Comment by numpad0
2 hours ago
People used to say human eyes can't perceive >60fps.
It's also just CDs, not digital formats in general. Grab an audiophile and ask their opinions about digital PDM/PCM formats, high bitrate AACs even, against true vinyls. They wouldn't have as much opinions as they do against CDs.
Also: 44.1kHz sampling rate != arbitrary waveform up to 22050Hz, unless music you're listening to consists of pure sine waves(and not even classic Yamaha FM sound chip signals).
Anybody can distinguish 60fps from higher frame rate just by looking at steady motion. The famous Blur Busters Test UFO makes it easy:
https://testufo.com/
But in the case of analog recording, nobody can distinguish a pure analog recording from the same thing but with a good ADC/DAC pair in the signal path in a blind test. It's theoretically possible to hear undithered 16 bit quantization noise if you turn the volume up extremely loud, but correctly mastered CDs should be dithered from higher bit depth.
And 44.1kHz sampling rate can theoretically represent arbitrary waveforms up to 22050Hz. The only complication is that this requires a brickwall filter, which is impossible to implement. That's why the sampling rate is set higher than needed to exceed the 20kHz limit of human hearing (in practice the limit for adult hearing is almost always lower). The higher sample rate allows for a practical filter with a shallower transition band to be used.
> Also: 44.1kHz sampling rate != arbitrary waveform up to 22050Hz, unless music you're listening to consists of pure sine waves
Every signal can be represented as a combination of pure sine waves. That insight is the basis of Fournier analysis / transform.
It's also (pretty much) how sound is processed by the inner ear. The different little hairs each pick up different frequencies.