Audiophilia

[Bryn]

Thank god - audiophiles are rare enough around here as it is...

Good to read that all went well for Richard. Re. the question of audiophilia, I have been struggling with a number of issues asociated with the condition, with particular focus on high resolution downloads and whether it is really posible for human beings to gain more audio information from them. A series of articles I found of particular interest starts here. Certainly some food for thought there. I had prefiously been somewhat attracted by the idea that difference tones eminating from interactions of ultrasonic frequencies might just have subtle lower frequency ramifications which attentive listeners might find add realism to musical reproduction. However, the cogent arguments in later articles in the series linked to pour a rather large volume of cold water on the possibility of such perceptions. Any comments on the issues raised by Dave Moulton back in 1999?

[french frank]

I thought this was a good topic - so have detached from the original thread re absentees.

[Bryn]

I thought this was a good topic - so have detached from the original thread re absentees.

Thanks.

[french frank]

Not really my field, but I would like to study it a bit more closely when I have a bit of time :-)

[Serial_Apologist]

One definitely seems to lose ones upper partials with advancing years. I can only substantiate this to myself by rubbing the tips of my fingers together next to my auditory channels, and what was once a sharp hiss has now become a dull hush, though the problem did start on the right ear before the left one, which has now caught up.

As far as listening habits go, unlike my late father, who, when this happened in his later years, overcompensated by switching from fm to medium of long wavelength channels and turning bass levels almost up to dubstyle levels, my way of dealing with it is to turn the treble levels up almost to maximum (not for all recordings, some being quite shrill enough as they are), and cut down on the bass. On having my right ear syringed a few months ago I found I was able to rebalance to some extent, but I've never really liked bass-heavy music in any case, reacting to it with sensations of impending physical nausea.

[Richard Barrett]

Having read the first page of Bryn's link I'm looking forward to devoting time to reading the rest, since this is an issue I think about quite a lot.

For those with an interest in such things and a copy of my Negatives CD (there must be at least one such person here!) I hereby reveal that one of the pieces on that disc was recorded in analogue (using Dolby SR) while the others were recorded digitally. I don't think anyone could tell which one it was.

I would always record in 24-bit since this gives more flexibility in post-production. I think it will make a difference in material with a wide dynamic range, for obvious reasons. I don't think that sampling rates above 48kHz make any perceptible difference to anything. That's my current thinking on the subject. Also it's often been my experience that you can hear things in the recording studio that you'll never hear again once the recording is released or broadcast.