Zp 24/96

What are you talking about? I said nothing like that at all. Where did I say that?

I apologize, I thought I was replying to gtyper. My comments in that post were directed at him and not you. My mistake.

If someone did the test and scored 100%, I would be the first in line to humbly say I was completely and utterly wrong. I would also rejoice in the fact that the scientific method worked exactly as it is supposed to.

For the record, I come from a science research background - and my opinion is that a blind test in this regard (regardless of the results) is not necessarily good science.

The first variable that becomes an issue is the human mind. Once it is being "tested" it naturally becomes stressed, which would impact any test. Stress leads to overthinking. Overthinking leads to erroneous data.

I have always railed against double blind tests that compare like items. Double blind taste tests, audio tests, etc. The human mind is not equipped to do it very effectively.

Heck, most people struggle with visual location memory - do you really think we can remember slight audio changes to any measurable level?

As I said, my only "vested interest" is in science. So far, science points to there being no difference. When it points to something else, I'll follow the science.

You'll follow whatever motivates you. You currently lean on the science fencepost, but that's because it currently provides what you wish it to.

I did a little digging and found a report wherein the difference between 44.1khz and 96khz was statistically significant. People could, based on the results, find a difference. But, even though I might agree with the assertion, I disagree with the testing methodology and thus believe it not capable of being able to prove anything. I find the test incorrect and I'm sure if you looked at the results - the actual conclusion would be inconclusive. I would argue, that the correlation between the data would not be grouped in a method that would lead one to the original assertion.

It's the nature of using the wrong test methodology. Unfortunately, we don't have a different methodology for comparison other that actually looking at the raw physics and making assumptions on whether or not people can hear the difference.

By the way, here is a list of codec comparisons that showed actual differences in double blind audio tests:

As I have stated, I am truly not all that interested in the subject - so I admit I skimmed the wiki. From what I could tell, the test may have been blind but it was blind versus another compression. So, for what I was seeing, the results were seemingly ranked based on knowledge that it was lossy and then ranking it.

They were not asked to tell the difference between lossy compression algorithms (which I would argue they could not do) or determining the difference between high bit-rate lossy and lossless.

You want to prove a point that it is inaudible to someone who doesn't care either way. It's a losing battle, I'm simply saying your "science is all I care about" malarkey is simply an excuse to espouse your opinion louder than anyone else.

Analog out, digital out, digital out into a DAC, headphones, electrostatic speakers, tin can and a string, I really don't care. It's your experiment, setup whatever you wish. Your complaint that the only way you could test 24/96 being thwarted because Sonos doesn't offer it is a convenient and clever use of words in this thread, but it is also a copout.

Are you sure you meant to reply to me? I have not said anything or commented about doing any sort of listening tests.

I apologize, I thought I was replying to gtyper. My comments in that post were directed at him and not you. My mistake.

Interesting, because I've never said this:

You and others have always said that the only way to truly hear the difference is to listen with your own ears.

Nor did I do this - I simply left out the redundancy and replied to the core:

You conveniently skipped the rest of my post. I don't find that surprising either.

I think maybe you were so earnest in your desire to prove science you simply crossed arguments all over the place.

Peer reviewed scientific journals accept double blind audio tests, that is a fact. I have never seen any of the popular criticisms of double blind audio tests, including the ones listed above, subjected to peer review in accredited publications. If you can point me towards an article of this type, I will gladly cede the point that double blind audio tests are flawed. Until then, I will stick to my first instinct: The critique of the tests are a convenient way to discount the results in order to further the audiophile agenda.

Peer reviewed scientific journals accept double blind audio tests, that is a fact.

Yes, it is. I don't discount the merits of double blind testing, I discount the methodology of sensory tests and, more to the point, the results (and what people assume they mean).

Generally speaking, since we want to go down the science road - there is no way to ever scientifically conclude that there is no audible difference between two objects (unless it is outside of the known hearing range). The reason for this goes to the most basic of principles - the scientific method. In science, you can only make a hypothesis and develop proof for it, but never completely discount the null hypothesis. (in the immortal words of Carl Sagan: "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence")

Blind tests have two outcomes:
1) Either you establish scientifically that there's a high degree of probability that someone would be able to tell the difference between A and B, or
2) You fail to establish that there is a discernible difference.

But here's the rub - one that is overlooked by people that have a passing knowledge of scientific theory: While a positive result establishes, to a certain level of confidence, the reality of different perceptible acoustic differences, a null result, or a failure to reliably detect a difference, does not indicate the nonexistence of that difference.

The reason DBT is currently used is because we don't have a better, testable method. So, people run forward with the tests they have at their disposal and we have to accept the flaws and variables of the test. The human response is flawed and biased - and any researcher worth his grain will list this as a potential draw back in this methodology. While the goal of DBT is to remove bias, once memory is introduced it only succeeds in amplifying stress to prove the bias. It is the nature of testing. All tests can be refined and improved upon, but when conducting this test the bottleneck is human memory and fatigue. This is an issue.

I, personally, would be more interested in watching brain activity and overall body reaction (blood pressure, breathing pattern, oxygen levels) of a listener when exposed to extensive listening of compressed vs non-compressed vs high resolution - both from a double blind and a non-blind test. I would be interested to see how the brain/body system reacts. *THAT* is pure science without the statistical variance imbued by the unreliability of human sensory memory.

I have never seen any of the popular criticisms of double blind audio tests, including the ones listed above, subjected to peer review in accredited publications. If you can point me towards an article of this type, I will gladly cede the point that double blind audio tests are flawed.

Sigh.

It is a well-established, scientific fact that the only aspect of the human senses that meet scientific standards for accuracy belongs to sight, and it is called direct visual comparison. Further, the only direct comparison that succeeds scientific scrutiny is the visual comparison of color tone between objects lying directly next to each other with no gap between them.

The reason that direct visual comparison is the only scientific form of comparison among all the human senses is because it places zero demand on human memory. All other forms of sensory comparison, including non-direct visual comparison (objects with spacing between them), depend on a person's highly unreliable memory for sensory impressions. The more testing performed, the more the characteristics of the stimuli blur within the human mind.

Extending upon the direct vs non-direct visual comparison example - when the objects have no space between them - one is able to pinpoint the differences easily whereas showing them one at a time introduces a degree of uncertainty and doubt - this leads to stress, second-guessing and ultimately an unscientific answer. The result of such a test would actually morph from testing whether or not there is a perceptible difference between the shades to testing whether or not we have the capacity to remember - thus nullifying the entire testing methodology.

At the end of the day, no matter which sense is tested, the lac of dependability in human memory for sensory impressions is the bottleneck in all such comparisons. As such, there is no true direct comparisons that are possible with other senses, even in A/B tests. Thus, at best makes these tests highly unreliable and at worst it would innately invalidates such a test.

I will stick to my first instinct: The critique of the tests are a convenient way to discount the results in order to further the audiophile agenda.

You can continue to parrot your rhetoric - I don't have an audiophile agenda. I don't have cobololo wood feet - nor do I even know what they are. When you say green marker, my first instinct is to assume you mean it's environmentally friendly.

I have a decent, in-home system - but I also have a decent disposable income. I bought nice gear because I could. Much like the reason I drive a nice car isn't because I can drive faster. Most of my money went to solid sound-proofing (mainly to not annoy my girlfriend), a good DAC and decent speakers. I would assume my setup is better than most, but only half as good as the people you continue to align me with.

At the end of the day - Jim Morrison is *NOT* in my speakers bleating his war cries at me -- it's a sonic reproduction. If, at the end of the day, I believe that high resolution audio makes it sound like he is that much more real ... why does it offend your sensibilities so?

I am simply stating that I believe that Sonos should offer hi-res simply because I own some hi-res files. Not because they innately sound better, but because I want to be able to play them as is. I want to be able to own one copy of the Rolling Stones' catalog in my library ... even if they are acoustically identical.

My agenda is simple - I want Sonos to be able to play anything I may wish to throw at it.

With that said, let me ask you one of your redundant questions (that, like you, I will ignore the answer to) - is your agenda quite as simple?

Hmm...very interesting thread. I have been a Sonos lover since I got my system, but have also been interested in being able to stream my hi-rez downloads (without downconverting) and DVD music through Sonos. I also wish they would just tell us what they're going to do instead of keeping it secret.

Before I had my Sonos, I streamed 320 kbs MP3s from my computer. I did careful comparisons on Sennheiser 600 headphones and (ON MOST MUSIC) could hear no difference whatsoever between the streamed files and the CDs they were burnt from. On music with cymbals or orchestral climaxes, however, the CDs were cleaner, either to my ears or to the placebo center in my brain. On 90 percent of the music I listen to, and on ALL music if I am also reading or otherwise not concentrating, there is no audible difference in my system.

Why, then, do I want hi-rez? Well, because I know that my SACDs and DVD Audios sound better than my CDs did in the same universal player (Denon 5900). I also know that when I bought my first CDs (which, for various reasons, all sounded like crap in the early years), I was told by all the experts that "bits is bits" and that there was no difference between players, etc. I believed this until I bought my second player and heard a readily audible improvement, although I had no expectation of hearing any. My point is that sometimes it takes time before things develop. Nowadays, well-recorded CDs sound fantastic. If recording engineers such as Doug Sax tell us that 24/192 sounds better than CD, in fact equivalent to the master tape, why shouldn't we ourselves get a chance to see whether there is an improvement? I have also found in the past when buying new equipment (amplifiers, receivers, etc.) that there is seemingly no improvement, only to find, when forced to temporarily install the old unit, that I can hear a negative difference. This is, of course, subtle, but subleties in sound reproduction, as in music itself, can significantly improve the experience.

I agree that doing other things, like fixing your room by acoustic treatments and by products like Audessy, buying better speakers, and the like, will make a much more immediate improvement to sound quality in the home than going hi-rez. Cleaning up the EMI and RFI will do even more (another subject for another day). But I would like the opportunity to see, over time, for myself.

I really hope that Sonos goes this route, and I really hope that they'll let us know their plans, one way or the other.

(A side note: The CD layer of "Dark Side of the Moon" was reportedly deliberately compressed in order to make the SACD version sound that much better. If companies resort to this type of thing, they are hurting the very agenda that they want to advance.)

Yes, it is. I don't discount the merits of double blind testing, I discount the methodology of sensory tests and, more to the point, the results (and what people assume they mean).

.... (in the immortal words of Carl Sagan: "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence")

Blind tests have two outcomes:
1) Either you establish scientifically that there's a high degree of probability that someone would be able to tell the difference between A and B, or
2) You fail to establish that there is a discernible difference.


Sigh.

It is a well-established, scientific fact that the only aspect of the human senses that meet scientific standards for accuracy belongs to sight, and it is called direct visual comparison. Further, the only direct comparison that succeeds scientific scrutiny is the visual comparison of color tone between objects lying directly next to each other with no gap between them.

The reason that direct visual comparison is the only scientific form of comparison among all the human senses is because it places zero demand on human memory. All other forms of sensory comparison, including non-direct visual comparison (objects with spacing between them), depend on a person's highly unreliable memory for sensory impressions. The more testing performed, the more the characteristics of the stimuli blur within the human mind.
.....

I am simply stating that I believe that Sonos should offer hi-res simply because I own some hi-res files. Not because they innately sound better, but because I want to be able to play them as is. I want to be able to own one copy of the Rolling Stones' catalog in my library ... even if they are acoustically identical.

My agenda is simple - I want Sonos to be able to play anything I may wish to throw at it.



Nicely worded critique of the Nay-saying contributors to this forum.
24/96 is a logical extension for any network music player. With Sonos the wait has been long....

Nicely worded critique of the Nay-saying contributors to this forum.
24/96 is a logical extension for any network music player. With Sonos the wait has been long....

Thanks.

I guess my issue is that "nay-sayers" typically resort to the scientific evidence argument, and that just isn't credible in this situation. Most scientists understand the inherent flaw in this methodology and realize the pedantic nature of this type of testing.

The argument against the network supporting the stream in multiple rooms or against the hardware supporting it - those arguments I think are fair. The argument that audiophiles or people with hi-res are a minority is accurate and fair.

There are plenty of valid reasons to argue against the implementation of this feature - audible difference is not one of them.

I am a bit worried of Sonos. If you look the market situation and the competitors policy in highres, Sonos is very alone with its "lowres" profile.

Are all the others wrong ?