to DSP or not to DSP (1 Viewer)

[John Royster]

LOL

for what it is worth I've never heard DSP sound anything but gimmicky and unnatural. For those that want "airy" sound all around them then go get some bose.

By the way Manuel, there is however significant DSP already used in various recordings, madonna and janet jackson come to mind. BUT, that DSP is already in the recording and there is no need to add or subtract sound or information that is or isn't already there. By listening in stereo you are in fact reproducing ACCURATELY the already included DSP.

If you want to run your music through a DSP mode, knock yourself out. But to call it "more" accurate? Hardly.

As the man whom I disagree with all the time, he's spot on here.

 

[JohnRice]

When I got my first piece of DSP equipment, the Yamaha DSP-1000, I think it was, about 14 years ago, I used it for music all the time. I thought it was WAY COOL. Now, any DSPd music I have heard just sounds gimmicky to me and gets tiring very quick. Yes, I agree with Philip. There is nothing like a good two channel recording played back on a fine system.

You just may end up changing your mind some day, as I did.

 

[KrisM]

Of course I will enjoy whatever I consider its improving my system.

Thats the imprortant thing in the end. Enjoy your music the way you want it. But you also came onto this forum and called people 'purists' like it is a bad thing. No offense, but you're going to have people disagree with you.

Regards

KrisM

 

[Manuel Delaflor]

WOW, finally I understand! You all think Im insulting people here by calling someone a "purist"!!

English is nor my first language (should be obvious, I think), and I were not aware at all about the using of this term in an offensive way.

Sorry if I hurt some sensibilities.

I had been a member since about a year, and this the first time I receive this kind of treatment. Normally, I enjoy discussions in here.

 

[Philip Hamm]

What kind of treatment? People disagreeing with you?

Yes, I agree with Philip. There is nothing like a good two channel recording played back on a fine system.

Except maybe a fine 5.1 channel recording played back on a fine system, straight to 5 speakers and a sub with no alteration...
And I'm a big proponent of psychoacoustic concepts by the way. I have been a huge advocate of MiniDisc which employs psychoacoustic principles to effect lossy compression on audio, which I find to be virtually unrecognizable from the original. I also like DTS and Dolby Digital which use similar principles to accomplish breathtaking sound with compression based on psychoacoustic principles.

 

[JohnRice]

Except maybe a fine 5.1 channel recording played back on a fine system, straight to 5 speakers and a sub with no alteration

I have to admit, I haven't heard much 5.1 music that I cared for. I expect this is because what I have heard is mostly 2 channel stuff that was "adapted" to 5.1. I do definitely enjoy Metallica's S&M though. I have both the CD and DVD. The bottom line for me, though, is I usually only listen to classical music intently. In that case I like it as pure as possible, as well as very loud. I recline back, turn the lights off and close my eyes. The sound field I get from my good old Thiels is better than I have heard any other way, particularly with most Telarc recordings.

 

[JohnRice]

And I'm a big proponent of psychoacoustic concepts by the way

I have to agree. It seems with the right encoding software you can get amazing results. I have heard mp3 recordings using bad software that were amazingly bad, though. I wish a "super" CD format had been developed using regular CDs but with mp3 type encoding, at 24/96 or 24/192. It should be possible to get 24/192 audio of 90 minutes or so on a standard CD using perceptual coding.

 

[Ted Lee]

just like MSG adds flavor to Chinese food. Taste good? Sure sometimes, but too much of it and you get a headache.

lmao. ric - your subtleness (sp?) amazes me sometimes...
manuel - i think the problem was the overall tone of your discussions. everyone agrees that if you like dsp, then that is all that matters. it just "seemed" like you weren't giving up on dsp and you were trying to "force" your opinions.
anyway, let's just call people here...umm..."passionate" about their hobby! at least for me, no offense was taken!

 

[Manuel Delaflor]

"What kind of treatment? People disagreeing with you?"

Ah, Philip, of course not. I love to discuss. It is the "tone" of the writtings.

"my opinion though anyone who uses DSPs go ahead, go nuts."

"You can go ahead and brush me off by calling me a "purist" simply because I agree with "purist" Philip,"

"This is ridiculous."

"This is so completely baffling I don't even know where to begin deconstructing it"

"It seems you actually meant to say, "this is an opportunity for lots of people to tell me I'm right." People disagree with you. That is the point of discussion."

"But you also came onto this forum and called people 'purists' like it is a bad thing. No offense, but you're going to have people disagree with you."

I don't find the above comments friendly. I fail to grasp the theme of the discussion in them.

I feel that DSP technologies can bring us a more natural sound, I feel that normal stereo recordings can't give us the natural feeling of live music (a lot of info went loss in the recording process). I think that using some DSP techniques we can improve the sound of an stereo recording making it to "subjectively feel" more natural and lifelike.

Yes, it is only my opinion, but it is as valid as the opinon of the people who feels that adding something to a recording just ruin it.

And we all can talk about this in a constructive way, learning from each other.

 

[Manuel Delaflor]

"manuel - i think the problem was the overall tone of your discussions. everyone agrees that if you like dsp, then that is all that matters. it just "seemed" like you weren't giving up on dsp and you were trying to "force" your opinions.

anyway, let's just call people here...umm..."passionate" about their hobby! at least for me, no offense was taken!"

Thanks Ted, as I said, English is not my best way to communicate, sorry if my tone was agressive at any point.

 

[KrisM]

When the Braves are playing my Phillies

Wow! So you're the other Phillies fan. I thought I was the only one.
As for the rest of this thread, my head is getting sore. I've had enough. Maybe we start another thread about why all amplifiers and cables sound the same.
Regards
KrisM

 

[RicP]

It should be possible to get 24/192 audio of 90 minutes or so on a standard CD using perceptual coding.

But of course the first thing that these "perceptual encoders" would do is lop off any and all information above 22Khz which is deemed "inaudible". It would also lop off any sounds that it deemed to be "buried in the mix" and therefore "inaudible". All of this of course would completely nullify using such a high quantization and sampling rate to begin with just to slaughter it with "psychoacoustic processing.
Music should be heard pure and uncompressed. Compression for convenience sake (MiniDisc, MP3) is fine as an interim solution when you cannot listen to the actual recording, but should never be the standard.

 

[JohnRice]

RicP

I hadn't really thought about the fact that perceptual coding is contrary to the concept of 192K sampling frequency. So your point is completely valid. I would still think good perceptual coding at, say, 24/48 at the 150KB/S CD rate would still give significantly better sound than 16/44.1 uncompressed CD audio sound.

 

[Philip Hamm]

Post ATRAC 4.0, MiniDisc is 20 bit 44.1 KHz native. Sounds really good, particularly for high quality analog sources like LP records.

 

[Ryan Spaight]

My take on this is that by listening to an MP3 on a computer, you're already several steps away from the original source, so slathering on some DSP won't do a whole lot of additional damage. (Sort of like taking a couple of whacks at a totaled car with a baseball bat.)

More seriously, we've got two fundamentally different philosophies here:

1. One sees a recording as a "work of art" created by the musicians and engineers to be experienced as accurately as possible, with a minimum of deviation from the original master tape.

2. The other sees a recording as a starting point to play with until you get something that sounds "good" to you, regardless of what it sounded like on the studio monitors.

When I first got into music, DSP was still a ways off, but I sure hit every button my JVC 100-watt rack system had. "Loudness?" Sure! "Surround?" Bring it on! I put big 'ol smiley faces on the neato graphic equalizer! I was in heaven.

Eventually, and I'm not sure how, I realized that all that processing was making things sound *worse*, not better.

Just recently, I cobbled together a stereo-only system for music listening. I pulled out an old Sony ES Pro-Logic receiver from the closet. Sounded pretty good, but the NHT SB3 speakers I used needed a bit of a bass boost in this particular room to sound "right" to me. The only EQ the Sony offered was a DSP thing. As soon as I engaged it, the sound got all diffuse, vague and grainy. Yuck.

So, I grabbed a cheap Yamaha stereo receiver with good old-fashioned analog tone controls and no digital nothing. Much better!

But as has been said many times, the only really important thing is that you like the results. If you're looking for validation that DSP is a good thing, I don't think you'll find it here -- maybe on an MP3 forum or something like that. (HTFers tend more toward the first view than the second.) But you don't need validation to enjoy music!

Ryan

 

[RicP]

I would still think good perceptual coding at, say, 24/48 at the 150KB/S CD rate would still give significantly better sound than 16/44.1 uncompressed CD audio sound.

No way. Like I said, perceptual encoding concerns itself with what we theoretically cannot hear. That means to a perceptual encoding algorithm, 48Khz sampling is way overkill, so it will lop off everything that according to it, you cannot hear.
I'm not sure what you mean by 150Kbps, but uncompressed PCM from a CD runs at 1.441Mbps...a significant difference, wouldn't you say?
There's no way that any sort of perceptual encoding will ever sound better than the pure signal. Impossible. By its very definition, perceptual encoding is eliminating musical information to maximize space, that's its only reason for existence. Nobody thinks it sounds better, and an extreme few think that it sounds equal to uncompressed PCM. It's a trade off of quality for space, and with a format like SACD or DVD-A, the space concerns are no longer an issue.

 

[JohnRice]

I'm not sure what you mean by 150Kbps, but uncompressed PCM from a CD runs at 1.441Mbps...a significant difference, wouldn't you say?

You need to read that more carefully. I said 150KB/S, not 150 Kb/s. There's a big difference. A factor of 8 in fact. I always understood CD audio to be 150 KB/S, which means 1.2 Mb/s which also agrees with the time limit on CD/Rs. A 74 minute CD/R holds just over 650 MB of info. 150 KB/s = 9MB/m x 74 min. = 666MB. I don't know where you get the figure of 1.441 Mb/s from, but going by that figure, the longest a CD could POSSIBLY run would be under 65 minutes (700 MB) which is obviously not true. 1.441 Mb/s = 180.125 KB/s = 10.8075 MB/m 700MB/10.8075 = 64.77 minutes.

 

[John Royster]

John, check your math. Maybe CDRs are different.
44100 sampling rate X 2 channels=88200 samples/sec stereo.
16 bits/sample = 16*88200 = 1411200 bits/sec = 1.411 Mbs. Don't know if there is any more framing or overhead involved in PCM than the raw data however. Also maybe redo your numbers considering that MB=1024KB, KB=1024 Bytes.
but then again, i'm way too much of a geek and love talking tech.

 

[Philip Hamm]

CD Audio is stored a little different from WAV files. If you rip an 80 minute CD you'll end up with more than 700 MB of WAV files.

 

[RicP]

I don't know where you get the figure of 1.441 Mb/s from

I get it from every well respected authority on Digital Audio. Maybe I can point you to some?
CDROM != CD-DA
Redbook != OrangeBook
Compact Disc Digital Audio is a completely different beast from a computer CDROM. This is the cause of 90% of the confusion and misunderstanding in digital audio today.