naturerecordists
[Top] [All Lists]

1. Re: Olympus LS-14 initial thoughts

Subject: 1. Re: Olympus LS-14 initial thoughts
From: "Scott Fraser" scottbfraser
Date: Thu Jan 10, 2013 10:13 am ((PST))
<  > Still, Sony held out for a higher rate since psychoacoustic research had 
shown that frequencies well above the so-called 20 KHz maximum affected one's 
impression of a sound. (I additionally recall they used solo piano as a test 
case.) <

Audio mythology, I suspect. The only research I've seen on that was 
questionable. I'm ready to be corrected if you have the studies. >

I read the research & communicated briefly with a prof at Cal Tech who was 
doing extended bandwidth studies based on the spectrum of a trumpet fitted with 
a Harmon mute. He did show that a majority of the energy exists above human 
hearing, & that selectively removing some of those out of band harmonics was 
perceptible to some trained ears. But his agenda was to show the superiority of 
analog over digital, so his methodology seemed suspect to me. 
Rupert Neve used to have a simple, though not scientifically controlled, 
demonstration, which he used as his justification for extended bandwidth needs. 
He would play a sine wave at the upper end of a person's perception, 15kHz or 
maybe higher. The respondent would agree that it was audible. Then Neve played 
a square wave at that same frequency. The harmonics in the square wave would 
obviously all be entirely beyond ones supposed 20kHz limit to perceive. Yet 
invariably the respondents would be able to identify the square wave as audibly 
distinct from the sine wave, even though theory would tell us that only the 
fundamental (a sine wave) of the square wave should be audible. Neve arrived at 
this test after an engineer told him that one module on a Neve desk was 
malfunctioning compared to the others. The engineer could hear a difference in 
that channel, & nobody else could. Tests revealed that that channel was 
oscillating at something like 60kHz. Perhaps it's audio mythology, but having 
come from the mouth of Rupert Neve I'm inclined to give it credence.

Scott Fraser








<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>
Admin

The University of NSW School of Computer and Engineering takes no responsibility for the contents of this archive. It is purely a compilation of material sent by many people to the naturerecordists mailing list. It has not been checked for accuracy nor its content verified in any way. If you wish to get material removed from the archive or have other queries about the archive e-mail Andrew Taylor at this address: andrewt@cse.unsw.EDU.AU