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24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

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Re: 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

#121

Post by stephen_g »

jchanimal wrote: post #110
tomc1985 wrote: post #3

While the extra quality is lost on listeners, from experience I've found that super-HQ source material can change your results (for the better) when fed through distortion/compression/warming effects processors

I've heard (and it passes the smell test) that even if your ears can't resonate at frequencies higher than human hearing, the space you are in can, and your ears are sensitive to the differences in arrival time that are smaller than the pitches we can't hear. So at least in high sample rate music the imaging could potentially be cleaner. Assuming super great everything else.

What you're sort of describing - having more of the higher frequencies resonate together - can actually cause intermodulation distortion (which itself can be in the audible range), which can make it sound worse...

I haven't had time to check the linked article but if it's the one I'm thinking of I'm pretty sure it goes into this.

In the end though, double blind testing (again, I think mentioned in the article) shows that there's a threshold (a bit below 48kHz, probably why 44.1kHz was chosen for CD audio) after which people cant distinguish between higher sample rates at any more accuracy than randomly guessing.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

#122

Post by TD-Linux »

duderific wrote: post #115

Kind of a side topic, but does anyone know what's up with Sirius XM satellite radio? Whenever I listen to that in my wife's car, I find the sound quality to be obnoxiously bad, to the point that I choose to listen to plain old FM if I'm driving her car. The higher frequencies (hi hats for example) are mushy and sound like they are warbling, and the sound just generally has a lack of depth. What is the explanation for…

I notice it too, and it's because the music is extremely low bitrate - usually 48kbps, but sometimes as low as 32. It's HE-AACv2 - not as good as Opus, but close. Its characteristic artifacts include destroying transients, like your hi-hats.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

#123

Post by photojosh »

exikyut wrote: post #112
peatmoss wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What about transhumans? I'm looking forward to my HiFi Cochleatron 9000(tm) when my hearing starts to go. Then I'll be mighty glad we made all these high-res recordings.

That makes for some genuinely interesting thought experiments. What if, this actually becomes possible, but we discover that because we previously couldn't hear these frequencies, our instruments and equipment are HORRIBLY mis-tuned and sound terrible? We may end up having to re-record tons of stuff. Something something premature optimization. And part of me is glad that the art of hand-making instruments is not yet…

Higher frequencies aren't even in most recordings, so we wouldn't have to re-record them for that reason.

And if they were (such as in 96 kHz hi-res audio), you could just run it through a low-pass filter to strip off the higher frequencies.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

#124

Post by __david__ »

jchanimal wrote: post #110
tomc1985 wrote: post #3

While the extra quality is lost on listeners, from experience I've found that super-HQ source material can change your results (for the better) when fed through distortion/compression/warming effects processors

I've heard (and it passes the smell test) that even if your ears can't resonate at frequencies higher than human hearing, the space you are in can, and your ears are sensitive to the differences in arrival time that are smaller than the pitches we can't hear. So at least in high sample rate music the imaging could potentially be cleaner. Assuming super great everything else.

That's one of those things that sounds true without putting thought into it but is ultimately false. A 44.1kHz sampled sounds can encode phases with offsets smaller than 22µs (1/44.1k). How much smaller? I'm not exactly sure, but I believe it's dependent on your sample size. My guess is 1/2^16 (assuming sample resolution of 16 bits), but I might be off by a factor of 2 (or indeed 100% wrong) there. Caveat emptor. If I'm right then that's 346 pico-seconds, which I'm betting is smaller than your brain can differentiate.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

#125

Post by anyfoo »

dep_b wrote: post #109

Without even reading the article I already know that it's extremely hard that hearing the difference between 16/44.1 and 24/192 indeed is really hard if not impossible. I only use higher bitrates when creating music so when I mix or record I don't need to make the levels go almost into red to get a hot enough signal, I can do all kinds of changes like slowing down or up, distortion, EQ, compression without losing any…

No, not "really hard if not impossible", it is impossible. The article itself cites that no one has ever been observed to be able to do so.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

#126

Post by shmerl »

jahnu wrote: post #18

I've said it before, this video demo is one of the very best I've ever seen. https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml So well prepared, so well presented, so little that could be removed without ruining it. I aspire to do such good demos but always fall so short.

The first one is good too: https://xiph.org/video/vid1.shtml

Check out also the making of:

* https://wiki.xiph.org/Videos/A_Digital_Media_Primer_For_Geek...

* https://wiki.xiph.org/Videos/Digital_Show_and_Tell

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

#127

Post by amygdyl »

jahnu wrote: post #18

I've said it before, this video demo is one of the very best I've ever seen. https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml So well prepared, so well presented, so little that could be removed without ruining it. I aspire to do such good demos but always fall so short.

I felt that the presenter is a very rare example of a engineer who felt that his expression and purpose was attractive to his imagined audience.

Without diversion via the questions embedded in the profession and the perception and self perception of the male geek working and academic world, I so rarely see a presenter reacting to a sense of apparent human warmth in the room, and beyond the lens, which even with the most encouraging assistance behind the lens, is genuinely hard to do. Hard enough that I think it is a classic contribution to the stereotypes of inflated ego newsreel presenters, which Hollywood loves to satirise, in my opinion because Hollywood is mocking, to their narrow and insecure view, a subspecies of acting which when done well, can so massively capture the greater audience than ever some most serious actors may manage to capture.

This is a bit more than a little bit of geek knowhow and applied thought, but I think many geeks by virtue of sheer analysis without a obstruction of a ego, could be handily outperforming the supposedly inherent talent they are "meant" to possess. It may be reaching well into "real serious" acting, very easily. I don't pretend to be a judge of that, but if acting abilities are "I know it when I see it", this is excellent acting indeed.

Edit, is not was, first line. A comma for clarity but later on.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

#128

Post by anyfoo »

baddox wrote: post #84
anyfoo wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is well known that music media for "popular" consumption are often intentionally mastered with much less dynamic. This is called "compression", but has, on the surface, nothing to do with compression of bits* . It's the dynamic that's compressed, making quieter and louder sounds be closer together. For markets with people that are more likely to care about sound quality, though, a much larger dynamic range is pres…

It's true that much popular music is heavily compressed, but you normally wouldn't encounter two differently-compressed masters of the same song. Two exceptions would be radio (some stations used to apply their own compression, and perhaps they still do) and some high-quality releases aimed at audiophiles that are produced from a less-compressed master. I wouldn't think that streaming services like Spotify would re-c…

I was a bit imprecise, but the "high-quality releases aimed at audiophiles" is essentially what I was referring to. The record stores are full of remastered vinyl editions.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

#129

Post by exikyut »

jahnu wrote: post #18

I've said it before, this video demo is one of the very best I've ever seen. https://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml So well prepared, so well presented, so little that could be removed without ruining it. I aspire to do such good demos but always fall so short.

Thanks for sharing that! I was convinced to watch it from all the other recommendations and can concur (FWIW at this point) that it was well worth it.

The camerawork was excellent and the demonstration integration/trinket-wielding was seamlessly done. I get the impression the people who made this had a case of "let's use the ThinkPad for this, and let's do it this and that way," and they pulled it off so perfectly, exactly how engineers wish would happen.

If you ever need a reference demo for "open-source software can make good looking presentations," this would be on the shortlist, I think. (The credits say it was made using Cinerella, for reference.)

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

#130

Post by exikyut »

photojosh wrote: post #123
exikyut wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes for some genuinely interesting thought experiments. What if, this actually becomes possible, but we discover that because we previously couldn't hear these frequencies, our instruments and equipment are HORRIBLY mis-tuned and sound terrible? We may end up having to re-record tons of stuff. Something something premature optimization. And part of me is glad that the art of hand-making instruments is not yet…

Higher frequencies aren't even in most recordings, so we wouldn't have to re-record them for that reason. And if they were (such as in 96 kHz hi-res audio), you could just run it through a low-pass filter to strip off the higher frequencies.

Ah, good point.

And... heh, using a filter to strip out the audio we used all that extra filesize to deliberately store. Haha. :)

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