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From: ark@rabbit.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.audio
Subject: "get that digital crap out of here"
Message-ID: <2233@rabbit.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Dec-83 08:49:33 EST
Article-I.D.: rabbit.2233
Posted: Thu Dec  1 08:49:33 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 2-Dec-83 08:02:54 EST
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill
Lines: 30

There is an obvious experiment to try.

Several people, Sony among them, now make gadgets to turn a video recorder
into a digital audio recorder.  Take your favorite super-duper analog program
source: LP12/Asak/Ittok, Studer half-track deck playing live master tape
at 30 IPS, what have you.  Copy from said program source onto digital tape.

Now for the playback.  Run the original source and the digital copy in
parallel, making sure that the levels are matched to within 0.1 dB.
Give the listener a pair of switches:  one goes from one source to the
other, the other does noting but interrupt the signal for a few milliseconds.
The switch box should be wired so that not even the experimenter knows
which switch is witch.  A single listener should be left alone in a room
through the entire running time of the program material.  The listener's
goal is to decide which switch is which.

Repeat this experiment several times for each of several listeners, with
several different program sources.  The listeners should be people like
the editor of the Absolute Sound.

This is the simplest experiment I can think of which would be able to establish
whether or not something is "wrong" with digital recording.  In particular,
the double-blind switching and the 0.1 dB level matching are ESSENTIAL.

Has anyone done such an experiment?  Care to point us at the results?

Some of you may recall that I posted a note several months ago describing
an experiment very similar to this one that demonstrated that listeners
were unable to distinguish between the sound of different power amplifiers
once the level and frequency response were accurately matched.