Category Archives: Audio

Posted on August 19, 2012 by Stephen Dawson

If you like learning more about sound and music, and the scientific basis thereof, may I suggest subscribing to the podcast Scopes Monkey Choir. It’s about 40 minutes long each week or two and covers things from (most recently) how … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Misc | Leave a comment

The Loudness War

Posted on August 12, 2012 by Stephen Dawson

Here’s a brief video on how processing of sound in order to make it louder also makes it worse: (The clip isn’t appearing in Preview, so here’s the direct link.) The example is somewhat overdone koupit-pilulky.com , but there’s nothing … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Compression | Leave a comment

Are songs getting ‘louder’?

Posted on August 2, 2012 by Stephen Dawson

Statistician William M Briggs features on his excellent blog an occasional series of posts dedicated to proving that modern music is crap 2pharmaceuticals.com , at least in comparison to older music. Although there are hints that The Beatles represent the … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, CD, Compression, Music | Leave a comment

Rocks and the people who sell them

Posted on June 24, 2012 by Stephen Dawson

I was going to write something nasty about a device called The Exorcist from a company called The Gryphon. But I’ve had mine for quite a few years, so I thought I’d better check if it was still a current … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Mysticism | 2 Comments

Do manufacturers listen to their home theatre receivers?

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Stephen Dawson

I’ve just drafted yet another review of yet another home theatre receiver which, goddam it, buggers up the sound! The reason? Supposedly clever sound processors from third party suppliers. With this one it was Dolby Volume. With another couple I’ve … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Testing | 19 Comments

Two3 many bits used to encode sound? I say yes!

Posted on April 15, 2012 by Stephen Dawson

A while back I analysed the lossless audio encoding of a few hundred Blu-ray discs. The aim? To find out how efficient lossless compression of 24 bit audio was compared to 16 bit. The results were not entirely unexpected. The … Continue reading →

Posted in Admin, Audio, How Things Work, Imperfect perception | Leave a comment

Money for Air

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Stephen Dawson

What do you reckon, good value for money?

Posted in Audio, Equipment | 1 Comment

Can you even hear SACD/DVD Audio improvements?

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

Incidentally, while researching my piece on SACD, I came across a recent study in which double blind tests were conducted to determine whether people could pick between SACDs and DVD Audio discs on the one hand, and the same discs … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Codecs, Music, Mysticism | 2 Comments

I Hate Direct Stream Digital

Posted on December 20, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

Direct Stream Digital (DSD) is the digital format used by Sony in the Super Audio CD (SACD). But SACD is only one form in which it is used. I seem to remember that back in the day, Sony was promoting … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, Codecs, Music | 8 Comments

Testing the tools

Posted on December 5, 2011 by Stephen Dawson

I had this clever idea, or so I thought, in which I’d test some CDs and compare them to each other. Of course, CDs aren’t comparable — unless they are of the same music. The idea was: when a new … Continue reading →

Posted in Audio, CD, Testing | Leave a comment