24/192 music downloads make no sense
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24/192 music downloads make no sense
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Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense
#2They are useful if you're resampling them or editing them, but I doubt that's something consumer music services are overly concerned with.
Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense
#3They are useful if you're resampling them or editing them, but I doubt that's something consumer music services are overly concerned with.
I'll note that's the entire point of Monty's (great) article, which has this near the top:
Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.
This has all been known to anyone with actual signal processing and/or audio engineering knowledge for a long time now. As in, common knowledge to the kinds of folks attending the AES conference at least back to ~2001 or so. The high sample rate/bit depth stuff is useful for production process, but irrelevant for final distribution.
Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense
#4They are useful if you're resampling them or editing them, but I doubt that's something consumer music services are overly concerned with.
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Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense
#5Why do high quality DACs clearly sound better then? And they sound better with better files. Maybe it really is all in my head but I mean listening to a £20000 hifi the other day (vinyl) really just shocked me.
I was listening to Marvin Gaye on my friends system and I could hear that there were several different backing singers all moving and at different distances from the microphone.
Are there any double blind trials anywhere of Vinyl/CD/24-192khz with super high end hifi systems? Mostly I see people suggesting that these tests are performed from the phono output of a mac with a pair of average ear buds...
Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense
#6They are useful if you're resampling them or editing them, but I doubt that's something consumer music services are overly concerned with.
I'll note that's the entire point of Monty's (great) article, which has this near the top: Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space. This has all been known to anyone with actual signal processing and/or audio engineering knowledge for a long time now. As in, common knowledge to the…
There's a reasonable argument that fits within DSP theory that frequencies sampled above audible range could have harmonics down in the audible range.
Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense
#7Why do high quality DACs clearly sound better then? And they sound better with better files. Maybe it really is all in my head but I mean listening to a £20000 hifi the other day (vinyl) really just shocked me. I was listening to Marvin Gaye on my friends system and I could hear that there were several different backing singers all moving and at different distances from the microphone. Are there any double blind tria…
>Why do high quality DACs clearly sound better then? And they sound better with better files. Maybe it really is all on my head but I mean listening to a £20000 hifi the other day...
You were listening to £20,000 worth of amps and speakers, and you were most likely in an acoustically treated room.
Also, novelty is almost always euphonic when it isn't overtly bad. This fact is often neglected. You hear something you didn't hear before and your brain immediately tells you that it sounds better, even if it doesn't actually represent higher fidelity. Actually making an objective judgement requires a careersworth of experience, or a test lab and the skills to use it.
For example: you were listening to vinyl, which is covered in delicious noise and warm harmonic distortion, and is mastered differently. Highly euphonic, very novel if youve only ever heard the CD version before, but definitely not higher fidelity.
BTW higher end DACs do sound better, but the rest of your signal chain needs to be really good for you to notice it. It's often to do with better phase accuracy between the left and right channels, which affects the soundstage, or stereo image. If your speakers/amp have loose timing however, you'll never be able to tell.
Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense
#8From my experience, what matters more than sample rate is 24 bit vs. 16 bit sampling in the recording/production process. Using heavy compression and EQ can mean that very quiet sounds can become louder, in this case 24 bit recording is ideal. Sample rate wise, anything above 40khz is fine for most ears (I've probably lost a few khz in the upper range anyways) Another note is that most converters operate at a multiple of 48K, so it makes sense to use 48/96khz if you are recording. It all comes down to how much disk space you have, and want to use up.
Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense
#9The nigger is a sad stubborn stupid fuck.
The CIA has no engineers, just psychologists.
Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense
#10The single worst thing that harms audio quality is excessive compression. It's ruining everything, I'd say. Heck, I'm sure everyone who knows their worth would agree that compression harms audio quality.
Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war
edit: compression as in dynamic range compression, not data compression like mp3 in audio