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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)

#191

If the only thing you do with your music is listen, then yes, 24/192 delivers questionable value compared to the more popular 16/44.1 or 16/48 formats. However, all musicians I know use these high-rez formats internally. The reason for that, when you apply audio effects, especially complex VST ones, these discretization artifacts noticeably decrease the result quality. Maybe, the musicians who distribute their music…

I do not believe it. 24 bits is definitely needed for processing (better yet, use floating-point). Not 192 kHz; no friggin' way. Repeated processing through multiple blocks at a given sample rate does not produce cumulative discretization problems in the time domain; it's just not how the math works.

> Not 192 kHz; no friggin' way.

It can be useful to run your signal processing chain at a higher rate because many digital effects are not properly bandlimited internally (and it would be pretty CPU hungry to do so).

But that doesn't mean you need to store data even that you'll process later at 192KHz though it might be easier to do so.

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

#193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>as engineers we will never solve this problem [reproduce a live acoustic music performance] as long as the "44.1kHz is good enough" dogma is perpetuated It's the opposite. We are never going to solve this problem if we are going to focus on things that have nothing to do with the problem. Compare and contrast: >as engineers we will never solve this problem as long as the "copper wires are good enough" dogma is perpe…

interesting viewpoint, however, did you think about the experiment I presented? without an answer, sample rate and cabling cannot be considered equivalent distractions on the road to high fidelity.

You’re talking about something orthogonal to the question at hand. It’s like complaining that the 4K TV sucks at VR.

Of course it does. It’s not meant to provide VR.

Same thing with sampling and bit-depth. Those address digital encoding of analog signals. They have nothing to say about speaker design, number of audio channels, room acoustics, or the myriad other factors that go into replicating a live stage performance.

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

#194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do not believe it. 24 bits is definitely needed for processing (better yet, use floating-point). Not 192 kHz; no friggin' way. Repeated processing through multiple blocks at a given sample rate does not produce cumulative discretization problems in the time domain; it's just not how the math works.

> better yet, use floating-point Both your inputs (ADC) and outputs (DAC) are fixed-point. Why would you want to use a floating point in between? Technically, 64-bit floating point format would be enough for precision. But that would inflate both bandwidth and CPU requirements for no value. 32-bit floating point ain’t enough. Many people in the industry already use 32-bit integers for these samples. > Not 192 kHz; no…

I habitually edit audio using 32-bit float, not 16-bit integer.

> Why would you want to use a floating point in between?

Because 32-bit float has enough mantissa bits to represent all 24-bit integer fixed-point values exactly, so it is at least as good.

Because 32-bit float is friendly to vectorization/SIMD, whereas 24-bit integer is not.

Because with 32-bit integers, you still have to worry about overflow if you start stacking like 65536 voices on top of each other, whereas 32-bit float will behave more gracefully.

Because 32-bit floating-point audio editing is only double the storage/memory requirements compared to 16-bit integer, but it buys you the ultimate peace of mind against silly numerical precision problems.

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

#195

Makes me long for the day when consumer audio products were proudly labeled as having a 1-bit DAC. Nowadays you couldn't sell audio hardware that made such truthful statements about its internals. Gotta have the bits.

Hey, they still do. And it's 'audiophile.' DSD is 1-bit, but with a very high sampling rate (2.8224 MHz). Though, as far as I know there isn't actually any quality boost vs PCM.

That's my point. The golden ears wouldn't deign to buy a "cheesy" 1-bit DAC. It has to be recast as something else to fool them.

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

#196

and yet, we are nowhere near being able to electronically reproduce a live acoustic music performance. have you ever walked by a bunch of musical sound coming out of a room and thought to yourself, "wow, those live musicians sound great" only to discover it was just a stereo playing? nope. as engineers we will never solve this problem as long as the "44.1kHz is good enough" dogma is perpetuated. here's a question. wh…

> and yet, we are nowhere near being able to electronically reproduce a live acoustic music performance.

That has a lot more to do with the spatial component of the audio than anything else.

Unfortunately, surround sound sufficient to really reproduce acoustic fields (and not just sound effects ping ponging around) require more cost and concessions in the listening room than many are willing to tolerate.

So long as people continue to get the engineering wrong and think the sampling rate and bit-depth have anything to do with it we'll probably continue to see the market invest in the wrong solutions.

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

#197
post #192

Contrary to what he says, I can most certainly see some IR remotes. Not super bright but enough to notice. Same goes for the IR lights in my Kinect.

Have you had cataract surgery? I know that can have an impact on visible spectrum depending on the replacement lens they put in.

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

#198
post #197
post #192

Contrary to what he says, I can most certainly see some IR remotes. Not super bright but enough to notice. Same goes for the IR lights in my Kinect.

Have you had cataract surgery? I know that can have an impact on visible spectrum depending on the replacement lens they put in.

Nope, I'm afraid not. I never noticed until maybe 3 years ago, so I think it's a newer development. I'm 31.

I also got glasses this year for the first time in my life, which the need for came on rather suddenly... So maybe it's linked with some kind of degeneration? I really can't say. I honestly didn't think to mention it to the doctor, but now I'm thinking maybe I should have.

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

#199
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 m…

What kind of software generated this comment?

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

#200
If you are downloading to simply consume, then sure. But as others have noted this article assumes that mastering is always the last step in the editing process. Anyone who ever remixed, sampled or DJ'ed will disagree.

If we keep that in mind, then the setup of the problem changes significantly and most arguments made here do not apply to the download itself.

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