[Someone in a Facebook group asked me more or less the question below.]<\/p>\n
TK, how do you feel about ‘high resolution’ digital audio? Can you hear the difference between 16\/44.1 and 24\/96??<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n I have not seen any formal, properly designed experimental\/testing data which demonstrates the ability of adult humans to hear sounds in free air<\/em>\u00a0(as opposed to bone conduction, which has been explored as part of hearing assistance R&D) significantly higher than the commonly accepted nominal bound of human hearing (20 Hz – 20 kHz) and have never seen credible scientific evidence presented of outliers who could hear above 22 kHz.<\/p>\n (There is a study by a Japanese researcher, Oohashi, that produced experimental data suggesting a respondent in their testing, as i recall it, did show such outlying capability, but that study’s methodology was criticized as compromised in peer review. As far as I know, that finding has never been replicated.)<\/p>\n There is certainly no evidential reason I know of to think there is any widespread ability to hear above the scientifically accepted human threshold.<\/p>\n So, what do we make of people who claim they can hear performance differences at high sample rates on a given converter– of whom there are quite many?<\/strong><\/p>\n The first and most ‘obvious’ factor in the common view of perceptual scientists is the old experimental bugaboo, cognitive bias. Cognitive bias can manifest in a number of forms, most prominently, as confirmation bias (the so-called placebo effect).<\/p>\n Of course, no one likes to be told they are imagining perceptions, particularly perceptions they believe set them apart from the common ability — but confirmation bias of this nature is extremely well documented<\/em>\u00a0in the scientific literature and has been studied extensively.<\/p>\n It is the fundamental reason that perceptual testing is virtually always done in double bind conditions to prevent extraneous cues that can influence the subject to believe one way or the other.<\/p>\n Fundamentally, we humans did not evolve to be rational creatures who innately<\/em>\u00a0analyze the world through logic. (Logical analysis and reasoning are essentially learned capabilities.)<\/p>\n On the contrary, humans, like other animals, evolved in such a way as to facilitate their survival in a primordial wilderness, making snap decisions based on heuristic shortcuts in order to be able to respond to immediate threats in their environment.<\/p>\n BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE…<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n There is a substantial body of unscientific (but quite sincere) assertions by a number of fairly experienced practitioners of audio recording who have claimed to be able to tell the difference between sample rates in their recording and playback systems.<\/p>\n This is not necessarily suggestive that these people are imagining their ability to differentiate!<\/p>\n The most commonly asserted, scientifically credible reason is that different ADC\/DAC devices can be demonstrated to perform with varying sonic characteristics at different sample rates<\/strong> — characteristics that CAN manifest in the nominal audible range — in large part because of differences in anti-alias filter design and application at different sample rates. (Judging from anecdotal evidence, this was probably a bigger factor in early converter designs. However\u00a0the rise of multi-bit over-sampling in modern converter design has generally greatly lessened perceivable differences between well-designed converters.)<\/span><\/p>\n So, it is, indeed, entirely possible<\/em> that a recordist or audiophile might be able to perceive performance characteristic differences in a given converter operating at different sample rates.<\/strong> This, however, can be explained without having to resort to overthrowing scientifically accepted nominal frequency bounds of human hearing.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" [Someone in a Facebook group asked me more or less the question below.] TK, how do you feel about ‘high resolution’ digital audio? Can you hear the difference between 16\/44.1 and 24\/96?? I have not seen any formal, properly designed experimental\/testing data which demonstrates the ability of adult humans to hear sounds in free air\u00a0(as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tkmajor.com\/tk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tkmajor.com\/tk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tkmajor.com\/tk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tkmajor.com\/tk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tkmajor.com\/tk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=764"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.tkmajor.com\/tk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":783,"href":"https:\/\/www.tkmajor.com\/tk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764\/revisions\/783"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tkmajor.com\/tk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tkmajor.com\/tk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tkmajor.com\/tk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}