Talk:Audiophile

What He Said

This is in dire need of some modicum of objectivity. As it stands, it appears the article has been written by an audiophile - approaching it in the same way an external commentator would approach, say, UFO enthusiasts, is likely to yield better results. Also, whilst I'm at it, the stuff about vinyl being technically better is horribly wrong. For starters, 192/24 has no known advantage...I'm getting sucked in... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2.103.222.84 (talk) 08:00, 21 February 2012 (UTC)

After stumbling upon this article, I found myself asking the question: is this article about audiophiles? As it seems to me, it is an article about high-quality sound reproduction - something that would (if it were a better article) fit in an article about Hi-Fi. Key questions (what people are audiophiles (i.e., male 30-50 y old), information about their microculture, their impact on the music industry, etc) are left unanswered, and instead we hear a bunch of audiophiles discussing what they kind of equipment they would like. I would suggest putting this article up for a rewrite - back to stub - because everything relevant in this article is explained more coherent in High fidelity - where it belongs.Sanchises (talk) 18:19, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Metacriticism First

It's funny how at the top of this page we read "This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject." Then the next thing you read (well, after this) is...a long drawn-out discussion of the topic.

Here's the bottom line: This is a terrible article that doesn't even come CLOSE to a NPOV on the subject. While it is inevitable that "hobby horse" topics like audiophilia, or Operating System wars, or discussions of high-performance motor vehicles, are going to engender a huge debate wherever their proponents gather, this article doesn't even make it through the first sentence before it devolves into a string of the writer's opinions on the subject.

Trash it and start over, says I. I came here looking for information, not the opinion of whomever was the last to edit this worthless article.

Oh, and one last thing: Seeing as how almost no one here felt it necessary to obey the first rule at the top of this page, I took it upon myself to ignore the second. B. Polhemus (talk) 04:33, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Done, I think Tim Bray (talk) 21:23, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

The Phase Factor: why vinyl sound(ed) better than CDs, or the digital audio myth

Hello, Excuse my poor english, but here are some basic technical arguments to sustain that, yes vinyls do convey more hearable information than CDs. I recommend to the person above saying that ~40KHz digitally sampled audio is better than high quality vinyl to please listen carefully to a good vinyl record (with an open mind, no "technical" prejudices) and secondly to please consider phase, in order to discuss the theory. Frequency is one of the several audio signal components that humans perceive. And yes, any adult human being hardly perceives a pure sine above 18kHz. But please recall that the phase energy of frequencies above the 20kHz threshold can be perceived and that phase information is one of the key factors when trying to achieve a high quality (e.g audiophile) hearing experience. This is why standards have now been set up to 192 kHz sampling rates for high quality audio; this sampling rate has not been set just to accomodate for a possible bat-like audiophile, able to hear up to 96kHz frequencies ... no human can ever perceive those frequencies per se : but we do perceive the phase energy they convey. A 40 kHz sampled CD record will not reproduce the original phase information that old analog vinyl records captured, for the benefit of quality audiophile equipment.

In summary, the sampling rate used for standard commercial CDs alters hearable phase information previously left unmodified in analog recordings. This is why audiophiles say that CDs deteriorate their musical experience compared to their previous vinyl records. Audiophiles would have loved CDs, if they had help to achieve a quality musical experience. And it is my personal opinion that the musical industry marketing has succeeded to propagate the digital quality myth for years, with so-called "technical" facts (obviously subject to obsolescence), neglecting the psychoacoustic hearing experience in favor of other practical and, yes, commercial factors. At that time, audiophiles were the only community to stand up against the technical "evidence" commonly accepted by most, based only on their perception. And perception is the ultimate evidence, as history shows (- possibly link to the psychoacoustics article in wikipedia - need further research to find appropriate articles in english). Our knowledge on the way humans perceive sounds, in particular music, is increasing, partly thanks to audiophiles. It is true that digital audio has fantastic capacities that analog did not have, but musical quality unfortunately was not one of them, up to these last years. Cheers [Pablo, from Paris, France, on Feb 12th 2007]

Please define "phase energy"; this is not a term I'm familiar with. Sorry, it sounds like mumbo-jumbo (i.e., bullshit) to me. And I am one of those who prefers vinyl to CDs; I find your explanation lacking in credibility, though.

By the way, your English is not too bad. I've read much worse—from native English speakers! +ILike2BeAnonymous 00:42, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Oops. Sorry about the mumbo-jumbo. Tried to correct some, but I realize it is way beyond my courage to further contribute, given the effort it took me to put together a few thoughts in english. I'll give it another try when I'll be retired. In the meantime, may I suggest psychoacoustics? Thanks to all those devoting valuable time to share knowledge. Pablo

I looked at that article, but it says nothing about "phase energy". It does mention phase aspects of sound. Would be nice if someone who actually knew something about this subject (what a concept!) could go over the material you added. +ILike2BeAnonymous 18:34, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

Pablo's contribution is an example of typical audiophile beliefs and, as such, would seem a fair contribution. In a scientific sense it is pretty much nonsense although there are faint echoes of technical issues concerning filters with sharp cut-offs in frequency domain introducing ringing in the time domain. Of course, this needs putting into perspective when compared to the substantial and clearly audible degradation of recording onto vinyl.HonestGuv 16:56, 10 March 2007 (UTC)

Eh, I suspect the original author may not have had an ideal grasp over the terminoloy. The phase of a sine wave is the offset from 0 to the beginning of a sine wave cycle. The phase cannot be more than the length of a single cycle of the sine wave, so a signal's phase is often described as it's angular displacement in terms of sin, cos. For example, phase difference between sin(x) and cos(x) is 90 degrees. The phase of a signal's component sinusoids cannot have their phase offset zero'd and continue to resemble the original signal. Pablo, please try to explain your assertion again. -Frank

66.227.140.8 (talk) 20:13, 30 May 2010 (UTC)

This is a three-year-old discussion, but I wanted to rebut your assertion that "phase cannot be more than the length of a single cycle of the sine wave". It certainly can! Phases of greater than 360 degrees are commonly seen, especially when examining high frequencies in relation to low frequencies. Frank is wrong, and Pablo is not clear enough in his explanation of phase to be of any concern to this article. Binksternet (talk) 15:31, 31 May 2010 (UTC)

This argument is based on the recognition that many sounds are not sine waves, even if they can be mathematically equivalent to a series of sine waves added together. In a perfectly linear system you can say that a wave eg a square wave can be analysed as a series of sine waves but real natural systems, eg human hearing, are non-linear and so this decomposition is only an approximation.This is why he talks about phase, eg the square wave as a series of sine waves, if they are added with different phases the waveform will not be the same. Since vinyl reproduces the shape of the waveform he is arguing that it reproduces the sound better. Of course he is not considering whether the electronics in the original recording process could have introduced phase errors or that even if they were recorded accurately that the needle could physically move with the speed required for perfect reproduction equivalent to the very high sampling rates he mentions. Kwenchin (talk) 22:00, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

That would only hold true for lossy compression. Lossless audio compression stores the waveform exactly - although at a sampled interval and with quantised values. The argument appears to be about digital vs vinyl in general, not specific methods of digital audio encoding. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 46.208.116.96 (talk) 23:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

Is 100% accurate sound reproduction what audiophiles REALLY want?

I've also cross-posted this question to Analog_sound_vs._digital_sound, since it is not necessarily restricted to the analog vs digital debate. By considering many of the arguments I've personally read and heard from time to time regarding not only digital vs analog but also e.g. the use of valve amplifiers, it seems that what "true audiophiles" are after is NOT a 100% perfect and repeatable reproduction of a recorded signal (something which is, by its very definition, already possible (and, unlike audio, undisputed) with digital technology in other domains such as control systems, video, etc. Rather, they seem to be after a subjectively "pleasurable" reproduction of audio, which does not always (or never?) equate to "accurate signal reproduction", which means that e.g. certain kinds of distortion can be acceptable and even desired. Could this be elaborated and eventually integrated into the article(s)? EpiVictor (talk) 19:30, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

This article has enough conjecture already. What it needs are more cites of expert opinion. If you can find a verifiable source that backs your point of view, bring it into the article. My subjective opinion is that there are more points of view out there than just the one you mention, even among a notional group called "true audiophiles", whoever that may be.

I'm deleting your cross-posting. This one serves well enough. Binksternet (talk) 20:18, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Well that's ONE big problem right there. What is an expert? If you treat this whole deal as objective, then it comes down to numbers and arguing measurablity. If you open the door to a subjective treatment, then you're stuck with the mess from a bunch of conflicting opinions handed down from on high by self-proclaimed experts. From what I've seen, this is an underlying issue affecting public perception. The public largely presumes an objective stance, while audiophiles take a subjective position. If you want insight into this, read through some Stereophile articles. While they mention specs in detail, the reviewer's recommendation is solely subjective. 76.203.139.210 (talk) 12:13, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

WAF

The cited reference saying that 1989 was the first known instance of WAF (Wife Acceptance Factor) is wrong. The underlying concept was discussed in HiFi magazines of the 1950s and 1960s, but those articles remain largely undigitized. Even by searching the digitized articles, it is easy to find an exact match for WAF earlier than 1989. How about Larry Greenhill writing about the Quad ESL-63 loudspeaker in Stereophile, September 1983? Greenhill says he heard the term first from Glenn Hart, but that the term was coined by Lewis Lipnick. Binksternet (talk) 13:03, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

The Audiophile and his microculture

Economist John D. Branch (2007) interviewed 11 audiophiles several times between July 1998 to February 1999 and wrote a useful paper about the audiophile microculture, his paper is available on Google Books.[1] Contributors should read his paper (and others like it) and incorporate key findings into the article. I think the article would be greatly improved and become more encyclopedic if certain sections written from a more sociological perspective, rather then from an insiders viewpoint. --Diamonddavej (talk) 21:09, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Couldn't agree more. A casual XNG "pop culture audiophile" yields reams of citation ore. Too, it's classic technology adoption cycle (Innovators, Early Adopters, Early Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards), so let's focus on that metric. It starts emic and segues to etic...kencf0618 (talk) 15:13, 22 October 2024 (UTC)

XKCD Audiophiles image

http://xkcd.com/841/ Maybe this could be used in the article to illustrate the typical Audiophiles vs Non-Audiophiles? It illustrates the issue, double morality/hypocrisy, while pointing out the humorous arguments that often ensue. As you can see at the bottom of the strip, the artist does allow hotlinking, so if someone asked him he/she would probably be ok with it being used in this article and hosted on the wiki under fair use! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.202.212.176 (talk) 00:00, 1 January 2011 (UTC)

What Criticism?

In the Sound Sources section we read,"Newer formats such as DVD-Audio and Super Audio Compact Disc (SACD), with sampling rates of 88.2 kHz or 96 kHz or even higher, have been developed in an attempt to address this criticism." Confusingly, no clear criticism addressed by these higher sampling rates is apparent in the previous sentences. Perhaps it was there but dropped in a later edit. I assume the criticism is that the Nyquist limit is insufficient to avoid aliasing distortion or something along those lines and if so I wish a knowledgeable editor would add/restore this missing piece of the puzzle. —Blanchette (talk) 09:38, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

A year later, I fixed this one Tim Bray (talk) 18:37, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

No discussion of "Burn-in"?

From what I've seen in the audiophile community, there is an awful lot of discussion about "burn-in", or when you let your equipment run for a lengthy period of time before (some believe) it achieves its best sound, be it speakers, headphones, or even power cables. Why is there no mention of this in the article? I personally think it's a bit silly, but it is a common practice in the audiophile community. --141.219.20.207 (talk) 22:17, 23 April 2011 (UTC)

Interestingly, the very same belief is held by acoustic guitar aficionados, who believe that some amount of time must elapse before the guitar "plays in", allowing the grain of the guitar's top to loosen and achieve it's best tone. Further interest might be had in one very common method of speeding up this process: setting the guitar in front of a stereo loudspeaker, turning up the volume, and allowing the guitar to spend a goodly amount of time - some say days - vibrating sympathetically to the audio system's playback! B. Polhemus (talk) 04:39, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

Here is an article explaining the need to allow time for your mains fuses to burn in. Audiophiles prefer these gold plated, silver wired mains fuses because of their better sound, but they take 3 days to burn in. http://www.amr-audio.co.uk/large_image/HFS%20AMR%20Fuse%20review.pdf?option=com_shows&task=detail&Itemid=31&id=20 Kwenchin (talk) 22:09, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

CD Lathe and other Audiophile Innovations

There needs to be a section of gadgets to improve the HIFI experience. Such as the CD lathe, this allows you to polish the edges of your CDs and so avoid light scatter which causes data errors. http://www.audiodesksysteme.de/index.php?kat=10_17_6 Kwenchin (talk) 22:16, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Thinking about major surgery

I haven't visited here in a while, but at least the top section is in need of major surgery, multiple paragraphs of windy uncited prose. The introduction could be reduced to a couple of paragraphs, which say - Audiophiles are people who are interested in high-quality audio reproduction - The interest extends to recording techniques, data storage, and playback technology - Playback technology includes CDs, turntables, yadda yadda - It is acknowledged that it is difficult to recreate the experience of live music in a good acoustic setting in an audio playback system That's all. Tim Bray (talk) 19:31, 24 February 2012 (UTC)

Did it. Front section is drastically shorter, some others are greatly tightened up. Tim Bray (talk) 04:56, 25 February 2012 (UTC)

Kill It With Fire

This article is, from top to bottom, nearly a completely hopeless pile of crap.

I have added a few tags on specific sections that require citations, and removed some of the more egregious "Because I said so!" statements of pure opinion. But it's far from being acceptable. Nandesuka (talk) 10:03, 24 June 2012 (UTC)

It was entirely inappropriate for you to remove huge chunks of the article. Marking "citation needed" is perfectly appropriate. However, there are a few sections tagged for citations that are stuffed with wikilinks, and basically pull together well-supported (in the linked articles) statements about how components fit together and so on. It's not appropriate to go replicate all the citations from those articles, so in those cases I'm removing the tag.

How to cite existence of product classes?

Article says:

Audiophiles use a wide variety of accessories and fine-tuning techniques, sometimes referred to as "tweaks," to improve the sound of their systems. These include filters to clean the electricity[11], equipment racks to isolate components from floor vibrations, specialty power and audio cables, loudspeaker stands (and footers to isolate speakers from stands), and room treatments.

etc etc. This in fact true; type the product names in to a search engine, the Internet is full of ads for these things. Type the word "tweaks" in, and the usage of that word to describe weird/eccentric/counterintuitive product classes is painfully obvious. But we've got a citation-needed tag and I’m a bit puzzled about how to deal with it. Surely it’s not reasonable to use a Google/Bing search as a citation? I have looked around and totally failed to find a reputable publication that I can cite as saying "the following product classes exist", probably because it seems too obvious for anyone to say.

NwAvGuy - The Audio Genius Who Vanished

An audiophile also includes DIY (do it yourself) to build the best audio equipment. FYI. • Sbmeirow • Talk • 23:41, 22 March 2014 (UTC)

• NwAvGuy: The Audio Genius Who Vanished, Febuary 14, 2014. Hacker News.
• NwAvGuy Blog, last post on May 9, 2012
• Objective Desktop Amp & DAC
• ODAC, O2/ODAC Combo

cn in final sentence in the controversies

The final sentence in the controversies section has just had a cn added

"There is disagreement on how equipment testing should be conducted and as to its utility. Audiophile publications frequently describe differences in quality which are not detected by standard audio system measurements and double blind testing, claiming that they perceive differences in audio quality which cannot be measured by current instrumentation,[23] and cannot be detected by listeners if listening conditions are controlled,[24] but without providing an explanation for those claims.[citation needed]"

I appreciate the frustration but how the hell do you add a citation for an absence of explanation in a source? If there IS an explanation in refs 23 and 24 then the last clause is incorrect, but if there is no explanation it is correct.

Greglocock (talk) 01:32, 12 May 2015 (UTC)

What is the subject of this article?

I suspect most readers will agree this not a good article. I cannot see how it can be fixed until there is agreement on what the term audiophile means and hence what the article is about. The current definition is:

"An audiophile is a person enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction."

This definition is clearly wrong because many people that call themselves audiophiles are enthusiastic about valve amplifiers, record players, speaker cables, small monitors, and a range of other home audio equipment that is not "high fidelity" (well defined term) although it could be classified as "high end" (term for audiophile hardware).

If the article is to embrace the difference between high fidelity and audiophile then it should be included in the definition in the first paragraph. Although the term had been around earlier, it was embraced in the 1970s by home audio enthusiasts and part of the industry that wished to separate from the previous "high fidelity" view based on technical performance. It soon came to dominate the home audio press and much of the equipment available in specialist home audio shops. Is this the subject of this article?Tmpname (talk) 11:28, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

First, it would be good practice to get a Wikipedia account if you're going to get into this sort of discussion; in the interim, can I call you “46.” for short? Anyhow, audiophiles *claim* to be people who are interested in high-fidelity sound, and there was a link there to a citation which supports this assertion. Granted, dictionary.com isn't the best, so if this is a subject of controversy, someone (like me) should add one or two better citations. I think you're making an argument that the claim of interest in high-fidelity is not true, because, per your argument, things like record players and small speakers are by definition not “high-fidelity”. You’re not alone in your opinion, but statements in wikipedia need to be supported by citations. If that is indeed your argument, then you should assemble some good citations, and update the sentence to read something like “An audiophile is a person who claims to be enthusiastic about high-fidelity sound reproduction[1] although that claim is controversial[2].” It’s really bad practice to remove a citation because you disagree with what it says. Tim Bray (talk) 01:07, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the reasoned response which reveals a disagreement about the roles of fact, opinion and citation. If high fidelity follows the meaning of the two words and is not changed to "sounds good to me", "my authority says it is high fidelity" or something similarly audiophile then the interests and hardware of audiophiles make it a fact and not an opinion that the current definition is incorrect. Sorted. Unless of course facts are not to be distinguished from opinion and are to be ranked below a citation regardless of whether what is cited is true or false. Rather discouraging for those in possession of facts about a tricky subject like this one but thanks again for being clear about the process and hence what was likely to happen had I got that userid and started working on the article.Tmpname (talk) 11:28, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I suggest you read up on wiki policies otherwise you are doomed to a frustrating life as an editor. Basically, in this case, a reffed but 'incorrect' definition is better suited to a wiki article than whatever your preferred unreffed definition is. This puts the onus on you to find a reference that supports your preferred definition, or you can attempt to argue on the Talk page. The former is much more likely to succeed. As it happens I more or less agree that the reffed definition is rubbish, it needs replacing by a better reffed definition. I like the ambiguity of this one http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/audiophile Greglocock (talk) 21:58, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Factually incorrect is not better suited to a wiki article. It is the result of a lack of knowledge about the subject and a lack of respect for facts by those that write and defend it. Tim was straightforward about how things work for which I am grateful since it meant I did not spend yesterday afternoon working on this article about an interesting faith-based subject only to be upset by seeing it revert to something like the current form due to not being able to defend facts from citations to scientifically invalid beliefs on the web. I presume the more visible articles within the scepticism project have an army of zealots going into battle for the facts but I am far more interested in working with like-minded people to put together a tricky article. I don't know enough about the history to do it alone hence the original interest in cooperation on wikipedia but now it is apparent why this article is like it is I will have to look elsewhere.

For the record, I changed the definition because it was factually incorrect and not to see my definition replace it. It was changed to effectively "audiophiles are those interested in audiophile equipment" which is factually correct but is clearly unsatisfactory as a definition. I am no longer interested in helping directly but an article is in trouble if it cannot define it's subject in the first sentence or paragraph in this case given the need to explain the ambiguity of the term and what the article will address and what is described elsewhere.Tmpname (talk) 11:28, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I have had a brief browse of the scepticism project and some of the guidance articles which quite happily treated facts as personal beliefs and give suggestions of how to work these conflicting "facts" into articles along the lines suggested by Tim above. This is absurd. Facts are not personal beliefs. Facts are independently verifiable and the same for everybody which is why they should be respected. Citation is a mechanism that may help resolve what is or is not factually correct but it rests on the quality of the source and a degree of common sense by those citing.

In this case the current definition of audiophile has not come from a source with knowledge of the home audio industry and what may or may not be considered audiophile. It has come from a web dictionary. Tim considers it a poor source but a source nonetheless and so, presumably, whether it is correct or not to be irrelevant. Greg recognises the definition to be poor rather than incorrect and would like to use a different one but again from a dictionary site and not one with knowledge of the subject. Tmpname recognises the definition as factually incorrect from knowledge of the subject and that the article must provide a definition itself because the term audiophile is ambiguous. The different definitions in the dictionaries makes this point rather nicely.Tmpname (talk) 11:28, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

TL;DR seriously. Look all you have to do is find a definition you like in ANY source that is likely to qualify as an RS, and put it into the article. Unless it is insane or wp:pointy then I imagine we'll work with it. But what you can't do is decide what YOU think an audiophile is and suppress all other meanings. Frankly your spiels seem to be inclined that way, and that ain't gonna fly. I'd also recommend reading the archives of this page, just to make sure you aren't rehashing old ground. Greglocock (talk) 21:48, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

I think you may have lost the point of my spiel. I read the article, talk page and the archive skipping a few sections before posting here. I am not trying to win my version which I have not written. For example, I did not quote the wikipedia guidelines on citations in the summary section which seems to broadly follow normal practise elsewhere. As you suggested I am leaving an argument in the notes making it clear that the article has a fundamental problem at the definition level never mind the content. It is for others such as yourself and Tim to edit the article. I dipped my toe in the water to see what would happen if I fixed something factually incorrect giving a reason in these notes. I twice got an answer in which factual correctness had no role in determining the resulting content. It is important to me that this is the basis for resolving conflict given the subject itself involves handling many incorrect beliefs such as valve amplifiers being high fidelity. That the reasons given for restoring the incorrect content did not line up with wikipedia guidelines on summary sections was not important to me. I am fairly confident both Tim and yourself would have agreed to a standalone summary section following the wikipedia guidelines had I submitted one along with shifting citations you wished to keep into the content. This never was an issue.

I will end my spiel here. If a need is felt to archive some of this section I would be grateful if you left at least the opening 3 posts which documents a failed attempt to fix the content of the article unlike much of what is above it and in the archive.Tmpname (talk) 11:30, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

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Proposal for inclusion of a subsection on class privilege under the Controversy section

Seems that this talk page has been dormant for years, but I wanted to bring up this point before editing [seeing as I'm a very new editor].

I think it's necessary to discuss class privilege when talking about audiophilia.This professional audio blog posted a great writeup on elitism in the high end audio market, and how mid-market speakers approach top quality. The phenomenon of old, one-percenter, predominantly white men spending upwards of ten grand on their turntable setup is half the story when approaching the audiophile scene. On the other hand, perhaps it would be too commy of me to include this without making the article biased. Thoughts?

I think I'll dig around for more sources and give it a week for anyone to chime in before I go ahead and make a change. FuunnyFaces (talk) 23:14, 23 January 2021 (UTC)

Class privilege

Should this be retitled Random Talking Point or Politics of Envy or First World Problem ? I wish I could unsee that drivel. Greglocock (talk) 21:48, 4 February 2021 (UTC)

oof, hi. maybe you're right but maybe you could tell me what I did wrong instead of saying that my edit was drivel? As I said above, I'm new here, your ego isn't a real welcome gesture FuunnyFaces (talk) 06:28, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Another ed has removed it, for valid reasons, which could be summarised as Don't make stuff up. Greglocock (talk) 08:49, 5 February 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Reading Culture

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 18 January 2022 and 11 May 2022. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): RTThai (article contribs).

Sampling rate

"The 44.1 kHz sampling rate of the CD format, in theory, restricts CD information losses to above the theoretical upper-frequency limit of human hearing – 20 kHz...."

Wrong.

Sampling rate of a recording being made is how many 'data' points gathered every second digitally to reproduce the original. More data points per second equals more closely it resembles the original. It has got nothing to do with the hearing limit of the human ear. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.166.252.152 (talk) 14:50, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

No, not wrong. Your statement isn't wrong either, but rather irrelevant to the point being made. As it happens 44.1 is a bit low, forcing them to use the infamous brickwall filter, but if you were to run a 96kHz sampling rate signal through the same filter the sound to a human would be identical, and if you filtered it at say 48 kHz using a gentler filter then the average human wouldn't pick the difference - it might be possible for some people to hear artefacts caused by the brickwall, I am not sure. You can do all of these experiments yourself using a program like GNU/Octave to create the sound files and ABX (if it still exists) to do the listening tests. Greglocock (talk) 21:48, 18 January 2024 (UTC)

Wow, you still don't know since you say it is irrelevant. The sampling rate has got -nothing- to do with filters, or human hearing limits or any other pseudo-scientific wording. It is only the amount of times a file (a recording) is processed when making a copy ...either the DAC within any audio equipment reproduces the sound with a certain 'times per second' so that you can hear it OR if a copy of the original is made so that the copy sounds the best it can be. Thats it! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.166.252.152 (talk) 10:53, 19 January 2024 (UTC)