> To summarize: I'm not saying I've witnessed 1+1 = 3, nor am I saying > that the sum of two reciprocals doesn't equal zero. What I witnessed > was a difference that five people described the same way but can't > explain. I also witnessed pretty convincing proof that *audible* (not > mathematical) cancellation of two files doesn't mean that they're > identical. this is a critical point. this comes up too often to be totally poo poo'd by phase inversion and pedantic math rants. while we all obviously already know about the subjectivity of perception, i remember hearing the same math related arguments when digital was younger and had problems that we were later able to find, test, and prove. i simply think this shows that there are things going on in digital audio that we don't yet have the right test and controls for. and i used to side with the math folks, saying all those luddites who claimed vinyl was better were nostalgic old fools. that is until i found out that their complaints about digital audio were later proven to be correct. i for one am glad it's improved, with better clocking and conversion and more accurate math digital is growing up, but i am in the business of trusting my ears. and anything else is somewhat irrelevant. even though i am using a daw, i'm using my ears more. the theory is interesting, but the long posts about math aren't totally compelling anymore as we've been through these arguments earlier on with digital audio and they didn't pan out at the time because they didn't take into account the fact that the wrong tests were being used and that people with great ears tended to say the same thing. i've heard arguments about sonic differences from too many people i do trust to ignore. and while i am not interested in perpetuating untruthful information on digital audio, i say the jury is still out on what is causing us to hear differences. and i don't think that it's all some psychological hoo haa. i think we should be curious as to if there are differences there somehow that we haven't been able to account for yet. cheers, paul pounce international http://marsh.prosoundweb.com/ - keyboard forum moderator

Op Thursday 31 March 2005 20:07, schreef paul kavicky: > and i don't think that it's all > some psychological hoo haa. As long as you close yourself off to parts of the scope like this, don't expect a sensible discussion or a usable result. The chain of events is this: Digital domain -> D/A conversion -> Analog domain -> ears -> brain The digital domain is perfectly calculatable and repeatable, bar transmission errors etc. (Note that all examples so far of digital "imperfection" where not in this stage, but the next one!!) D/A conversion: Pretty critical, a lot known but it is a never ending science. Analog domain: Influenced by anything that makes noise and anything that induces signal to the path. Ears: Idem Brain: Almost totally unknown. And this is where we do our measurements. Now anyone who searches for mysteries in the first domain, and discards any psychological influence as "hoo haa" has absolutely no clue what he's talking about. Maurits.