"The expert in 'the Monty's video' shows clearly Hi-Res is useless; you won't get stair step audio signal output from CD"....Well, let's check together to find out!

 "The 'Monty's video' shows Hi-Res is useless. The expert said you won't get stair step audio signal..."

I bet the above video, also known as "the Monty's video", is quite famous amongst the supporters who turly believe that "Hi-Res is useless".

Whenever these supporters were questioned why "Hi-Res is useless", some of them would just show you that "scientific proof".

Some supporter even made another YouTube video to support the very same "scientific" claim based on the same "Monty's video" (as they considered all the things the Monty's video said is factual). The supporter named his video as "Debunking the Digital Audio Myth: The Truth About the 'Stair-Step' Effect"

A lot of these supporters may asked, "With so many experts on YouTube demonstrating so clearly with the help of a bunch of  lab equipments and doing various experiments in front of our eyes, why you guys still do not believe 'Hi-Res is useless'? "

Why? My critical thinking does not allow me to accept any claim (even they labelled these claims with "scientific', "objective", "factual", "evidence-based" claims) without further analysis.

Let's debunk the "Monty's video" and its derivative video "Debunking the Digital Audio Myth: The Truth About the 'Stair-Step' Effect" together with our critical thinking.

Debunk the "debunking video"

Let me show you something. The followings are real output from an oscilloscope with analog audio signal reconstructed by a modern DAC, Topping E30. (source)

For a perfect 1k Hz digitized sine wave input, the analog audio signal re-constructed by the modern DAC, Topping E30, is shown as below:

For a perfect 10k Hz digitized sine wave input, the analog audio signal output looks like this:

Can we see clearly these are not perfect sine wave (as suggested by the "debunking" videos). All these real stair-step audio output signal are generated by a modern DAC with NOS (aka Non-Over-Sampling) mode.

Some supporters may argue that "you are cheating! You are using a bad or a poorly designed filter to show us the bad result!"

Well... Depends on what you mean by bad or poorly designed. 

Many modern DACs provide an option for user to enable the "NOS mode" (aka "NOS filter" in Cirrus Logic based DAC, or "Super Slow Roll off filter" in AKM based DAC) now. The NOS mode is by designed doing "Non-Over-Sampling" filtering. These NOS mode works properly as designed. 

We are not taking a bad DAC to show you bad result.

You may further asked, "In that case, why modern DAC supports NOS mode?". I'll explain why modern DAC supports NOS in my other blog later. Stay tuned.

Let's focus on debunking the "debunking video" here.

Smooth analog sine wave output means perfect?

Ok, let's assume the "debunking video" is correct (even we've already shown it is wrong),

i.e. "You would not get any stair step audio signal output. The audio signal output are smooth sine wave from a DAC with 44.1kHz / 16 bit input." 

This is mis-leading. The keyword here is "smooth".

In fact, there are noise in the "smooth sine wave ouput" they shown on their "debunking video".  

In other words, the "smooth since wave output" you see on these video are not as smoothing as you think in your mind. 

To be exact, those "smooth since wave output" may look like perfect sine wave but they are not. If you zoom close enough, you would see some artifacts similar to the ones shown in the red lines below (I doubt if they want you to see these noise) 

(note: the following graph is not from any audio signal. I used the graph to illustrate the idea that something similar is happening in the audio output for any DAC because the sine wave output from a DAC is not a perfect sine wave as suggested in the "Monty's video")

Do you see smooth sine wave with the red lines above? (This is the source of the above graph)

If you consider these are good enough smooth sine wave, then you probably are one of people who have a different definition of the word "same"

Feel free to enjoy your "smooth sine wave". For Hi-Res music lovers, they are enjoying "smoother" and "better re-constructed" sine wave in their Hi-Res music. In the end, it is always your choice what you want to pick.

Why we still got tricked / fooled in 2024

All the pseudo science claims are specially designed to explore our confirmation bias loophole or other cognitive bias that are well studied in Psychology. 

A lot of people would simply apply mental shortcut to understand something new instead of employing critical thinking beause of the mental efforts it required.

Together with the illusions based on our (hidden) association like the following:

"lab equipment" (associated with "scientific"), 
"experiment" (associated with "scientific, objective measurement"),
"MIT graduate" (associated with "expert"), 
"Audio University" (associated with "authority")
"Forum based on Audio Science" (associated with "scientific, objective measurements, double blind tested") 

Because of these, we are very susceptible to various pseudo science claims. We would easily fall into these pseudo science traps without our notice.

To me, critical thinking and good learning technique can help us to be immune from these pseudo science virus. 

(TL;DR)

Hi Res music helps to improve the noise, or to be exact, the re-construction artifacts/errors introduced from a DAC when it re-constructs the analog audio output from the digitized input.

--- Updated 5 May: continue with Part 2 ---

==== Feedback from other people about this blog ====

This is the latest feedback regarding this blog

==== Feedback from other people about this blog (updated on 3 May) ====

I have a wonderful discussion with the people in Head-Fi. I explain a bit more about my view points. I hope it will give you better idea what's mis-leading in the Monty's video if the my blog couldn't explain it clearly to you. Cheers