"flipper" wrote in message
...
On Thu, 6 Sep 2007 16:43:41 -0400, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:


"Peter Wieck" wrote in message
roups.com...
On Sep 6, 4:18 pm, "Arny Krueger" wrote:

I suspect that if your knowledge of electronics and physics is typical
of
highly intelligent but non-audio/IT/communications professional, stuff
like
Information Theory *is* a leap of faith.

Mpfffff..... Good KEERist...

If irony killed! - Read on!

It seems to me you're more interested in browbeating to 'win' rather
than understanding and illumination.

You mean like you're doing, Flipper?

Information Theory speaks to the understandability and clarity of the
message over noise.

Wrong.

Depends on what he meant.

If he meant something other than the clear meaning of the words, yes.

Definately not about understandability.

If he meant the ability of a decoder to recover ('understand')
transmitted information then he's essentially correct.

Pretzel logic noted. Intent is obvious - browbeat and humiliate.

That's called articulation.

If by "articulation" you're referring to speech recognition then
you're talking about a subjective 'decoder' (I.E. a human listener)
that uses a host of non random predictive processes in deciphering the
'meaning' and that's a 'content' different than simply the 'raw
information' transmitted.

Doooh!

Information theory would deal with that as entropy, mutual
information, self information, et al, but it's a moot point because
all of the discussion in here about bandwidth and S/N ratios presume
raw random bits, which may not be 100% applicable with a
'predictive/subjective decoder' (I.E. human perception)..

Wrong again flipper - the proper terms are bandwidth and dynamic range.
It's a common mistake to confuse dynamic range and SNR, but they are indeed
distinct.

Information theory is far, far general than that.

Not sure how you're defining 'general' nor whether that's 'good or
bad' to the purpose of a specific process: 'music' reproduction that
will be perceived by a 'human'.

Your lack of assuredness no doubt comes from lack of knowlege, Flipper.
You're over your head.

No leap of faith required there.

Peter, it would take a leap of (misplaced) faith to accept your ideas
about
Information Theory!

Then why don't you try some illumination rather than ad hominems?

There was no personal attack, rather a criticism of wrong-headed ideas. Do
try to understand the meanings of the words you use, Flipper.

Speaking of which, you 'talk' a lot about information theory but I
can't recall seeing any illumination as to which equations you're
using or how you arrive at the conclusions made.

I feel no need to rewrite standard texts.

For example, you once made a comparison with a 10dB difference and
said something like that being an order of magnitude bandwidth
difference but if you're using the standard Shannon channel capacity
equation (presuming white Gaussian noise ) then I don't think your
math adds up. Could be wrong, of course, because you never say how you
get there.

I'm afraid that I have no recollection of what you are talking about here.
Do try to find a quote, if you want me to defend something that I actually
wrote.

It says nothing at all about the validity and/or quality and/or
importance of the message conveyed.

Wrong again. Information Theory includes the concept of the entropy of the
signal which is exactly about validity and quality.

Shannon entropy is about the randomness of the information bits. I.E.
If the information is perfectly predicable then the entropy is 0
because you don't really need to transmit anything. It's 'uncertainty'
is 0.

Doooh!

That says nothing about any self information, however. For example

SOS(pause)SOS(pause)SOS
and
BOB(pause)BOB(pause)BOB

have the same entropy but a subjective decoder (I.E. human) interprets
them differently.

And your point is?

This gets back to the earlier comment about the 'specific process'
(and your "far, far general") because both have exactly the same
SN/bandwidth requirements but result in different 'perceptions'.

Note the repeated confusion of SNR and dynamic range.

I believe my difficulties are with
the quality of the message at hand, not its clarity. You are the one
leaping in this case, but to conclusions, not faith.

Thanks for proving my point Peter - your understanding of Information
Theory
is such that it would take a leap of faith to rely on it. And BTW, I'm
not
being mean or evasive, you just plain blew it.

As did you, Flipper. You're not going to get my head today, no matter how
hard you try.