In rec.audio.tech David Looser wrote:
"Steven Sullivan" wrote in message
...
In rec.audio.tech David Looser wrote:

I would be astonished if anyone could tell the difference between an
original 24-bit digitisation and a 16-bit one when digitising vinyl.

You must not visit 'audiophile' forums much. Such claims are routine
-- as is the claim that neither digitization will sound as good as the
vinyl. They';re never backed up with anything like hard evidence, of
course
but they're not at all uncommon. So if you ever feel like being thus
astonished,
or perhaps depressed, visit audioasylum.com or stevehoffman.tv


I try not to. I can only take so much of people obsessing over the
improvement in sound quality they get by replacing the mains leads with
silver-plated wire, or changing the make of GZ32 rectifier used, or some
other minor (but usually expensive) alteration.

IMO if a difference doesn't show up in a DBT it doesn't exist, whatever the
audiophiles may claim. But if you've just bought an expensive new gizmo of
course it's going to sound better *to you*.


IF an audiophile makes a claim of a certain difference, and then cannot
pass a DBT, then I consider it unlikely that he actually heard one.

As DBTs are scientific measures, with results analysed in terms of
probability, they never 'prove' in the vernacular sense, that no
difference could possibly exist. Science doesn't require that level of
'proof' anyway, to draw a reasonable conclusion. But 'audiophile' tend to
misconstrue this to mean that it's still likely that someone else could
hear a difference. IN fact, we don't know whether it's *likely*. We just
know that it is not ruled out. There is a huge difference there, one that
audiophiles gloss over when they criticize DBTs (and science
generally)--which they do with mind-numbing regularity on such forums.


I'm no longer astonished at the claims made in such forums, but it would be
straightforward to mount a DBT of CD transfers from vinyl made using 16 and
24 bit ADCs (everything else identical of course, including ADC
architecture). If the DBT showed a clear preference for the 24-bit version I
would be astonished, and withdraw my comments.

IIRC Bob Katz , a highly tech-savvy mastering engineer, has done REdbook
vs hi-rez rate comparisons with subjects in the engineering community, and
found that any differences were down to filters, not the rates themselves.
More recently, E. Brad Meyer and David Moran in JAES published results of
a long term, multi-subject, multi-gear blind comparison of SACD vs SACD
downconverted to Redbook rates, and found that even 'golden ear' listeners
cannot tell the difference, unless playback levels are very high.



___
-S
"As human beings, we understand the world through simile, analogy,
metaphor, narrative and, sometimes, claymation." - B. Mason