Don Pearce wrote in message news:4998dad6.517245406@localhost
On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:07:42 -0000, "BBC is biased towards DAB"
wrote:

You have now made the
extraordinary assertion that all these things that we hold self
evident are in fact false. This extraordinary claim must be
proved.


No, YOU are the one making the claims, so the onus is obviously on
you
to prove them.

So there we go. You can't pass a simple listening test, and you now
realise that you have just foolishly disagreed with a whole raft of
well known and accepted truths. Competence isn't exactly shining
through is it?

But I am happy to get the ball rolling.

1. Classical music is more complex and demanding than modern pop.
First, it is longer - that demands a greater concentration span.


Doesn't prove anything.


Second, it is generally written in several movements in varied time
signatures, as opposed to modern pop, which is typically in a simple
4/4 or 8/8 signature.


This proves nothing.


Third, it makes great use of interpretive rubato - something which
can't be done with a pop tune locked to a click track.


You said:

"it takes a greater degree of intelligence to
understand and appreciate it"

When are you gonig to get round to the "intelligence" bit?

Wouldn't happen to be because you can't prove that, would it?


Fourth the harmonies are varied and often not those which would
immediately suggest themselves. Contrast the simple thirds and
fifths
of pop music - when there are any, that is.
Fifth the performance must be great because unlike pop, vocoding
devices to bring the performances back in tune can't be used.


See above.

Overall: FAIL


2. The CD has more definition than the human auditory system.
Frequency range - the CD is flat from 0Hz to 22kHz.


Is there an infinite transition bandwidth at 22 kHz? That's an
impossibility, because it requires non-causal filters which require an
infinite number of filter taps. So what figure are you actually
claiming the bandwidth is for a CD?


At normal
listening levels, human hearing is down about 20dB at 20Hz and
20kHz.


Does psychoacoustic theory actually make any claims such as "nobody
will have hearing above X kHz" and other stuff like that?

At best, everything's statistical - all the psychoacoustic models have
to be statistical, becaue they can't exactly have measured every
single person's hearing on the planet.

This implies that nothing can be proven with absolutely certainty - so
the very best you can say is that you're X% certain of Y being true
based on statistical analysis.

Overall: FAIL


Linearity - The CD has vanishingly small distortion over almost
100dB
of dynamic range. Human hearing is only marginally linear at mid
frequencies, and heavily expansive for treble, and particularly
bass.


Can you prove that no-one can perceive the difference between 16 and
24 bit? Obviously not, so FAIL.


Resolution - the CD has effectively infinite frequency resolution.
The
human ear suffers masking, resulting in the ability to hear low
level
sounds close in frequency to a high level one.


You can't prove this. FAIL


3. It is not easy to compare CD and SACD.
The DACs are not the same, so accurate levelling is not simple.


Is it impossible? If it's not impossible then FAIL.


They do not go through the same mastering process so there is no
like-for-like material available to make the comparison.


Is it possible to master a CD that is to all intents and purposes a
44.1 kHz 16-bit version of an SACD or whichever other high-resolution
audio format? If so, then FAIL.


4. Developments since the CD have not improved audible quality.
The answer to 2 above already demonstrates this, but to see the
truth
of this you need only look at what the developments are.
MP2 - a compressed version of CD, therefore by definition not
better.
MP3 - ditto
AAC - ditto
Minidisc - ditto

I think I will leave that there.


Since the CD came out, there have been attempts to provide higher
audio quality, which you cannot prove do not provide higher audio
qulaityu than CD does.

All you're doing is using the circular argument that because *you
believe* that the CD is slightly overspecified wrt human hearing then
it doesn't allow trhe quality to be improved upon relative to CD,
therefore any attempts at designing new audio formats will either be
no better than or worse than CD. There have been formats that deilver
sound quality below CD, therefore your circular argument has it that
the only developments have led to reductions in quality.

However, you have failed to prove that humans can't perceive any
improvement relative to CD, therefore this and all the other claims
come crashing down in a big FAIL FEST.

Overall: FAIL.


OK - I'm done. Now time for you to put your money where your mouth
is
and demonstrate that all of those are false.


Done.

Your turn.

The reason I chose the quotes I did was because I knew you *couldn't*
prove them. The best you could possibly do is argue the case, but
theyr'e actually unprovable, so I couldn't lose.

Thanks for playing the Self-Defeating Game, though.




--
Steve - www.digitalradiotech.co.uk - Digital Radio News & Info

The adoption of DAB was the most incompetent technical
decision ever made in the history of UK broadcasting:
http://www.digitalradiotech.co.uk/da...ion_of_dab.htm