Are audio companies all involved in a huge conspiracy? - Page 41

 

Shouldn’t it be 'Professor' if one wants to be formal?  ;)

Its so amusing to me to see how lively the same basic discussion is after three or so decades.

I'll just report in that audio can still be fun, that it is very possible to spend a weekend, a week, even months enjoying something new, whether its better or not. I picked up a pair of old Klipsch Forte speakers and have been having FUN with them for nearly a year now. They are not set up, not adjusted, not eqed, not even the subwoofer is set up remotely correctly, but they play insanely loud and do something wonderful for vocals at any level. The other really fun thing lately has been the Steve Hoffman forums and tracking down music sourced from the best masters, which has introduced me to a huge amount of new material.

Maybe it won't last, I've got a tickle of an itch to "make it better", ranging from a reasonable sorting out of a new subwoofer, to locating a pair of Pioneer TAD compression drivers and building something.

Right now its fun, with plenty of technical annoyance coming from HTPC land, maybe that distraction is letting me enjoy the audio side without fussing?

I run an optical digital spdif from the HTPC to a Sony STR DA3000ES (hope I got all the letters correct) which is pure digital with volume control and DAC in the output stage of the amp.

Yeah, I spent some money on buying the service manuals for the Integra 70/80.3 models and corresponding Onkyo last round of updating my AVR and I concluded the same thing. No differences that you couldn't tell from looking at the inputs/outputs on the back, really.

I did another test today by ripping Poltergeist 2's DD 2.0 Pro Logic Track in DVD Audio Extractor & then converting it to FLAC using Foobar2000, & let me tell you it blew my socks off. That movie has a really Dynamic sound mix!

here is a link to the Poltergeist 2 Audio file in FLAC www.packupload.com/QLQVATPMD50

The DD tracks converted to wav/mp3/flac/vorbis sound better, louder, & more dynamic than the original file!

The audio conversion programs strip all of the metadata/Dialnorm/DRC used on Dolby Digital tracks.


I have read that Dolby's Cinema Processors( the ones used for 35mm DD which is only 320kbps for all five channels) Ignore's dialnorm/metadata etc, so you get the same exact sound levels as the original mix.


If i could get my hands on one of their Cinema Processors, I would be one happy man.

Why did they think that Dialnorm/DRC on home media was such a good Idea? they should have given us consumers the ability to turn off all Metadata/Dialnorm/DRC settings.

I want you guys play that Poltergeist FLAC file that I Posted on your Home Theater setups & let me know how it stacks up to Blu-Ray's Uncompressed Audio.

What is "the original file"? How did you perform the comparison? What decoder was used, and how were the levels matched?

Since Foobar converts AC-3 to WAV, the best comparison to "the original" would be with the WAV file. FLAC is allegedly lossless so it should not alter the result. The same cannot be said about MP3 and Vorbis.

If the Foobar decoded file sounds different in dynamics, maybe it is some error in how Foobar decodes DD audio that causes the change in sound. It is, after all, not a Dolby certified decoder.
Why do you think that? Does Foobar say this somewhere?
Dolby's cinema processors do not ignore dialnorm/metadata. It simply does not exist in the Dolby cinema format.
They are sold on the open market. But just in case there is any confusion, if you were to feed it a DVD with a DD soundtrack, it would output the exact same audio as the DVD player itself.
DRC is user defeatable in most products. Dialnorm imparts no sound of its own.
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Edited by Roger Dressler - 1/14/13 at 2:16am

Roger, I performed the comparison using VLC Player & Media Player Classic. It sounds way better to my ears. The original file was the AC3 track from the Poltergeist II DVD that i ripped from the DVD using the program DVD Audio Extractor. I then converted the AC3 file to FLAC using Foobar2000 (the Audio conversion program)


I did this test before using The DD 2.0 Pro Logic Track from the Star Wars Episode 1 : the Phantom Menace DVD , except that I converted it to mp3 & played it on my surround sound system. I played the audio from the DVD & then played the MP3 & the mp3 sounded better with more clarity & dynamics. I posted a link to this ripped file earlier in this thread.

Roger, Foobar didn't mention anything about it stripping the Metadata/DRC/Dialnorm, I was just assuming that it did, since it sounds more dynamic & different. I also converted the DTS & AC3 tracks from the Goldeneye Ultimate Edition DVD to WAV & compared them both, & there was no difference between the encodes.
Roger I did not know that the Dolby 35mm Cinema codec does not use Dialnorm. I was misinformed.

here's 2 more links to two movies converted to flac format from lossy AC3 files, The first link is the 5.1 track of the 1994 Charlie Sheen Movie Terminal Velocity www.packupload.com/LJ3LAY5Q0PJ

The next link is the 2.0 Pro Logic track of The 2000 Animated Action Adventure flick Titan A.E. www.packupload.com/P2RKGCM63AO

How do you ensure the playback volumes are level matched to 0.1 dB or better? What is the level accuracy of the match being used?
Perhaps you happen to like what MP3 does to the sound. Nothing wrong with that.
Whether it does this or not, the sound would remain the same, so it is a moot point.
None that you detected, anyway.
Not a problem. There are not too many people who know the finer details of cinema systems.

Roger, I just Converted Independence day to FLAC from the DVD's DD 5.1 track & it has more bass than the DD, & the explosions rock my speakers. The Terminal Velocity flac file that i posted has a scene where Charlie Sheen & Nastassja Kinski are on a rocket sled & then eject from it when it's about to crash into a wall & then the sled explodes when it hits the wall., it makes my desk shake & rattle.

If the DD trakc has a typical Dialnorm value of -4, since AFAIK FLAC doesn't do dialnorm, FLAC is 4 dB louder than the DD track plays back, which will make bass sound louder and increase the apparent impact, not to mention revealing more detail . . .

The Dialnorm is performed in the DD decoder. Once it becomes WAV, it's already done. Being that Foobar is not a certified decoder, I do not know what it does wrt Dialnorm. Or the rest of the decoding algorithm for that matter.

More bass than the native DD audio? So you are saying that FLAC is not lossless??

You have not yet replied to my questions about how you are doing the level matching. As JHAz rightly points out, whichever is louder will sound more dynamic and have better bass.

Roger, the volume levels in VLC player are set at the same level when i play back both the flac & the DD from the DVD.

Unfortunately that does not answer the question. if there's a level difference between the DD and the FLAC, you would have to adjust your volume control to eliminate that difference in order to have both files play at the exact same SPL. Minor differences. like 3 dB are plenty to make the louder version sound better to our ears, but not enough to necessarily be identified as "hey, that's louder." As I understand it, that's one reason speaker manufacturers started making 4 ohm speakers. They'd get an advantage in listening tests by being louder at the same volume control setting compared to 8 ohm speakers . . .

This is correct except for the number. 3 dB is easily discernible as a level difference. But 0.3 dB is not, and yet it will sound different to us.

You can determine your sensitivity to level changes here: http://www.audiocheck.net/blindtests_index.php

If your assertion that Foobar ignores Dialnorm is true, then there could be several dB of level difference in that case. You have to match the program levels, not the playback settings. To be safe, the level match has to be roughly 0.1 dB or less to avoid that as a factor. Not easy to do with 1 dB step volume controls -- that gets you to 0.5 dB worst case.

In my experience you can be both right.

With certain kinds of music a 3 dB difference may not be audible as a level difference but be discernibly different nevertheless. The same is true for 0.3 dB.

I think that if you are allowing time to pass between listenings, like you might be when switching between source devices or speakers, the potential to not notice a level change is a level change is heightened. Semiobviously, 1 dB is generally the let's say typical barely discernable difference, and 3 dB is typically thought of as one notch louder. If you're just twisting the volume control. Give it 5 seconds of silence and lll bets are off, I think. Or the 4 ohm trick never would have sold a single speaker. Seems clear also that some listeners, and likely many trained listeners, can accurately identify a smaller EQ difference than 1 dB if the affected range is broad enough and you have the right kind of test material playing. If louder=better were always counterbalanced by "I know it's louder," the maxim that folks find louder = better would itself be unnecessary.

If you are to do comparisons of things and get a useful result, matching has to be done to 0.2dB or better. Bigger difference than that and the louder one will have unfair advantage, even if the volume difference isn't discernable as such.

After years of listening to mismatched levels in the 0.5-3.0 dB range I'm not so much concerned with an unfair advantage for the louder alternative as the more obvious and explainable difference due to the level difference obscuring smaller differences that might be audible.

More to the point it is pretty easy to show that the ear/brain's sensitivity to small differences is fleeting due to the mechanics of perception in the brain. I built an ABX Comparator that had a user-settable muted time during the switch over. The mute time could be varied from a tenth of a second or so to 10 seconds. Switch over delays of even just a second were irritating while delays of several seconds were absolutely deadly, rendering small differences completely impossible to reliably hear.

This situation is nicely explained in the popular book: This is Your Brain On Music. There is more than enough science behind these real-world observations.

Exactly.

What happens in most audiophile listening evaluations is that various extraneous influences destroy the ability to hear any small differences that might exist. Since the evaluations are sighted, that usually dominates the outcome of the test. Even if the listener had no preferences coming into the test he can develop one based on random influences. That's one reason why so many people are so attached to so many different preferences. In many cases there was never an actual audible difference, but random influences created a preference regardless.

And thus the phrase "subtle but significant" was born.

Well, you say the same thing as I did, but phrase it differently, so I guess we agree? (I never said why there was an advantage)

You said this in post 1221, right?

"Bigger difference than that and the louder one will have unfair advantage, even if the volume difference isn't discernable as such."

What's that word after "unfair"? ;-)

Yes, "advantage", but I never said what the advantage was. The advantage is having less of the drawback you describe the weaker one has. So, exactly the same as you state, but stated inverted.

The one's disadvantage is the other one's advantage.

I do hope you're not disagreeing with me based on principal also in topics we agree on!!

Thanks for the response.

I suppose I'm encouraged to go through the minor trouble of hooking the Oppo to my Orion ASP directly and see if I can hear a difference.

I must admit a degree of impatience with sound quality "improvements" that somehow can't be explored scientifically for some reason.

Maybe some can explain this. I've heard people talk about bi-amping using AVR's and wax lyrical about the audible benefit. I've heard people claim that it separates the highs from the lows. Is that true, for passive bi-amping? The other claim I hear about is that power goes up.

Any truth to any of this? I don't know if this qualifies as a conspiracy per se, but I'm positive some manufacturers make lofty claims in support of bi-amping.

If you were to use an active crossover, and amplify different signals for the different parts of your speaker, I could see it having a benefit. Even just bi-wiring using an active crossover in the mix makes sense to me.

But bi-amping from an AVR just doesn't work in my conceptual model of a sound system. You wind up sending the same thing to your mids/woofers and your tweeters, and generally, due to the power-limited nature of AVRs, without much if any additional headroom for peaks that you could get with external amplifiers for the mids and woofers.