From Newsgroup: comp.arch

Terje Mathisen <terje.mathisen@tmsw.no> writes:

MitchAlsup wrote:

BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> posted:

Just randomly thinking again about some things I noticed with audio at
low sample rates.

For baseline, can note, basic sample rates:
44100: Standard, sounds good, but bulky

No it does not sound "good" on a system that accurately reproduces
22KHz; like systems with electrostatic speakers covering the high
end of the audio spectrum.

Might sound "good" to someone who does not know what it is supposed
to actually sound like, though.

My ears are not good enough to notice the difference between CD
quality, AAC/high sample rate MP3/ogg vorbis/etc, but according to my
savant (?) cousin who could listen to a 16 min piece of music once and
then write down the score for all the instruments, none of them sound
like live, but they are close enough that he can listen and internally translate to what it would have sounded like in a concert.

Anyone with ordinary hearing can tell the difference between
CD-quality audio and a high-quality analog audio path. Like
what Mitch says, it's all about the phase relationships of
high frequencies. Most people have just never had the
opportunity to listen to high-quality audio (especially
including speakers, but sometimes also other components),
and that fools them into thinking substandard digital
audio (especially CDs, but also others) is okay. To do
a meaningful test needs better equipment than most people
have listened to.
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:

On Sat, 6 Sep 2025 05:28:16 -0500
BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> wrote:

Just randomly thinking again about some things I noticed with audio
at low sample rates.

For baseline, can note, basic sample rates:
44100: Standard, sounds good, but bulky
32000: Sounds good
22050: Moderate
16000: OK, Modest size, acceptable quality.
Seems like best tradeoff if not going for high quality.
11025: Poor, muffled.
8000: Very poor, speech almost unintelligible (normally).
But, it is seeming like a "weird hack" may exist here.

8000 x 8bit (mu-law in USA, A-law in majority of the world) was a
standard sampling rate for digital back ends of analog wired telephony
for more than 50 years. I didn't check, but would assume that it still
is.
Most people founded it quite intelligible.

Yes but bit rate isn't the whole story. First the measure is not
"good sound" but only "understandable sound". Second telephony
does frequency filtering in a very different way than digital
audio does. Voices on phones are recognizable but still easily
differentiable from the original. Music played via phone-quality
audio sounds terrible.

Certainly more intelligible
than cellular telephony, until less then 20 years ago cellular improved
a little.

Cell phone audio... even today, ick, double ick, and triple ick.
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 1/22/2026 5:31 AM, Tim Rentsch wrote:

Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:

On Sat, 6 Sep 2025 05:28:16 -0500
BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> wrote:

Just randomly thinking again about some things I noticed with audio
at low sample rates.

For baseline, can note, basic sample rates:
44100: Standard, sounds good, but bulky
32000: Sounds good
22050: Moderate
16000: OK, Modest size, acceptable quality.
Seems like best tradeoff if not going for high quality.
11025: Poor, muffled.
8000: Very poor, speech almost unintelligible (normally).
But, it is seeming like a "weird hack" may exist here.

8000 x 8bit (mu-law in USA, A-law in majority of the world) was a
standard sampling rate for digital back ends of analog wired telephony
for more than 50 years. I didn't check, but would assume that it still
is.
Most people founded it quite intelligible.

Yes but bit rate isn't the whole story. First the measure is not
"good sound" but only "understandable sound". Second telephony
does frequency filtering in a very different way than digital
audio does. Voices on phones are recognizable but still easily differentiable from the original. Music played via phone-quality
audio sounds terrible.

In general, A-Law generates better sounding audio.

But, at low sample rates (eg, 8 kHz), I had noted that ADPCM gives more intelligible speech than A-Law, even if the A-Law "sounds nicer".

Like, if you want background music, 8kHz A-Law is OK.

But, to understand what anyone is saying, less ideal IME, as it tends to
be more muffled than what I was getting with ADPCM. Contrast, ADPCM is different, in that while intelligibility is higher, it also has a more "gritty" sound (particularly in variants at 2-bits / sample).

Had also noted:
Low pass filtering reduces "grittiness" by also negatively effects intelligibility;
High pass filtering preserves intelligibility but can cause a more
"tinny" sound (say, if one uses a 2kHz high-pass filter, so that the
ADPCM only really encodes the 2kHz to 4kHz band).


In my past testing, seems like 2kHz to 4kHz is the most important band
for speech intelligibility (at least for me). It is improved with the
4kHz to 8kHz band, but it seems like this is less important.

So, ranking bands for relative importance:
< 500 Hz : Mostly N/A (*)
0.5- 1 kHz: 5th (barely noticable)
1- 2 kHz: 3rd (makes sound "fuller")
2- 4 kHz: 1st
4- 8 kHz: 2nd
8-16 kHz; 4th (small effect)
16-32 kHz: Mostly unnoticable

*: Mostly inaudible as sine waves, but still very audible if some form
of square wave. But, it would seem like I may be "mostly deaf" in this
range (I can detect sounds here more through tactile senses than by
hearing them via ears). This effect though more depends on touching a
surface, and the relative properties of the object in question.


Subjective responses from house-cats do seem to imply that to them there
is a more obvious difference between the original audio and high-pass or band-pass versions.

Like, play a normal version of a song, and they remain calm, but play a
2kHz high-pass version and they dig in their claws and seem displeased (implying a more obvious difference in the sound of the audio than my
own subjective experience).

Certainly more intelligible
than cellular telephony, until less then 20 years ago cellular improved
a little.

Cell phone audio... even today, ick, double ick, and triple ick.

Cell phone audio:
Pretty much unintelligible.

Mostly warbling noises and hiss...


--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch


BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> posted:

On 1/22/2026 5:31 AM, Tim Rentsch wrote:

Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:

On Sat, 6 Sep 2025 05:28:16 -0500
BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> wrote:

Just randomly thinking again about some things I noticed with audio
at low sample rates.

For baseline, can note, basic sample rates:
44100: Standard, sounds good, but bulky
32000: Sounds good
22050: Moderate
16000: OK, Modest size, acceptable quality.
Seems like best tradeoff if not going for high quality.
11025: Poor, muffled.
8000: Very poor, speech almost unintelligible (normally).
But, it is seeming like a "weird hack" may exist here.

8000 x 8bit (mu-law in USA, A-law in majority of the world) was a
standard sampling rate for digital back ends of analog wired telephony
for more than 50 years. I didn't check, but would assume that it still
is.
Most people founded it quite intelligible.

Yes but bit rate isn't the whole story. First the measure is not
"good sound" but only "understandable sound". Second telephony
does frequency filtering in a very different way than digital
audio does. Voices on phones are recognizable but still easily differentiable from the original. Music played via phone-quality
audio sounds terrible.

In general, A-Law generates better sounding audio.

But, at low sample rates (eg, 8 kHz), I had noted that ADPCM gives more intelligible speech than A-Law, even if the A-Law "sounds nicer".

I am not listening for the sound to be good or bad, I am listening
whether {the violin sounds like a violin, the trumpet sounds like a
trumpet, and the drums sound like drums} when listening to them live!

That is what was the hallmark of "Hi Fi" when I started (1965-ish.) -----------------------

In my past testing, seems like 2kHz to 4kHz is the most important band
for speech intelligibility (at least for me). It is improved with the
4kHz to 8kHz band, but it seems like this is less important.

The timber of instruments requires phase accurate reproduction of
frequencies up to at least 15KHz.

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 1/22/26 6:13 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:

The timber of instruments requires phase accurate reproduction of
frequencies up to at least 15KHz.

Define "phase accurate". As in how much phase error at say 20KHz is
acceptable to you. 1 degree? 10?

And how do you maintain that through the signal chain? In, for example, speaker crossover networks.


Instead of chasing performance at frequencies I am increasingly less
able to hear, I went the other way. A subwoofer so that pipe organs, and
other things that reach down to 20Hz, sound impressive.
--
http://davesrocketworks.com
David Schultz
"Gag me with a Smurf"
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 1/22/2026 4:13 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:

BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> posted:

On 1/22/2026 5:31 AM, Tim Rentsch wrote:

Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:

On Sat, 6 Sep 2025 05:28:16 -0500
BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> wrote:

Just randomly thinking again about some things I noticed with audio
at low sample rates.

For baseline, can note, basic sample rates:
44100: Standard, sounds good, but bulky
32000: Sounds good
22050: Moderate
16000: OK, Modest size, acceptable quality.
Seems like best tradeoff if not going for high quality.
11025: Poor, muffled.
8000: Very poor, speech almost unintelligible (normally).
But, it is seeming like a "weird hack" may exist here.

8000 x 8bit (mu-law in USA, A-law in majority of the world) was a
standard sampling rate for digital back ends of analog wired telephony >>>> for more than 50 years. I didn't check, but would assume that it still >>>> is.
Most people founded it quite intelligible.

Yes but bit rate isn't the whole story. First the measure is not
"good sound" but only "understandable sound". Second telephony
does frequency filtering in a very different way than digital
audio does. Voices on phones are recognizable but still easily
differentiable from the original. Music played via phone-quality
audio sounds terrible.

In general, A-Law generates better sounding audio.

But, at low sample rates (eg, 8 kHz), I had noted that ADPCM gives more
intelligible speech than A-Law, even if the A-Law "sounds nicer".

I am not listening for the sound to be good or bad, I am listening
whether {the violin sounds like a violin, the trumpet sounds like a
trumpet, and the drums sound like drums} when listening to them live!

That is what was the hallmark of "Hi Fi" when I started (1965-ish.) -----------------------

In my past testing, seems like 2kHz to 4kHz is the most important band
for speech intelligibility (at least for me). It is improved with the
4kHz to 8kHz band, but it seems like this is less important.

The timber of instruments requires phase accurate reproduction of
frequencies up to at least 15KHz.

Well now...

https://youtu.be/Ze4soU1nK1w?list=RDn13GHyYEfLA

Or a wonderful game song, live:

(love this one! wow.
Aquatic Ambiance - Big Band Jazz Piano ft. Smart Game Piano (The 8-Bit
Big Band)

https://youtu.be/5znrVdAtEDI?list=RD5znrVdAtEDI
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch


David Schultz <david.schultz@earthlink.net> posted:

On 1/22/26 6:13 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:

The timber of instruments requires phase accurate reproduction of frequencies up to at least 15KHz.

Define "phase accurate". As in how much phase error at say 20KHz is acceptable to you. 1 degree? 10?

When instruments quit sounding like they sound in person.

And how do you maintain that through the signal chain? In, for example, speaker crossover networks.

I use a full range electrostatic speaker (Martin Logan CLS (Rev G))

Instead of chasing performance at frequencies I am increasingly less
able to hear, I went the other way. A subwoofer so that pipe organs, and other things that reach down to 20Hz, sound impressive.

Velodyne DD15 SubWoofer (and then spent couple hours tuning its
8 stage variable frequency crossover so that 15Hz to 5KHz was as
flat as possible.) Sub mainly carries 15Hz-65Hz.

Also note:: Room is 17 feet wide and 57 feet long, you can play as
low as about 1 Watt and hear everything while others are carrying
on conversations.

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 1/22/26 8:00 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:

David Schultz <david.schultz@earthlink.net> posted:

Define "phase accurate". As in how much phase error at say 20KHz is
acceptable to you. 1 degree? 10?

When instruments quit sounding like they sound in person.

Hardly an objective standard and you can't design to it.

And how do you maintain that through the signal chain? In, for example,
speaker crossover networks.

I use a full range electrostatic speaker (Martin Logan CLS (Rev G))

A rare and specialized speaker. What about the rest of us?

And what about the phase errors resulting from varying distances from different parts of the panel to your ears?

Velodyne DD15 SubWoofer (and then spent couple hours tuning its
8 stage variable frequency crossover so that 15Hz to 5KHz was as
flat as possible.) Sub mainly carries 15Hz-65Hz.

I use a Velodyne SMS1 with my home built sub. (JBL2245H driver) Strange
thing, the brick SMPS failed. Resulting in hum from the sub. Easy to
replace but just added to my dislike of SMPS in general. I good idea but rarely executed well. The damn things keep failing after far too short a
time.
--
http://davesrocketworks.com
David Schultz
"Gag me with a Smurf"
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 1/22/2026 8:20 PM, David Schultz wrote:

On 1/22/26 8:00 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:

David Schultz <david.schultz@earthlink.net> posted:

Define "phase accurate". As in how much phase error at say 20KHz is
acceptable to you. 1 degree? 10?

When instruments quit sounding like they sound in person.

Hardly an objective standard and you can't design to it.

And how do you maintain that through the signal chain? In, for example,
speaker crossover networks.

I use a full range electrostatic speaker (Martin Logan CLS (Rev G))

A rare and specialized speaker. What about the rest of us?

And what about the phase errors resulting from varying distances from different parts of the panel to your ears?

I am currently using some ~ $35 Logitech gaming headphones.

Previously I had gotten some cheaper $15 headphones to replace some of
my old headphones (also Logitech) which had gotten so old they were
falling apart. The cheaper headphones sounded kinda like muffled
dog-crap though, so ended up spending the "big money" on some headphones
that "probably wont sound like crap".

Ironically, ended up giving them to my dad who is hard of hearing,
apparently he also noticed that they sounded like muffled crap though.

Granted, more expensive headphones exist, but I am not made of money.

Velodyne DD15 SubWoofer (and then spent couple hours tuning its
8 stage variable frequency crossover so that 15Hz to 5KHz was as
flat as possible.) Sub mainly carries 15Hz-65Hz.

I use a Velodyne SMS1 with my home built sub. (JBL2245H driver) Strange thing, the brick SMPS failed. Resulting in hum from the sub. Easy to
replace but just added to my dislike of SMPS in general. I good idea but rarely executed well. The damn things keep failing after far too short a time.

Not used much in terms of dedicated speakers in a long time, but
generally I don't want to be making noise that other people would hear.





--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 2026-01-23 10:25, BGB wrote:

[snip]

I am currently using some ~ $35 Logitech gaming headphones.

[snip]

Granted, more expensive headphones exist, but I am not made of money.

Indeed. I had occasion recently to inquire about headphones at a large
local electronics shop. The assistant asked for my price range, and when
I hesitated, he mentioned that their range went up to 65 kilo-euro. Talk
about "framing" a price discussion :-)

The shop had one of those items in a locked glass display case.
Reportedly each pair of headphones is hand-built. They come with a white veined marble stand that is also an electronics box, with eight or ten
vacuum tubes mounted visibly on the top surface. The builder comes to
your home to personally install and tune the stuff for your environment.
The price, however, was only 62 999 euro; perhaps it was discounted as a display item.

We settled on a cheaper model.

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 1/22/2026 7:04 PM, Chris M. Thomasson wrote:

On 1/22/2026 4:13 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:

BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> posted:

On 1/22/2026 5:31 AM, Tim Rentsch wrote:

Michael S <already5chosen@yahoo.com> writes:

On Sat, 6 Sep 2025 05:28:16 -0500
BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> wrote:

Just randomly thinking again about some things I noticed with audio >>>>>> at low sample rates.

For baseline, can note, basic sample rates:
     44100:  Standard, sounds good, but bulky
     32000:  Sounds good
     22050:  Moderate
     16000:  OK, Modest size, acceptable quality.
       Seems like best tradeoff if not going for high quality. >>>>>>      11025:  Poor, muffled.
      8000:  Very poor, speech almost unintelligible (normally). >>>>>>         But, it is seeming like a "weird hack" may exist here. >>>>>

8000 x 8bit (mu-law in USA, A-law in majority of the world) was a
standard sampling rate for digital back ends of analog wired telephony >>>>> for more than 50 years.  I didn't check, but would assume that it
still
is.
Most people founded it quite intelligible.

Yes but bit rate isn't the whole story.  First the measure is not
"good sound" but only "understandable sound".  Second telephony
does frequency filtering in a very different way than digital
audio does.  Voices on phones are recognizable but still easily
differentiable from the original.  Music played via phone-quality
audio sounds terrible.

In general, A-Law generates better sounding audio.

But, at low sample rates (eg, 8 kHz), I had noted that ADPCM gives more
intelligible speech than A-Law, even if the A-Law "sounds nicer".

I am not listening for the sound to be good or bad, I am listening
whether {the violin sounds like a violin, the trumpet sounds like a
trumpet, and the drums sound like drums} when listening to them live!

That is what was the hallmark of "Hi Fi" when I started (1965-ish.)
-----------------------

In my past testing, seems like 2kHz to 4kHz is the most important band
for speech intelligibility (at least for me). It is improved with the
4kHz to 8kHz band, but it seems like this is less important.

The timber of instruments requires phase accurate reproduction of
frequencies up to at least 15KHz.

Well now...

https://youtu.be/Ze4soU1nK1w?list=RDn13GHyYEfLA

Been a while since people have referenced Undertale much...


Though, ironically, had noted that the Undertale/Deltarune art style
does seem to align with how my dream world looks, which seems curious
(as from descriptions, apparently most people dream in a more
natural-looking full color thing, not so much high-contrast
mostly-monochrome, or with some 16-color like stuff going on).

Like, can't really explain it, it is like my brain is too cheap to
afford color depth (or even analog grayscale). Yet, my normal vision has
full colors and gradients (it is like, when "importing" images, my mind simplifies them, maps out the edges, and then blows out the contrast).

Or a wonderful game song, live:

(love this one! wow.
Aquatic Ambiance - Big Band Jazz Piano ft. Smart Game Piano (The 8-Bit
Big Band)

https://youtu.be/5znrVdAtEDI?list=RD5znrVdAtEDI

I kinda liked some of the 90s Sonic games music.
It was MIDI/FM based, but mostly well done.

Actually, 90s was notable, as many games did "actually good" music.
MIDI and Tracker music often having a special quality here, more so if
the song is good.

Vs, say the 2000s, where seemingly much of the industry was like "hey,
why don't we use a bunch of crappy garage band music!" and, mostly just
kept doing so.

Then, people mostly remember the game songs where someone does something
nice sounding with MIDI or trackers or similar. Not so much the ones
where someone is yelling in the microphone and doing blaring guitar sounds.

...




Well, not much notable recently...
A while ago, added SCAD model support to BGBCC;
Then implemented SIMD stuff for RV and XG3;
Then tweaked the ABI rules;
Then went and implemented some backprop neural net stuff;
Then partially reversed a few changes to default ABI for XG3:
Going back to using the 8-argument-register ABI as default (*1);
Then, debugging the SCAD stuff I had added to BGBCC.

*1: Where, say, 16 arguments in registers:
Slightly net-negative for performance in RV64G;
Helped for XG3 performance, but mismatched ABI leads to issues;
Temporarily went with 8 args for RV64 but 16 args for XG3;
But, then ran into some mismatch annoyances;
Ultimately, made more sense to stick with the 8-argument ABI as the
default for both RV and XG3 targets.

Did stay with having moved F4..F7 over to being callee-save, as this did
help in both cases.


After I started trying to make more use of BGBCC as a tool for
converting SCAD models, I have started ending up needing to debug it; as
as-is it is still pretty incomplete and buggy (doesn't take much to
stumble on bugs here).

Mostly, in this case, was fiddling some with stuff in my BT3 engine,
where BGBCC's core has ended up being used as the asset converter and packaging tool.

Like, well:
Compiles C code;
Converts files for the resource section;
Can pack WAD2 and WAD4 files;
Can convert images;
Can convert sound effects;
Can turn SCAD scripts into BMD models and similar.

Then again, the PEL resource section is essentially WAD based, and a lot
of the file-conversion stuff can be used in either case (except maybe
that SCAD is a bit much... but ironically, could leverage some other
parts of the C compiler).

Had I wanted to do a SCAD interpreter otherwise, would likely have
needed to leverage the core of a JS interpreter or similar, but maybe
might have made more sense than making use of a hacky interpreter that
was built on top of the "expression reducer" (which in turn exists as
part of BGBCC's front-end optimizer steps).

It is in some ways, a very stupid way to do an interpreter (as it
effectively evaluates things via expression rewriting), but, yeah... Generally, SCAD scripts are not exactly bound by the evaluation parts,
more by the CSG parts. But, it is somewhat higher level than, say, the
Quake "Brush Model" system, which exists as an intermediate step.

So, say:
Parse SCAD script, as a vaguely JS like syntax;
Evaluate script, in this case results in a tree of primitives replacing
the original AST;
Convert this tree into brush models and unions and similar;
Build and clip the polygons;
Convert to a 3D model in the desired format;
Add to target packaging.

So, in some sense, it works, even if, essentially, using a C compiler to convert SCAD scripts into 3D models and package assets seems kinda stupid.


But, the BT3 engine and TestKern are ending up using some similar tech:
WAD2 and WAD4: Yep;
BMP: Yes, for some things.
BT3 uses 16 color and 256 color BMP images for some uses.
WAV (ADPCM): Yep.
Don't have much "obviously better" than ADPCM for my uses (*1).
XML: Yeah, both BGBCC and BT3 have ended up using XML.
UPIC: Yeah.
Ended up going with UPIC with a transode to DXTn path.
Originally, BT3 was using DDS, but DDS has drawbacks.
UPIC has some advantages over both JPEG and PNG here (*2).


*1: For the weaknesses of ADPCM, there is pretty much nothing that
competes well against it in my uses. Basically: Something that is cheap
and simple to decode and can do "doesn't sound like crap" audio in the
16-32 kbps range (8000/11025/16000 2-bit mono, and 8000 4-bit mono).

4000-6000 2-bit mono is possible, but pushing the sample rate below 8000 usually does not result in passable audio quality. For the BT2 engine,
had used some 5512 Hz ADPCM for BGM (with some filtering trickery), but
for the BT3 engine am mostly using S3M for music.

Though, S3M can itself risk bulk it the patches are too large. If I were designing the format, would likely go with MIDI format but with patches
stored in ADPCM. But, tracker software doesn't really support this and
this decays back to wavetable based General MIDI, and the lack of a
good/free option for a GM wavetable. Did previously hack something
together using scavenged audio, but my improvised wavetable failed to
sound better than using FM synthesis (and scavenging the MIDI FM
parameters from the "GENMIDI.DAT" lump from FreeDoom).

But, alas, harder to make a good sounding General MIDI wavetable when
some amount of the patches were themselves derived from edited FreeDoom sound-effects and similar (it being otherwise difficult to do provenance
for the copyright status of sound-effects). But, at a certain level of
crappy, pretty much anything can be made to sound like a musical
instrument (even with the crappiness of "listen to instrument sound,
look for a sound effect that contains something 'kinda similar' that can
be edited out"; then just sorta shoved into a WAD as a bunch of blobs of
8kHz APCM).

But, otherwise, for the BT3 engine ended up going with S3M and my
lackluster musical skills. As, while many (and much better) MOD and S3M
music exists, options that work well as BGM and also are royalty free,
is harder. Well, and some amount of what I had made, is either
repetitive patterns, or using a similar strategy to that previously
described by Cryiak and Vihart, namely doing the melody by picking a
popular numeric sequence and laying out the digits as notes (for however
many notes one needs for that part of the pattern); often results in
something "slightly creepy".

But, would make no pretense of being a musician here.



*2: UPIC:
Structurally similar to T.81 JPEG, but:
Uses a TLV packaging scheme;
Uses STF+AdRice rather than Huffman,
with an LSB first bitstream
Z3V5 with a Deflate-like VLC coding.
Uses Block-Haar and RCT rather than DCT and YCbCr.
Both computationally cheaper and reversible.
Also has blocky CDF-5/3 and YCoCg and similar as options.
Natively supports an alpha channel.
Lossy compression seems competitive with T.81 JPEG;
For many images, compresses better than PNG and is faster to decode;
Supports lossless image storage.

UPIC is a nonstandard format, but this is less of an issue when used for textures.

It ended up winning out vs BMP+BT5B: BT5B is inherently lossy, and while
it can support smaller images than DDS, for functional reasons it fails
to achieve better Q/bpp than using DDS (and, "like DDS, but more
complicated to load" isn't super compelling). BMP+CRAM8 could also serve
a similar role (can be smaller than DDS, but looks worse).

While not the fastest option, UPIC ended up "less bad" in other areas,
and texture loading mostly isn't CPU bound. Bolting a DXTn decoder
directly onto the block decoder is a trick I had used with JPEG decoding.

...


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From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 1/23/2026 3:43 AM, Niklas Holsti wrote:

On 2026-01-23 10:25, BGB wrote:

   [snip]

I am currently using some ~ $35 Logitech gaming headphones.

   [snip]

Granted, more expensive headphones exist, but I am not made of money.

Indeed. I had occasion recently to inquire about headphones at a large
local electronics shop. The assistant asked for my price range, and when
I hesitated, he mentioned that their range went up to 65 kilo-euro. Talk about "framing" a price discussion :-)

The shop had one of those items in a locked glass display case.
Reportedly each pair of headphones is hand-built. They come with a white veined marble stand that is also an electronics box, with eight or ten vacuum tubes mounted visibly on the top surface. The builder comes to
your home to personally install and tune the stuff for your environment.
The price, however, was only 62 999 euro; perhaps it was discounted as a display item.

We settled on a cheaper model.

The cheapest ones on Amazon, sold individually, were around $10, but
mostly the variety that used to come with portable cassette and CD players.

It was possible to get these ones for cheaper per unit (say, ~ $2/ea),
but it generally would involve buying a whole box of them (and I don't
need a whole box of cheap/crappy headphones).

There is a lower limit for me though.


Where, options are, say:
Portable music player headphones (cheap but suck);
Some random Chinese brand (generally also suck);
Logitech or similar (mostly doesn't suck);
Sennheiser or similar (generally more expensive than Logitech);
...

Well, before getting into the realm of crazy expensive niche things.

...

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From Newsgroup: comp.arch

MitchAlsup <user5857@newsgrouper.org.invalid> writes:

David Schultz <david.schultz@earthlink.net> posted:

On 1/22/26 6:13 PM, MitchAlsup wrote:

The timber of instruments requires phase accurate reproduction of
frequencies up to at least 15KHz.

Define "phase accurate". As in how much phase error at say 20KHz is
acceptable to you. 1 degree? 10?

When instruments quit sounding like they sound in person.

And how do you maintain that through the signal chain? In, for example,
speaker crossover networks.

I use a full range electrostatic speaker (Martin Logan CLS (Rev G))

I'm also a fan of electrostatics. I use Magnepan MMGs with a
Klipsch 15" sub.

Also note:: Room is 17 feet wide and 57 feet long, you can play as
low as about 1 Watt and hear everything while others are carrying
on conversations.

My listening room is more squarish (36' wide by 30' long)
(LR/DR combo), with a vaulted ceiling over the LR. Acoustically
not ideal, but the system (driven by a Yamaha A3070 receiver)
sounds quite fine regardless.

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From Newsgroup: comp.arch

BGB <cr88192@gmail.com> writes:

On 1/23/2026 3:43 AM, Niklas Holsti wrote:

On 2026-01-23 10:25, BGB wrote:

   [snip]

I am currently using some ~ $35 Logitech gaming headphones.

   [snip]

Granted, more expensive headphones exist, but I am not made of money.

Indeed. I had occasion recently to inquire about headphones at a large
local electronics shop. The assistant asked for my price range, and when
I hesitated, he mentioned that their range went up to 65 kilo-euro. Talk
about "framing" a price discussion :-)

The shop had one of those items in a locked glass display case.
Reportedly each pair of headphones is hand-built. They come with a white
veined marble stand that is also an electronics box, with eight or ten
vacuum tubes mounted visibly on the top surface. The builder comes to
your home to personally install and tune the stuff for your environment.
The price, however, was only 62 999 euro; perhaps it was discounted as a
display item.

We settled on a cheaper model.

The cheapest ones on Amazon, sold individually, were around $10, but
mostly the variety that used to come with portable cassette and CD players.

I've been using these when I mow and work in the shop:

https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/home-improvement-us/worktunes/

They actually sound good, and filter out the environmental
noise well.

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From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 23/01/2026 10:43, Niklas Holsti wrote:

On 2026-01-23 10:25, BGB wrote:

   [snip]

I am currently using some ~ $35 Logitech gaming headphones.

   [snip]

Granted, more expensive headphones exist, but I am not made of money.

Indeed. I had occasion recently to inquire about headphones at a large
local electronics shop. The assistant asked for my price range, and when
I hesitated, he mentioned that their range went up to 65 kilo-euro. Talk about "framing" a price discussion :-)

The shop had one of those items in a locked glass display case.
Reportedly each pair of headphones is hand-built. They come with a white veined marble stand that is also an electronics box, with eight or ten vacuum tubes mounted visibly on the top surface. The builder comes to
your home to personally install and tune the stuff for your environment.
The price, however, was only 62 999 euro; perhaps it was discounted as a display item.

With that level of work involved in making (and installing) them, it is
not surprising they cost such a lot. There are many steps between the manufacturer and the customer, with distributors, sales offices and
shops, and these all need to take their cut. That cut needs to be high
as the quantities sold are low - high end hi-fi equipment can be in
stock in shops for months or more without being sold. So a factor of 5
or more between manufacturer price and customer price is not uncommon in
this field.

You are not just buying good quality sound reproduction - you are buying prestige, and the "feel" of the product. If you have the money, and you
like this sort of thing, and you understand you are buying look and
feel, not sound quality (they are presumably good quality, but not
/that/ good), then that's fair enough. It is no different from buying jewellery, or a fancy car.


But if someone is telling you that you need a valve amplifier for the
sound quality, file that along with the "oxygen-free directional"
speaker cables, gold-plated power leads and "audio quality" ethernet cables.

We settled on a cheaper model.

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 2026-01-23 18:37, David Brown wrote:

On 23/01/2026 10:43, Niklas Holsti wrote:

On 2026-01-23 10:25, BGB wrote:

    [snip]

I am currently using some ~ $35 Logitech gaming headphones.

    [snip]

Granted, more expensive headphones exist, but I am not made of money.

Indeed. I had occasion recently to inquire about headphones at a large
local electronics shop. The assistant asked for my price range, and
when I hesitated, he mentioned that their range went up to 65
kilo-euro. Talk about "framing" a price discussion :-)

The shop had one of those items in a locked glass display case.
Reportedly each pair of headphones is hand-built. They come with a
white veined marble stand that is also an electronics box, with eight
or ten vacuum tubes mounted visibly on the top surface. The builder
comes to your home to personally install and tune the stuff for your
environment. The price, however, was only 62 999 euro; perhaps it was
discounted as a display item.

With that level of work involved in making (and installing) them, it is
not surprising they cost such a lot.

Sure, plus the luxury factor (higher price => more luxurious). I was
more surprised that this shop -- which is not an "exclusive" luxury
store, although a very large one with a wide product range -- had such
an item, and ...

as the quantities sold are low

... the shop assistant admitted they had not sold a single one, so far.
That may be because Russia's attack on Ukraine prevents rich Russians
from visiting Helsinki, where the shop is.

Probably the shop only keeps this item on display to amaze the
customers. They also keep an old Soviet MIG fighter jet on the roof of
the building, and one can view it up close, even touch it. But no price
is listed for it.

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From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 1/23/26 2:25 AM, BGB wrote:

On 1/22/2026 8:20 PM, David Schultz wrote:

And what about the phase errors resulting from varying distances from
different parts of the panel to your ears?

I am currently using some ~ $35 Logitech gaming headphones.

I fail to see what that has to do with those big electrostatics.
--
http://davesrocketworks.com
David Schultz
"Gag me with a Smurf"
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 23/01/2026 17:56, Niklas Holsti wrote:

On 2026-01-23 18:37, David Brown wrote:

On 23/01/2026 10:43, Niklas Holsti wrote:

On 2026-01-23 10:25, BGB wrote:

    [snip]

I am currently using some ~ $35 Logitech gaming headphones.

    [snip]

Granted, more expensive headphones exist, but I am not made of money.

Indeed. I had occasion recently to inquire about headphones at a
large local electronics shop. The assistant asked for my price range,
and when I hesitated, he mentioned that their range went up to 65
kilo-euro. Talk about "framing" a price discussion :-)

The shop had one of those items in a locked glass display case.
Reportedly each pair of headphones is hand-built. They come with a
white veined marble stand that is also an electronics box, with eight
or ten vacuum tubes mounted visibly on the top surface. The builder
comes to your home to personally install and tune the stuff for your
environment. The price, however, was only 62 999 euro; perhaps it was
discounted as a display item.

With that level of work involved in making (and installing) them, it
is not surprising they cost such a lot.

Sure, plus the luxury factor (higher price => more luxurious). I was
more surprised that this shop -- which is not an "exclusive" luxury
store, although a very large one with a wide product range -- had such
an item, and ...

as the quantities sold are low

... the shop assistant admitted they had not sold a single one, so far.
That may be because Russia's attack on Ukraine prevents rich Russians
from visiting Helsinki, where the shop is.

Russian oligarchs, crime lords, and their relatives are the prime
customers for that kind of thing. They are also popular for bribes
(though a bit bulkier than Rolex's). Chinese nouveau rich are also
candidate customers, but I don't suppose so many of them go shopping in Helsinki.

Of course, there is the odd honest rich person that buys them!

(For the real audio foolery stuff, like simple cables for $100K, I have
heard that they are often used for money laundering in the drug trade.
They cost practically nothing to make, but can be sold for vast amounts,
so are used as a way to pass drug money across borders.)

Probably the shop only keeps this item on display to amaze the
customers. They also keep an old Soviet MIG fighter jet on the roof of
the building, and one can view it up close, even touch it. But no price
is listed for it.

--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2

From Newsgroup: comp.arch

On 1/23/2026 11:07 AM, David Schultz wrote:

On 1/23/26 2:25 AM, BGB wrote:

On 1/22/2026 8:20 PM, David Schultz wrote:

And what about the phase errors resulting from varying distances from
different parts of the panel to your ears?

I am currently using some ~ $35 Logitech gaming headphones.

I fail to see what that has to do with those big electrostatics.

Most people don't have these, and phase mostly doesn't matter for most speakers. Also electrostatic speakers are impractically expensive, etc.


On the more practical end of speaker technology, it is mostly "voice
coil and magnet" speakers, vs piezoelectric speakers.

I would guess, probably many/most people use headphones, probably some
people use earbuds, but the earbud experience kinda sucks IMO.



some people go for very large speakers, but the issue is that as speaker
gets bigger, frequency range shifts lower. But, the people going for for
giant speakers are also the ones going for using 00 gauge wire and
similar for their speaker cables (and then people fighting over whether
they can use copper-clad aluminum for speaker wires, and others claiming
that the wires need to be pure copper because of supposed audio
degradation from using aluminum wire, or arguing about the need for gold connectors, etc).


Well, or the more realistic option, of getting some PA Horn speakers...
Which appear to be cheaper than the giant cone speakers, and are
generally well proven at being loud, etc.


But, I don't really get it personally...


Audio seems to reach peak quality at roughly 44100 16-bit or similar.
Is there a difference between 44100 and 48000? I don't notice.
Even the difference between 32000 and 44100 probably doesn't matter.

Contrast, 16000 and 22050 are "more economical" (mostly good enough for general use, less memory needed).

Though, makes sense to mix at 32000 or 44100 if there is the
computational power to do so, as the difference between 16/22 and
32/44.1 is still perceptible (if minor).


With 8000 and 11025 in the "sounds poor" territory (bad for primary use,
still mostly OK for sound-effects or input audio; excluding speech,
which ironically does benefit from being at least ~ 16000).


16-bit PCM works well as an audio storage format, but sometimes isn't
great for mixing. Where, for mixing use, 16 or 32 bit floating-point
seems to have some merit. In audio mixing, sometimes the audio can
exceed the dynamic range of 16-bit PCM, and clamping can be detrimental (ideally clamping only being done for the final output).

Could use 16-bit PCM, but shift right for more usable dynamic range, but
this ends up worse than using Binary16 or similar. Arguably, Binary32 is better, but seems kinda overkill for audio, and is bulky. Big issue is
mostly if doing filtering tasks that require keeping a buffer of
previous audio (such as for reverb or echoes, which may require
potentially multiple seconds of audio buffers). But, on a normal PC, for practical reasons one may need to use Binary32 here, even if overkill,
due to typical lack of native Binary16 (and Binary16->Binary32
conversion adding an undesirable level of overhead to "very big FIR
filter" use cases)

But, to make these more practical, can store these at a lower sample
rate (people are not likely to notice as much of the reverb or echo math
is using 8kHz or similar for the delayed parts of the audio, say with
16k samples for a 2-second delay loop).

Or, say: primary mixing happening at 32 kHz, with 8 kHz for the reverb.


In some of my 3D engines, I try to dynamically calculate reverb based
off of the world geometry. This somewhat helps IMO.


I rather personally dislike the use of "presets" (like EAX and openAL)
because (at least to me), that the audio is essentially being bounced
within various size of boxes centered around the listener's head, seems obvious.

Like, one has options:
Traditional mixing:
You are just in a big open space.
Walls don't exist in terms of audio.
Presets:
Typically a big box, doesn't match with environment.

Better IMO (at least in a voxel engine) to check block types in an area
around the player, and calculate the relative contribution from each
point in the scene (and the approximate delay to apply). This then
effectively generates a dynamically changing FIR filter that moves along
with the player (in this case, it can overlap with the use of raycasts
for visibility determination, where the "visible shell" found by the ray-casting can also be used for audio).

Isn't perfect though, IRL often to some extent sounds go through walls,
but in a voxel engine can ignore this by the walls being 1 meter cubes
of solid material, where the reflective sound contribution from the
other side of a 1 meter wall is effectively null.


Downside is that this is computationally expensive, so there desire to
try to limit the amount of math needed (such as by using lower sample
rate, and sparser sampling with larger delays), but then the difficulty
is doing this without it becoming obvious.


But, alas, seemingly no one notices or cares.
Like, if people did notice, maybe games would just stop doing their
audio mixing like the player is floating in a big empty space (or, maybe
get fancy and abruptly put the players' head in a 15-foot wooden box or similar).

Nevermind if the initial sound-mixing in my case doesn't account for
walls. Otherwise one would need to do raycasts from the speaker to the listener, which would greatly increase computational costs (and it is a
little cheese to do the audio-reflections as-if the sound was always
coming from the listener). But, this sort of works in a similar kinda
way to how "screen space reflections" work (not very accurate, but sorta
good enough).

Can instead merely attenuate the audio sources, along with applying time delays due to distance and relative velocity (which most people also
don't bother with for some reason). Well, and using things like
floating-point math and cubic splines for the audio interpolation, etc.


But, at least to me, audio reflections and Doppler shifts seem a lot
more "real" than a lot of the stuff that audiophiles go on about.

But, presumable most people don't notice, since most game style audio
mixers don't bother, and presumably would bother if more people tended
to notice, etc.


Well, but then again, I was doing a thing of storing input sound-effects
at low sample rates mostly based on how obvious it was. Like, sometimes
one needs 16 kHz, but much of the time one may find that 8 or 11 is sufficient.

Well, apart from mostly avoiding 8-bit linear PCM, which manages to
sound poor regardless of sample rate (like, 44.1 8-bit PCM is just a
waste, 44.1 failing to make 8-bit PCM sound good).

Typically, the sample rate used for mixing seems to matter more than
that used for the sound effects though.


...

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From Newsgroup: comp.arch

David Schultz <david.schultz@earthlink.net> writes:

I use a full range electrostatic speaker (Martin Logan CLS (Rev G))

A rare and specialized speaker. What about the rest of us?

Through a unique set of circumstances, I ended up with a pair of their electrostat towers (I'm remote, otherwise I'd mention the specific
model #). To quote Ferris Bueller:

It is so choice. If you have the means, I highly recommend
picking one up.

If they ever die beyond my ability to repair, I'll go back (with great
regret) to Speakers for Mortals.

Andy Valencia
Home page: https://www.vsta.org/andy/
To contact me: https://www.vsta.org/contact/andy.html
--- Synchronet 3.21b-Linux NewsLink 1.2