PGGB: Intrigue at the End of the Universe

[camrector]

For those unfamiliar, PGGB is an offline upsampling /downsampling software program. It bills itself as using “advanced algorithms, optimized to maximize reconstruction accuracy to near theoretical limits*.” Imagine the software version of the Chord mScaler only 10x as powerful. Sounds kinda cool huh?

Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster (PGGB) gets its name from the Douglas Adams book series “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”. Its website is full of fun references to the books, and even the developer calls himself Zaphod Breeblebox after a character in the book. But unlike Rob Watts of Chord, Zaphod of PGGB, remains anonymous. What could be the reason to remain anonymous, you might ask?

Let’s explore that question…..

I too, love the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. (My son is named Ford btw)

In the books Zaphod Breeblebox, the ex president of the galaxy, steals the "Heart of Gold". It is the best and fastest starship in the universe, getting its power from advanced algorithms, and mathematics.

While researching the audio software program PGGB I stumbled onto this 2019 Stereonet forum thread. It was an eye opening read: https://www.stereonet.com/forums/topic/261591-extreme-filtering-software-upscaling/#comments


Huh? Hmm?!? What is this?!? It seems to be exactly PGGB, but a few years before PGGB even existed! Within the thread, it explains exactly how you can do this upsampling for yourself, for free!!!!!

My actual favorite part of the thread is a few messages down, where we meet a forum member named : a.dent.

No way?! a.dent (Arthur Dent)

Arthur Dent just so happens to be the main character from “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” Weird?! Coincidence?

WOW!!

Personally, I don't believe in coincidence. I equally don't believe that “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” is so popular and/or relevant enough to be finding random references all over hifi audio threads!

Let me be absolutely clear here as well, I do not believe that a.dent stole anything or is behind PGGB at all.
He is simply the calling card, the piece that ties it all together. The inspiration of why whoever did steal it, named himself and everything about PGGB after “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.”


So now we have to ask ourselves; Did the dude who calls himself a character famous for stealing a math powered space ship, steal the math powered upsampler software?

The last page of the above Stereonet forum thread says this about PGGB and might shed some light for us:

"They're missing a lot of detail about just what and how; I hope they're not just using my free software patches and charging to upscale files. I'll do it for free to an even higher level than they offer, as I've always offered."



Part 2 to follow…..

 

[ddude003]

I've been playing around with various upscaling things since I got my Chord Quest DAC a few years back (2019)... One of them is Con's mods to SoX late 2021... Then HQPlayer, Roon, PGGB and others like r8brain... Even some equalizer VST plugins include upscaling...

Qutest signal path is: 1FS to 8FS input > 16FS WTA1 filter (49,152 taps) > 256FS WTA 2 filter > 3rd order 2048 FS filter > pulse array noise shaper at 104 MHz > analogue...

With parallel and vector processing in almost every laptop and desk side computing platform, on the fly upscaling and filter shaping is pretty much a no-brainer...

An interesting subject, so, I am interested in your upcoming Part 2...

 

[camrector]

PGGB: Mostly Harmless?

Part2



The connections and questions raised during Part 1 needed further exploring and deeper digging. But before taking that deep dive, a condition needed to be tested and met.

Did Zaphod demonstrate a propensity to lift someone else’s work, and pawn it off as his own?

I devised a test.

When reading someone into a classified and/or compartmentalized project, often times misinformation is planted, on purpose, in case of a leak. These “markers” server to pinpoint exactly who leaked said information. For example, I tell you a story that has a guy driving a red car. We know and can prove that the guy is driving a blue car. If we read a story from an “anonymous source” telling the same story with the guy driving a red car, well we know that the “anonymous source” is you.


After reading some rather spirited forum chatter, I noticed something. Zaphod would engage in these conversations, then make changes and updates to his website FAQs, seeming to address and combat points that were being made. Almost in real time. So I posted a comment here on a now banned account on Apr27.


Post #280 of 284



This post contains a lot of correct and accurate info concerning various filter behavior when applied to a digital signal. It also contains this sentence I copied directly from a 2012 stack exchange forum. My “marker”

Here is where it appears in the 2012 with the link.

noise - Why do I see ringing in the output of a digital filter with a narrow transition band? - Signal Processing Stack Exchange


( I made a slight change to the word “oscillations “ for ringing, which you can see referenced as the same thing earlier in the paragraph.

I waited. And it didn’t take long….

A post here from later on April 27th : https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/...ath-and-magic/?do=findComment&comment=1278053

has Zaphod referencing changes to the PGGB FAQ. When going to the section on his website PGGB - FAQ ,we find this :

The exact sentence I purposefully placed from the 2012 stack exchange. Note also that it is even more of a verbatim copy of the 2012 stack exchange with the inclusion of the “(ie., will also increase in frequency)” part.

In any other context this type of behavior would be like the title says……mostly harmless.
But it clearly shows that Zaphod does engage in plagiarism.

Condition tested. Condition met.
Now we dive deeper.


Part 3 to follow……

 

[ddude003]

Mostly sounds like a software developer that is getting input from customers/potential customers and giving them what they want... Maybe a different development style than some may be familiar with (Scrum)...

Con's mods to SoX were a few (6?) brief mods if I remember correctly... I didn't think that PGGB is/was a ripoff of SoX with a "better" interface (Matlab), but who knows...

Still interested to see where you are going with this...

 

[2234rew]

Still interested to see where you are going with this...

+1