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Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Fri May 02, 2014 4:23 pm
by Malcolm Boyce
I don't even know where to begin... How did this even get printed in a national magazine in 2013?

http://aaroncollier.canadianmusician.co ... mple-rate/

Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2014 12:56 pm
by Mathieu Benoit
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Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Mon May 05, 2014 1:02 pm
by Mathieu Benoit
Malcolm Boyce wrote:I don't even know where to begin... How did this even get printed in a national magazine in 2013?

http://aaroncollier.canadianmusician.co ... mple-rate/



Wait, I just realized who wrote that. Wow.

Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2014 5:22 pm
by macrae11
Yeah I was actually going to send Aaron an email after I read that a while back, but then didn't know what good would come of it.

Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Wed May 07, 2014 11:30 pm
by Mathieu Benoit
macrae11 wrote:Yeah I was actually going to send Aaron an email after I read that a while back, but then didn't know what good would come of it.


Yeah, what is the point? I stopped arguing with people about their disillusions a few months ago. I feel much better letting people do whatever kind of crazy comes to mind. As long as they are not doing it on my property, I strongly encourage them to continue to living their truthiness.

Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2014 8:49 am
by macrae11
Well Aaron's a pretty rational guy and I'm sure it's just a misunderstanding on his part. I don't really know him anymore but he's a cool guy and a great musician. I know I've said stupid stuff in a classroom full of people before inadvertently and had to go back and correct myself. It sucks but I'd rather have the record correct and look a bit dumb than to spread misinformation.

Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2014 9:20 am
by Christian LeBlanc
How much of it was good, and how much goes off the rails? I was digging and understanding the visual representation. Would a sine wave at 440 Hz still be inaudible if the sample rate was 440Hz, as per the first example?

Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2014 11:31 am
by macrae11
In this specific example it would be inaudible but not for the reasons implied. To give another example, if the sample rate was lets say 800Hz and there was no proper anti-aliasing filter involved you would end up with an alias frequency of 360Hz. To figure this out you just subtract the input frequency from the sampling rate x an integer that will raise the sampling rate above the input frequency. For example in this case it would (800 x 1)-440=360. This is the very simple version but there are also a series of harmonics created above the fundamental that are more complex.

With the original example where the input frequency is exactly at the sampling frequency you would get an alias at 0Hz. You would get some amount of DC offset but it would be inaudible. You can test this in your DAW if you have a simple signal generator and some method of reducing the sample rate. Lofi by Avid or Bitcrusher by Apple are two plugins that can do this.

Simple breakdown, any digital sampling system can theoretically perfectly capture and frequency less than half of it's sampling rate, also known as the Nyquist frequency. However no matter how high we raise the sampling rate it doesn't increase the resolution on the lower frequencies at all, it just extends the high frequency capability of the system. So 440 Hz doesn't sound any different when sampled at 8kHz or 44.1kHz or 384kHz because it's below the Nyquist frequency of all the systems. Theoretically of course. There are other practical implementation issues that can come into play when operating at different sampling rates.

Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Thu May 08, 2014 1:27 pm
by Malcolm Boyce
Explaining the "fundamentals" of digital audio without even mentioning Nyquist is always a bad sign. It is pretty much the first thing you learn when looking at the basics of how sampling audio works. This article demonstrates the author's complete ignorance of the basics, and it makes me cringe to think of the number of people who read stuff like this and help perpetuate the myths of how "digital" works.

Making a mistake while teaching is one thing, but having the entire explanation being rooted in a general misunderstanding, and using a convoluted, round about way to "teach" that is the worst form of misleading.

I understand this isn't a "technical" publication, but...

Mathieu Benoit wrote:
macrae11 wrote:Yeah I was actually going to send Aaron an email after I read that a while back, but then didn't know what good would come of it.


Yeah, what is the point? I stopped arguing with people about their disillusions a few months ago. I feel much better letting people do whatever kind of crazy comes to mind. As long as they are not doing it on my property, I strongly encourage them to continue to living their truthiness.
I know what you mean about letting people go about their business with their version of craziness, but this kind of "paper" has the unfortunate ability to head newbs in the wrong direction because of it's affiliation with a fairly substantial publication. This was printed last year, and I hope someone has dropped a message to get some kind of rebuttal in the works.

Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2014 10:25 am
by Mathieu Benoit
Malcolm Boyce wrote:I know what you mean about letting people go about their business with their version of craziness, but this kind of "paper" has the unfortunate ability to head newbs in the wrong direction because of it's affiliation with a fairly substantial publication. This was printed last year, and I hope someone has dropped a message to get some kind of rebuttal in the works.


Maybe but I own a house now, I barely have time to police my own kids let alone anyone elses... I am really feeling this adult thing.

Andrew on the other hand has fewer excuses. Unless he is too busy practicing bass now.

Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2014 12:31 pm
by Malcolm Boyce
Mathieu Benoit wrote:....Andrew on the other hand has fewer excuses. Unless he is too busy practicing bass now.

Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2014 3:06 pm
by macrae11
Mathieu Benoit wrote:
Malcolm Boyce wrote:I know what you mean about letting people go about their business with their version of craziness, but this kind of "paper" has the unfortunate ability to head newbs in the wrong direction because of it's affiliation with a fairly substantial publication. This was printed last year, and I hope someone has dropped a message to get some kind of rebuttal in the works.


Maybe but I own a house now, I barely have time to police my own kids let alone anyone elses... I am really feeling this adult thing.

Andrew on the other hand has fewer excuses. Unless he is too busy practicing bass now.


oddly enough I did pick up the bass for a few hours yesterday for the first time in probably years.

If we were to compare time schedules over the last month I don't know that the excuses would seem so lopsided. Got to see my wife this week for a change, so that was nice.

Re: Digital Music: Misunderstanding The Fundamentals

PostPosted: Fri May 09, 2014 3:07 pm
by macrae11
Malcolm Boyce wrote:
Mathieu Benoit wrote:....Andrew on the other hand has fewer excuses. Unless he is too busy practicing bass now.

Love Nathan East. Wish they'd turn down the snare verb though.