Digital Facts and realities?

[Jimbo]

To add to my comment about higher sampling rates.

Our hearing has a sensitivity to sound measured at 5-10 us(micro seconds) but a sampling rate of 44.1 khz only gives us 22.7 us.

96 khz sampling rate gives a time resolution of 10.4 us but is not until you get to 24/192 khz sampling rate that you get a resolution of 5.2 us which is close to the time resolution of our hearing.

Therefore CD quality sampling rate may not be enough and may be one reason our hearing can perceive timing issues.

This is not to be confused with timing of the digital audio signal through poor clocking, RFI or a poor PSU resulting in jitter and corruption of the audio data.

None of this may be of any concern however to those of us who have poor or knackered hearing!

[alphaGT]

To add to my comment about higher sampling rates.

Our hearing has a sensitivity to sound measured at 5-10 us(micro seconds) but a sampling rate of 44.1 khz only gives us 22.7 us.

96 khz sampling rate gives a time resolution of 10.4 us but is not until you get to 24/192 khz sampling rate that you get a resolution of 5.2 us which is close to the time resolution of our hearing.

Therefore CD quality sampling rate may not be enough and may be one reason our hearing can perceive timing issues.

This is not to be confused with timing of the digital audio signal through poor clocking, RFI or a poor PSU resulting in jitter and corruption of the audio data.

None of this may be of any concern however to those of us who have poor or knackered hearing!

Thank you! Exactly what I’ve been saying, there is greater accuracy to be had well within human hearing. Higher frequencies is not the only advantage of higher rates. Those with knackered hearing may not appreciate higher frequencies, but way down in the midrange where most of the music is, it can make a real world difference.

Russell

[Clive]

Yes thanks James, this is what I've been trying to get to over the last 5 pages of posts.

[Barry]

To add to my comment about higher sampling rates.

Our hearing has a sensitivity to sound measured at 5-10 us(micro seconds) but a sampling rate of 44.1 khz only gives us 22.7 us.

96 khz sampling rate gives a time resolution of 10.4 us but is not until you get to 24/192 khz sampling rate that you get a resolution of 5.2 us which is close to the time resolution of our hearing.


Therefore CD quality sampling rate may not be enough and may be one reason our hearing can perceive timing issues.

This is not to be confused with timing of the digital audio signal through poor clocking, RFI or a poor PSU resulting in jitter and corruption of the audio data.

None of this may be of any concern however to those of us who have poor or knackered hearing!

Where do you get that figure? A rise time of 10us (i.e. a half period) implies 50kHz. 10us might be enough for the ear to respond to an aural stimulation, but to recognise the pitch of a note, the ear requires a longer time; at least 5 cycles.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/381...6bd04d5112.pdf

[jonners]

The figure of 10us probably relates to the perception of inter-aural time differences, which enable us to locate sounds. Obviously this is important because if the sound system can't resolve at that level, the auditory system will be confused.

[Jimbo]

Where do you get that figure? A rise time of 10us (i.e. a half period) implies 50kHz. 10us might be enough for the ear to respond to an aural stimulation, but to recognise the pitch of a note, the ear requires a longer time; at least 5 cycles.

https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/381...6bd04d5112.pdf

I was reading a number of articles Barry but I think it was buried somewhere in this one.

https://asia-latinamerica-mea.yamaha...o_quality.html

[Barry]

That's an interesting paper, thanks. However if we take the speed of sound to be 330m/s, a time resolution of 6um would imply the subjects of Kunchur's experiment were able to tell if one loudspeaker had been moved 2mm towards the listener relative to the other. I find that hard to believe.

[Light Dependant Resistor]

An interesting moment to reflect on comments left by engineers and others here: http://www.aes.org/historical/oral

[Jimbo]

That's an interesting paper, thanks. However if we take the speed of sound to be 330m/s, a time resolution of 6um would imply the subjects of Kunchur's experiment were able to tell if one loudspeaker had been moved 2mm towards the listener relative to the other. I find that hard to believe.

I can hear the difference when I move my speakers by that much.

[Light Dependant Resistor]

I can hear the difference when I move my speakers by that much.

But depends also on the loudspeaker used and size of the room and furnishings . For instance a ESL57 you may be able to pick up a 2mm difference in a small room with minimal
or no furnishings other than a chair , possibly noting more difference than cone speakers that were moved the same distance.