PAUL writes:
Reconstruction of a sine-wave based on only two sample-point is only possible because the “algorithm” was told to construct a sine-wave! Neither a square-wave, nor a saw-tooth wave etc! However music is characterized by more or less steep transients being only captured and reproduced when using DSD as you mentioned, Paul, for those delicate sounds as brush strokes on a cymbal or plucked strings of a guitar or cembalo. Thus shouldn’t the question be when digitizing via PCM which sine-frequency has the same rise-time as the sharpest transient being captured by a microphone which already is dampening the incoming signal due to mechanical and electrical inertia-effects? I am pretty sure it needs a sine-frequency far higher than 192 kHz to get the sharpest transients for plucked string instruments or percussions.
BOB L writes:
I once read an article comparing the pulse response of DSD vs PCM.The single rate DSD reproduced a perfect replica of the original analogue pulse whereas 44k PCM only managed a pulse heighth half of the original with noticable pre and post ringing.88k PCM managed two thirds the pulse heighth with half the ringing of 44k.176k PCM managed three quarters of the pulse heighth with half the ringing of 88k.
A 10khz squarewave was reproduced perfectly by DSD whereas the best that 44k PCM could do was a sinewave!
I think this proves the superior transient performance of DSD over PCM.
BOB I writes:
So many people only know enough about digital audio to “be dangerous”. They’ve seen many stairstep signal representations of just the sampling and quantization processes, and therefore have a fundamental misunderstanding about what’s happening in the signal processing and a never-ending bias about the supposed “evils” of digital audio (such as significant “missing” signal information). This article SHOULD help them overcome that misunderstanding and bias. However, those mistaken beliefs are so deeply rooted, I’m not holding my breath – many examples are there in the comments from people who presumably listened to the entire video. Most (not all, but MOST) of the differences that I have heard between analog tape or LP vs CD or better digital copies of the same recordings are a result of (1) the different sources used (e.g., 1st generation multi-track tapes vs other copies), (2) mix variations (e.g., amplitude, equalization, compression, echo/reverb, etc.), and (3) the inherent noise/distortion characteristics of the analog media (e.g., tape hiss, dirty tape heads, 2-dimensional tape head misalignment, dirty styli or record grooves, 3-dimensional phono stylus misalignment, dynamic stylus mis-tracking, different stylus shape geometries, vinyl pops/ticks, etc.). When I started building my CD collection in my early 30s (with good hearing up to 20 kHz or beyond, and listening to a variety of audiophile-grade CDs & equipment including different turntables, tone arms & cartridges, tube and solid-state electronics, and electrostatic speakers & headphones), I did indeed find CDs that sounded significantly inferior to my old best LPs and tapes – but it was almost always due to obviously different equalization used in the media mastering processes or different source tapes that were mixed or otherwise mastered differently. The plethora of additional signal processing techniques that were developed since then (e.g., dynamic noise filtering software) add to the possible variation reasons, but in my judgment, equalization and compression differences remain the worst and most obvious offenders. I trusted my younger excellent hearing, not the “digititis” phobias believed by and promulgated by others. [BTW, younger readers might be interested to learn that typical moderate amounts of age-related hearing loss above, say, 7 kHz has almost no impact on music enjoyment and instrument discernment. For music, the top octave or more of highest-possible human hearing consists almost entirely of rather low-level harmonics (not fundamental frequencies), which have little effect on discerning the upper-register sounds of different instruments playing the same notes or range of percussion sounds. E.g., the inability to hear the 16 kHz sine wave in the side 2 runout groove of The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper album doesn’t necessarily mean that even instruments like cymbals, jingle bells, tambourines, etc. can’t be distinguished, although more profound amounts of hearing loss can of course make an extreme difference.]
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