Reviewed: MusicScope digital file analysis software

Andre Marc · May 13, 2015

My review of MusicScope by Xivero.

Digital file analysis software, $29.

http://www.avrev.com/home-theater-a...scope-analysis-software-by-xivero-review.html

FYI, HighResAudio.com of Germany has licensed the product to examine their online catalog
and recently rejected some albums due to their findings.

marty · May 13, 2015

This is great news. Thanks Andre. Bruce Brown told me a few weeks ago that such software existed from several sources. But as far as I can tell, here's the catch 22 that pertains to all of them. It is namely, that you have to buy your Hi-Res download first before you can use the diagnostic software to see if its the real thing, or merely an upsampled PCM. Any thoughts or recommendations? Is there anything that is the equivalent say of "try it before you buy it" from Hi-Res download sources?
Marty

Andre Marc · May 13, 2015

marty said:
This is great news. Thanks Andre. Bruce Brown told me a few weeks ago that such software existed from several sources. But as far as I can tell, here's the catch 22 that pertains to all of them. It is namely, that you have to buy your Hi-Res download first before you can use the diagnostic software to see if its the real thing, or merely an upsampled PCM. Any thoughts or recommendations? Is there anything that is the equivalent say of "try it before you buy it" from Hi-Res download sources?
Marty

Thanks Marty.

Yes, of course, you must have the files on your hard drive to be able to evaluate not just authenticity, but dynamic and frequency range as well.

At this point, there is very little upsampled material available for sale. Suspect offerings are outed rather quickly on various forums, and
Pono Music even has a user forum where reviews are posted. i wish the other online stores like HDT and Suprhirez would allow user reviews.

Bruce B · May 13, 2015

I just had hi-rez DSD files rejected by a label that uses MusicScope software.
Go figure??

Andre Marc · May 13, 2015

Bruce B said:
I just had hi-rez DSD files rejected by a label that uses MusicScope software.
Go figure??

they rejected files you supplied? was it a false positive?

esldude · May 13, 2015

I believe if one wanted to bother, it is trivial to trick such software. Though it is a start to hopefully get hirez suppliers to pay a little more attention to provenance.

Too bad Bruce about getting genuine hirez rejected. It does remind me of a simple two mic recording I did of a small group of musicians. Done at 24/192. The mics I had on hand died pretty quickly above 24 khz. The music itself had nothing very high in frequency at any appreciable level, and the space was fairly dead absorbing high frequencies substantially. I do believe this software quite likely would have pegged it as a 48 khz recording upsampled even though it wasn't.

Bruce B · May 13, 2015

Andre Marc said:
they rejected files you supplied? was it a false positive?

These were solo instrumental recordings at a lower volume. They said they can't detect anything over 18k, so it's CD quality at best.

On that note, I had downloaded 2 albums that I had submitted earlier last year from 5 download sites. Do you know that all but 1 FLAC file was different from the original that I had submitted in file size and amplitude!!

I'll be submitting a new thread with all the data.

Andre Marc · May 13, 2015

Bruce B said:
These were solo instrumental recordings at a lower volume. They said they can't detect anything over 18k, so it's CD quality at best.

On that note, I had downloaded 2 albums that I had submitted earlier last year from 5 download sites. Do you know that all but 1 FLAC file was different from the original that I had submitted in file size and amplitude!!

I'll be submitting a new thread with all the data.

Fascinating. Please do post. I would love to know what could account for the differences.

Bruce B · May 13, 2015

Andre Marc said:
Fascinating. Please do post. I would love to know what could account for the differences.

In the process of removing identifying data now.

garylkoh · May 14, 2015

Bruce B said:
On that note, I had downloaded 2 albums that I had submitted earlier last year from 5 download sites. Do you know that all but 1 FLAC file was different from the original that I had submitted in file size and amplitude!!

I was told the same by record labels and musicians - that the file that they sent to download sites could very well be "remastered" even when the sites deny doing any post-processing. One of the mysteries of downloading content - who/what is making the changes? May be someone with current knowledge of the Internet infrastructure could comment. Does the "cloud" re-compress?

amirm · May 14, 2015

This has a pretty UI and such but much of it what shows is already available in (decent) audio workstation software. What is missing from both is perceptual/intelligent analysis, i.e. what the person does looking at the data. It is a rather hard problem to solve at the extreme but much more can be done that just spitting out numbers and graphs. In the simplest case, detecting a CD sharp filter at 22.05 Khz can be detected and flagged. Spectrum can be analyzed to see if it is noise or is music. Single peak ultrasonic like this from Andre's review:

Can be flagged as spurious and even analyzed to see what the resolution of the computer monitor was that bled into the audio path! I did this for a file that a friend gave me and he just about fell off his chair. The recording was old and I traced the spike to the specific Apple CRT monitor of 1980s!!!

Andre Marc · May 14, 2015

amirm said:
This has a pretty UI and such but much of it what shows is already available in (decent) audio workstation software. What is missing from both is perceptual/intelligent analysis, i.e. what the person does looking at the data. It is a rather hard problem to solve at the extreme but much more can be done that just spitting out numbers and graphs. In the simplest case, detecting a CD sharp filter at 22.05 Khz can be detected and flagged. Spectrum can be analyzed to see if it is noise or is music. Single peak ultrasonic like this from Andre's review:

Can be flagged as spurious and even analyzed to see what the resolution of the computer monitor was that bled into the audio path! I did this for a file that a friend gave me and he just about fell off his chair. The recording was old and I traced the spike to the specific Apple CRT monitor of 1980s!!!

amir, that is simply amazing. I would not have believed a computer monitor could bleed into the audio path.

amirm · May 14, 2015

It is pretty common because the person doing the audio work doesn't hear it and never does a spectrum analysis. More so an issue of CRT era as their high voltage scanning circuits put out quite a lot of power.

If you can give me the exact frequency at the peak of that spike we can figure out the resolution of that monitor too! Does it have a cursor where you can move it on the graph and read the frequency right at that peak?

amirm · May 14, 2015

Somewhat related, I don't understand why that spike is not filtered away. Likely the person doing that mastering did not analyze the spectrum either. Such high frequencies can cause amplifiers to oscillate, tweeters stressed and distorted, and all manner of animals bothered.

amirm · May 14, 2015

Here is the analysis I did for the friend that I mentioned. The file was supposed to be two tones but instead had all these other things in it:

The spike on the right as noted is at 16.58 Khz which is the scan frequency of Apple Monitor running at 800x600 resolution. Which makes sense given the fact that these files were recorded on tape in 1970s (?) and captured digitally in 1980s.

What is interesting in this case is that these tones are sold as some kind of meditation/therapy and little do folks know that it has all of these other things in them.

DonH50 · May 14, 2015

To be fair, the horizontal scan spike is pretty far down and probably inaudible. The IMD is pretty poor, however, as is the noise floor (if that is all dBFS).

rbbert · May 14, 2015

IME it is very common for even new hi-res transfers of analog masters to have one or more ultrasonic spikes of varying amplitude (although almost always peaking at -48 dB or lower). Like Amir, I'm not sure what this software can do that most DAW's and audio editing software doesn't already do.

Andre Marc · May 14, 2015

rbbert said:
IME it is very common for even new hi-res transfers of analog masters to have one or more ultrasonic spikes of varying amplitude (although almost always peaking at -48 dB or lower). Like Amir, I'm not sure what this software can do that most DAW's and audio editing software doesn't already do.

Did you happen to note the price????

rbbert · May 14, 2015

Andre Marc said:
Did you happen to note the price????

Yes, but I wonder who might actually buy this; most who are so inclined probably already have an audio editor. I'm not sure what all Audacity can do, but it's quite a bit less expensive than this program

. Adobe Audition 3.0 also used to be free and AFAICT it does everything; there's also Foobar2000, another free program

Andre Marc · May 14, 2015

rbbert said:
Yes, but I wonder who might actually buy this; most who are so inclined probably already have an audio editor. I'm not sure what all Audacity can do, but it's quite a bit less expensive than this program . Adobe Audition 3.0 also used to be free and AFAICT it does everything; there's also Foobar2000, another free program

You would be surprised. I received a heap of PM's at Hoffman from folks who wanted to know where to buy it when I first posted about it.
They don't want or need high end audio editors. Adobe Audition is not free anymore, and not cheap.

Audacity is superb, but the analysis tools are poor for provenance.

Reviewed: MusicScope digital file analysis software

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