streaming" or whatever the dopey jargon the roobs would lap up. Not being anywhere near so gullible any more and having quit paying attention somewhere around the fourth or fifth utterly disproven cycle of hopium high followed by crushing reality, don’t even hold me to getting the BS even in the right order. Pretty sure it began with "perfect sound forever" but who knows, maybe the pabulum for the mentally and aurally infirm goes back even further.

Can we get a "whatever"?

There was a guy at work absolutely convinced I was clinically insane, first of all for daring to even consider that records might not sound just awful, but even worse uttered the heresy that all digital was not perfect. Until one day the guy actually heard some of the supposedly lossless MP3. And then let me play him some records.

The people pushing the digital measurements BS have one fundamental problem they never will be able to acknowledge, let alone face up to. And that is that we measure to quantify and expand on our human perception and not to substitute for it.

If it sounds better the onus is on the measurers to figure out how to more accurately measure.

Pretty simple stuff yet beyond their grasp.

Oh well. As penance ye shall spend the rest of your life listening to digital. And not even knowing its a fate worse than death. If that ain’t punishment I don’t know what is.

What are all those numbers in cartridge specifications? Do they have anything to do with measurments and math?

It is rather cute Teo and Miller how you two bloviate with flowery language that would make it look like you know what you are talking about but to someone who actually understands this stuff you just sound ... Funny. Yes funny.


Teo. Jitter on recording is in the 10’s to 100’s of picoseconds. Ditto on playback. Easily modelled as phase errors or distortion. Distortion 100+ db even on real music signals. I know you don’t want to believe it but audio is easy. We do 100+db on complex signals day in day out in comms.


Not my first rodeo and I know the usual arguments that is why many many posts ago I posted a paper (that included actual experiments) that showed timing accuracy as a fraction of bits with very low signal.to noise ratios, ie like 30db, and the resolution is several orders of magnitude finer than the sampling rate.


Believe vinyl/current analog is superior ... No issues. But don’t hang your hat on something you are going to fail miserably on. I can post many experiments that clearly show high subsample timing accuracy in low SNR environments of which digital audio is not one.


All two channel does is increase the relative jitter mapped as higher effective SNR but since it is already very low the timing resolution is very high. Feel free to argue points you don’t have the background to argue, but at least back that up with some solid work by real experts to support what you are saying. Otherwise it is just hand waving.

I’ll take some of this action. The problem is not on the CD. The standard CD contains data with extremely high sound quality. You just can’t HEAR the sound quality, that’s all. The problem is the playback machine. There are a number of inherent problems with CD playback. Three problems that spring immediately to mind are (1) scattered background laser light, (2) seismic vibration and other mechanical vibration including the CD transport noise and acoustic vibration, and the vibration and flutter of the CD itself while spinning. The same high technology that created the Compact Disc also created the problems - nanotechnology and quantum mechanics.

Yes, I realize atdavid is going to try to tell me streaming solves all the problems with CDs. Sadly, streaming sucks. But it IS convenient, I’ll grant you that.

“You can be a knower or a blover.” - audiophile axiom

- your friend and audio insider,

geoff kait
machina dynamica
advanced audio conceits