Posted primarily for your amusement, really. This is the kind of stuff that infests my field every working day.
http://www.lessloss.com/firewall-p-196.html?zenid=o9nm08sjstrhot2oe9fvrjof41

http://bybeetech.com/?page_id=11

http://www.mitcables.com/new-release-matrix-series-affordable-technology/featured-articles/products/all-new-high-matrix-speaker-interfaces-and-interconnects/menu-id-306.html

NOTE: Before you click on any of these links, please empty your mouth and your hands. I am not responsible for spit-takes on keyboards and monitors, please.

It’s a little harder to dig up the claims of hogwash like “Digital can not capture phase”, and a whole load of other claims. These are simply refuted if your cell phone works. Ooops. It does, doesn’t it?

We don’t see here the people arguing that “our understanding of conduction in wire is flawed”, with assertions that would make the analog copper wire phone loop impossible.

Then there was the guy from Colorado who insisted that MP3 files would drive people insane and destroy society…

But all of that exists. I don’t know how much anyone cares, really.

Oddly enough, those URL’s are ok but w w w dot aes dot org slash sections slash pnw slash ppt.htm wherein a variety of tutorial ppt decks live is considered spam by the automated system here.

Wow, if I read that correctly, I can buy a room-temperature superconductor for dirt cheap!

Where’s that smiley of head-banging-on-a-wall?

TromboneAndrew - 27 December 2012 08:35 AM

Wow, if I read that correctly, I can buy a room-temperature superconductor for dirt cheap!

Where’s that smiley of head-banging-on-a-wall?

Oh, you mean the one that “uses coopers pairs”, “has no resistance, capacitance, or inductance”, but is not a superconductor, too? That one?

Yeah (dot dot dot)

:faceplant:

But I have gone to a hardware store to buy some heavy gauge wire for my speakers.  They asked me what I wanted it for.  When I told them they got some stuff that was thinner then the normal zip cord for speakers.  It is kind of funny having people look at you like you are crazy when you do know what you are doing.  Try explaining damping factor to people in a hardware store.  Should I have told them that I was using Vandersteen 2Ci speakers that retailed for $1500?  LOL

Back in 1999 Audio Magazine had an article about cassettes sounding better than MP3s.  I don’t recall at what compression though.

But if we recorded at a higher sampling rate than CDs then compressed it to the bit rate of CDs what sound quality would we get?  Just mildly curious now.  I just don’t care so much any more.

psik

psikeyhackr - 27 December 2012 05:45 PM

Back in 1999 Audio Magazine had an article about cassettes sounding better than MP3s.  I don’t recall at what compression though.

But if we recorded at a higher sampling rate than CDs then compressed it to the bit rate of CDs what sound quality would we get?  Just mildly curious now.  I just don’t care so much any more.

psik

I don’t really know the math behind the technology, but I do know that CDs don’t just come in one sampling rate. I think that CD players must read the sampling rate from some information at the beginning of the CD. I also know that the cheaper CDs definitely have worse sampling rates than LPs, and possibly cassette tapes, too, and LP enthusiasts sometimes reference the worst possible sampling rate for CDs to cite a comparison favorable to LPs. But with LPs, although the sampling rate is pretty high, the noise levels are higher, too, which cancels out useful information that the ear can distinguish. I’m pretty sure that the best CDs - and the highest-sampled MP3s - have superior sound to LPs and cassettes, but too often it’s the case that people simply don’t care. Especially when it comes to highly compressed pop music, where the compression is actually part of the intended sound.

TromboneAndrew - 27 December 2012 06:17 PM

I don’t really know the math behind the technology, but I do know that CDs don’t just come in one sampling rate.

Actually, all CD’s are 16 bit PCM, 2 channels, sampled at 44.1kHz. There is one fixed sampling rate, one fixed bit depth, and one channel arrangement.

Now, DVD’s, SACD’s, Blu-Ray are different, and can have audio sourced from a variety of places, but usually (not always) the audio on such will be compressed, usually with AC3 or DTS codecs, depending on source, etc.

DVD is somewhat specific in what you can use (AC3 required, DTS optional), BluRay is a bit more open, you can put in PCM if you want.

But CD’s, no, CD’s are fixed by something called the “Red Book Standard” for CD’s. Hm, ought to be a web reference somewhere, although the standard itself at least used to be one of those things you had to by and agree to fight club terms for…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Book_(CD_standard) is mostly ok, but some of the ‘adapted’ claims are a bit questionable.

(fixed taggage)

psikeyhackr - 27 December 2012 05:45 PM

But if we recorded at a higher sampling rate than CDs then compressed it to the bit rate of CDs what sound quality would we get?  Just mildly curious now.  I just don’t care so much any more.

psik

For most any speaker, Home Depot 12-2 or 14-2 zip cord is fine. So they shouldn’t be looking at you funny, and they shouldn’t be trying to sell you #22 for your 2ci’s. (I used to have a pair, moved someplace with different acoustics, replaced them with Snell C-V’s, and then moved again, and built a set of speakers matched to my new listening space. But I get to do that, helps to know how…)

But since CD is PCM audio, it’s not compressed in any of the usual senses of the word.  What’s more, sampling rate in a CD is not likely to be much of a problem, and there have been a myriad of utterly bogus claims about LP’s or Cassette that, well, “just wrong” is how most of them are most easily described.

You could (and some do) originally capture at more that 16 bits, or at a higher sampling rate, but then the processes that one uses to reduce to CD bit depth and sampling rate are pretty much mathematically specified, modulo your choice of downsampling filter.

TromboneAndrew - 27 December 2012 06:17 PM

Especially when it comes to highly compressed pop music, where the compression is actually part of the intended sound.

Careful here, the word “compression” means several different things in audio.

Ever since I invented a good part of the field, I have been calling bit-rate reduction “coding” to separate it from “compression” which means “limiting dynamic range”.

But the compression in pop music is of the dynamic range variety.

MP3 compression is of the bit-rate-reduction variety.

They are not at all related to each other.

MP3 is a perceptual coding technology. My “perceptual coding tutorial” (first given in 1989, by the way) is at www dot aes dot org slash sections slash pnw slash ppt dot htm under the unsurprising title of “perceptual coding tutorial”. Old but still as true as it always was.