Neil Young readies Pono music service for expansion Part 2

dangerous because we live in a society that is, on the whole, not too critical about anything while thinking we are. another thread topic though

 

Yes, that is certainly possible. I only focused on the sample rate/bit depth because we already know something about that. I did the same ABX test a couple years back through my stereo with a Cambridge DACMagic unit I had purchased (and subsequently returned) from AudioAdvisor. I could not hear a difference there either. That is not to say you or someone else couldn't, but I have to make decisions about what is worth spending money on based on what I can hear, not others.

I do very much stand by the claim that the chart Pono uses is misleading at best. What the chart shows is the difference between the amount of information encoded in the respective files, not the difference in sound quality as they would be perceived by human beings. I've never been able to reliably hear a difference between 44.1/16 and higher resolution PCM or DSD when differences in mastering are accounted for.

My skepticism may be unwarranted, unjustified, and simplistic, but it is based on about 14 years of experience with hi-rez digital going back to my time with a Philips SACD-1000 player that I bought in the year 2000. In retrospect, I wish I had been a bit more skeptical about this kind of marketing hype back then. If the hi-rez files were really as much as 5 times better sounding than CD, you would think I would have heard some quantifiable difference at some point. So far that has not been the case under a variety of circumstances. Until I hear a difference, I'll remain skeptical, at least insofar as it concerns how I spend my money. YMMV, etc.

 

That chart is extremely misleading. And that's really Pono shooting themselves in the foot as it's basically advertising something that that's a fallacy. "Music quality", imho of course, once you get to 16/44.1k is going to more due to mastering than numbers. Notice that this chart even shows CD lossless quality to be a tad higher than CD itself, which is itself a complete fallacy -- they are the same.

What's going to happen when Joe Consumer buys that $300+ Pono device, and then buys a few non-NY Pono masters that are brickwalled (because PonoMusic isn't going to force the issue with the labels) and he/she hears no difference between that and the iTunes version? I hope they turn this around before October and really lean on the labels to get the best masters they can because there could be a major backlash here.

 

I agree, this chart is ridiculous and it's doing hi-res no service at all. It creates an expectation in those unfamiliar with the matter, that can only result in disappointment.

 

For some things perhaps, but for critical music listening? I'm still not convinced.

Has anyone posted this article yet? It's somewhat relevant to this thread, no?

http://tapeop.com/blog/2012/04/11/problem-bing-and-why-neil-young-right-about-sound-/

"The Almost-Barely tests seem so objective. Here's A, and here's B. See, soooo close! The conclusion: because most people can't tell the difference, there's not really a difference. And then you stack up the stats on these results, and suddenly we're doing science.

The problem is that these tests assume that because two things are close enough in a quick test that the difference will also be indistinguishable over long stretches of time. However, this assumption totally misses how it is that we tend to actually experience things in our very real lives.

For example, we hear people talk about how one can't make out the difference between a hi-res MP3 and a 24bit WAV file (assumedly a difference similar to the one Neil Young feels is worth fighting for). Admittedly a hi-res MP3 and a 24bit WAV are relatively close enough in resolution that many people will not be able to pick them out in an A-B test.

But, we don't live with music like that. If your'e anything like me, you listen to a lot of music in a lot of styles and - over the course of, say, a month - perhaps you've absorbed well over a hundred listening hours across many different albums on a few different playback systems.

How can flip flip flip replicate what it is to live with that much music for that long? How can a drop of water emulate what it is to swim for hours?

If you want to do a real test of the differences, give people a music collection that's all MP3s for a month, then give them that same collection as 24bit WAVs for a month, and then ask which one's which, and I bet you will start to get some correct answers.

Why? Part of the answer is that, if given enough time, subtle differences will reveal themselves to us. Subconsciously at first, and eventually consciously, we become aware of new details, subtleties, nuances. We humans need time to truly come to perceive things in full detail. But details, once revealed, become important features in the big picture."

 

The masters are what they are - there aren't multiple masters of albums that record companies can send out to retailers based on a retailers wishes. No record company is going to re-master anything for Pono, just so Pono can have their own special master. If Pono are so concerned with dynamic masters, then they're going to have to put their hands in their pockets or offer some kind of deal to artists/labels.

 

Interesting article but the coffee analogy actually brings up a different side of human beings -- you become accustomed to things and eventually you may prefer them. I think this may be what happens with people's hardware setups, including my own, where you become comfortable with them to the point where it clouds our judgement. With vinyl I call it a sound signature where I can actually hear, and now prefer, the colorizations my cart / TT / stage bring to the table.

The best ABX test imo is the one we make for ourselves -- I don't trust any other because 100 people may not hear a difference, but I might. Or vice-versa, for that matter. And as far as Pono is concerned it would be a moot point IF the cost of the 24/192 album was the same as the CD or 16/44.1k. But it will likely not be, they've already stated this because they said the labels will set the prices and we've see the results with HDTracks already. Price is always a factor, unfortunately.

With that MP3's / 24-bit WAV's for a month test, it would still need to the be the same masters for it to really be a good test. I already do this btw, at least for vinyl -- some time spent with my vinyl copy, some with my drops (48khz AAC's, in this case) and I never really hear differences between the two. But that's just me.

 

When I meant "turn it around" I meant tone down on the "24/192 is great JUST because of the numbers" advertising. They are building this up to be some kind of otherworldly experience and when the reality sets in they might have a lot of angry customers.

 

Also, where the hell is Mr. Hoffman? Steve's insights would certainly be enlightening.

His absence from this thread is unusual and interesting.

I wouldn't be surprised if he wasn't "a cookin' a something up" for the old Pono himself....

I also think there's way too much emphasis on just remasters of older releases. I think the real benefit could be in new music releases done exclusively for Pono. Imagine bands, artists and producers, all trying to outdo each other in sound quality. It could make for an interesting turn of events.

If the musicians and artists themselves get behind this thing, it could really make a big difference in the sound quality of music being released in the future.

I'll admit I'm trying to be a "glass half full" kinda guy here but... I'm telling you people, don't underestimate the power of sonic psychedelic hippie ideas.

This thing just might work!

 

I saw the Tegan and Sara signature series for Pono and that was refreshing. I'd like to see more modern artists make a stand with (hopefully) better dynamics. But it would then be a trickle down effect - Pono/HDTracks but also to vinyl and CD releases too. Heck, maybe even down to lossy downloads.

 

Yeah, I've been staying out of that conversation. They really need to have lower prices for this to really work. I'm hoping the greedheads at the record companies come to their senses about price and see the potential windfall that awaits if they do this right.

Albums should be priced $9.99 (a little higher for double albums) and singles should be $0.99. If they did that and made all their releases exclusive to Pono, iTunes would be yesterday's news.

 

But look at every other format. Any of them. None have all great sounding records but many have lots of great sound along with the terrible too. If pono limits themselves to only great sounding records , which would seem to fit into their plan , then they are going to have to turn down lots of great music that's hasn't been remastered to a certain quality level.

 

Although the chart could be construed as misleading with a title like "Quality Spectrum", I see the CD and CD lossless bars as having equal heights.

 

Is it an established fact that it costs online music retailers more to obtain/sell lossless downloads than lossy? I'm thinking a large reason for the price differences are due to the added bandwidth required by the retailers to store and distribute larger files.

 

It's not -- I thought it was just my eyes playing tricks on me, but rip out the diagram and zoom in on the two and it becomes more apparent. It's subtle but it is slightly higher.

Granted, most people aren't even going to care but it's a mistake that really shouldn't be in there.

The storage rebuttal is a valid one -- larger files = more storage needed and more bandwidth required for downloading.

But twice as much money for a 24/192 download over a 16/44.1k lossless download? That seems excessive to me. And let's use Amazon as an example -- they recently added CD and vinyl auto-rip features to physical purchases. At no extra cost, even though it obviously costs them more for the extra throughput and the inevitable customer service calls. And yet they managed.

We all have our thresholds and, for me, $24 for a lossless digital download is about $11 more than I personally want to spend. Especially if I feel there's no audible difference to me between that and the 24/44.1k or 24/96 download. I think $18 for the 24/96 is too much, as well.

I've actually emailed HDTracks about this and if Pono can't change this then I likely won't be buying unless I read that the download is definitely the best of the best over any other format available.

 

It's especially stupid because you only get one more octave going from a 48kHz sampling rate to a 96kHz sampling rate and only one more octave going from 96 kHz to 192 kHz - and none of the additional bandwidth going from 96 to 192 is audible to any living human being on the planet, past or present.

Let's start at 20 Hz and do octaves:

20 40 80 160 320 640 1,280 2,560 5,120 10,240 20,480

That's ten octaves. Redbook covers it (ok, nearly) perfectly.

But look where they have their bar chart soaring to the sky - by going from 96 kHz to 192 kHz sampling rate. This gives us one ridiculously inaudible octave - and not much else; it's 2014 where we've worked out most of the issues with digital filtering that were an very early on with the first CD players.

Sure, 24 bits is nice but science tells us the additional dynamic range isn't an issue for listening so long as those 16 bits are used wisely. And if a mastering engineer doesn't know how to use those 16 bits wisely, then I don't want to hear anything from them in any format because they clearly suck at what they do.

The only good thing I see coming out of Pono is at least a slightly wider audience that even has a foggy conception about sound quality. But this 192 kHz crap just reinforces the ridiculous notion that such sampling rates create any benefit for listening. There is no reason why they should - at all - and there is some real danger in improperly implementing 192 kHz due to the audible intermod products that can occur if you have worthless ultrasonic energy in that extra octave (see the oft-mentioned xiph.org stuff on this).

Evangelizing about better sound quality is great, but hanging solutions on ridiculous easily debunked charts like the above have a chance of backfiring and causing more harm than good. This is what bothers me the most about hirez evangelists. It's misdirected. There's so much low hanging fruit that hasn't been plucked, and they're up at the top of the tree plucking leaves and examining them with tiny microscopes.

 

I bought two midcentury style ceiling light fixtures for my home recently. They are high quality replicas and they make two sizes. A 9" and a 12" wide version. What surprised me was that both cost the same price. High Rez music files should cost the same as mp3 or lossless songs and albums then a customer can decide for themselves. As long as they are aware of the size difference for their devices. Some won't want the larger better files because they simply want to fit as many songs as possible. And others would rather have the quality.

 

Of course they're ripping people off. It's a niche market (192khz is utterly pointless of course....), and they're going to try and charge as much as they can for as long as they can.

 

The chart is showing uncompressed 44.1/16 bit flac vs the typical modern compressed cd- that's my interpretation.

 

Ah! You might be right as I was wondering what they actually meant by "uncompressed". I was thinking in terms of data compression, but they marked FLAC like uncompressed which was throwing me off. I think you may have nailed it.

BUT, that means their diagram is even more deceptive as they aren't even taking CD's with less compression into consideration. Plus, is there even such as a thing as a recording with ZERO compression, as far as mastering is concerned? I always thought at least some compression was almost a requirement with pop/rock recordings, in particular. The more I read into that diagram the less I like it.

 

Well, 24-bits is nice because you can digitally fiddle with the volume on your playback system without losing audible resolution. That's handy when you're using a computer as your playback device, as many now do.

48kHz and 96kHz have the big advantage of allowing for much gentler low-pass filters than 44.1kHz does. While 44.1 does allow for the full audible spectrum to be digitized (barely), it also forces the use of pretty aggressive low-pass filters, and those can color the sound down into the audible range. 48kHz mitigates that issue and 96kHz eliminates it.

192kHz strikes me as complete overkill for anything other than editing, and most consumer D/A converters still don't handle it as well as 44.1 or 48. My h/k receiver for example produces artifacts at that resolution (though not at 96kHz, which is what I have my computer set to output). Of course, you can always downsample to 98kHz, so in theory 192kHz is no worse, although in practice like I said, equipment still doesn't handle it reliably.

A big problem with these high sample-rate sources is that all kinds of electronic noise lives up above 20kHz. It causes amplifiers to behave in oddball fashions - even at audible frequencies - and can also cause issues with the few tweeters out there capable of reproducing such frequencies. Keep in mind, most microphones have little to no response at those frequencies to begin with, and the mics that do frequently aren't the ones even used to record those instruments which produce a lot of ultrasonics (particularly drums), so whatever ultrasonic signals there are on these original master tapes are almost entirely noise.

I've always thought that mastering engineers using these high bitrates should transpose the high frequency signals down into the audible range first in an attempt to determine just what the heck is going on in the ultrasonic signal on these tapes. If it turns out to just be noise above a certain frequency, it should be filtered out, either selectively if the noise hits at select frequencies, or low-passed out of the signal entirely if it's all noise above a certain frequency.

 

On the kickstarter page and in interviews they have clearly numerous time stated it depends on what the labels give them. End of story.

The only confusion is from the argumentative lot that keep trying to read between the lines of the vague ramblings of Neil who to be frank seems to not know what his own company is doing or what the technology entails.

 

I don't want to get into a debate about ABX testing, and these points may be entirely valid. I would only say the following, the ABX tester I used allows you to listen for as long or as short a period as you want. You can go back and forth as many times as you want before making a choice. I really tried hard to hear a difference, but no matter how long or how short a period I listened, I could not hear any. It was not that A and B were close, I literally heard no difference between them.

Also, I did not say anything about "doing science" and that is not the intention of my tests. I find posts where people say things like "you only think you hear a difference because you don't understand science" extremely obnoxious. My intention is to gauge whether Pono, or other hi-rez digital files are a worthy investment for me. I never said there is not a difference between the files. There definitely is a difference, and that difference is reflected in the relative size of the files. There is no doubt that there is more information in a hi-rez digital file. The question is whether I can hear a difference. So far I have not encountered a circumstance where when I'm making an apples to apples comparison the answer to that question is yes.

Anyway, I'm perfectly willing to accept the judgment that my hearing is bad, or my equipment sucks. What I'm not willing to do is lie and say I can hear a difference where I cannot. 44.1/16 seems good enough for these 44 year old ears.

 

One thing about those ABX testers is that they are designed for more short-term samples, and it's more "can you hear a difference?" versus "which do you like better?".

It would actually be an interesting test to somehow randomize two sets of data for long term use. It wouldn't be too difficult to do either -- have a third party copy two sets of files into the player with no discernable difference between them -- same file names, just two different folders. Then play one set for a few weeks, then another set, back and forth. After a few months, make your decision on which sounded better (if any) and then see if you picked the higher res files.

 

No not clearly stated, that's you reading between the lines as well. Believe what you want. I'd rather wait and see for sure. Nothing left to discuss here then. Good day.