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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)

#341

Post by CaptainZapp »

mixedCase wrote: post #313
Fifer82 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have! I really have! My friend spends all his money on audio. I sadly just don't understand. You are correct. I was going to say that he pays infinite money for what to me is a 10% increase in enjoyment, but perhaps for you and him, your brain is better with sound, and you guys might get a 1000% improvement for your dollar. Although in any case, nothing justifies the pricetag dished out to audio enthusiasts.

An 100-150 dollar headset of the right type is hardly "infinite money" and I would call it paradigm-changing compared to what most people seem to be using, at least over here. It's only at higher tiers that the difference might really be imperceptible to many ears.

I always thought pickups (the needle of a turntable) are the best example for that:

A 200$ pickup is certainly better than a 20$ needle, maybe even 10x better The difference between a 200$ pickup and one that goes for 2000$ is miniscule. There certainly is a difference, but it's never as big as between the 20$ and the 200$ model.

That said, there are listeners who believe in the value of a 2000$ pickup and derive a lot of enjoyment from the difference to a lesser model. Who am I to say they're wrong?

Now when it comes to a manufacturer of very expensive cables (for example): Don't make me laugh...

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

#342

Post by dagw »

dom0 wrote: post #319
mixedCase wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An 100-150 dollar headset of the right type is hardly "infinite money" and I would call it paradigm-changing compared to what most people seem to be using, at least over here. It's only at higher tiers that the difference might really be imperceptible to many ears.

For all its flaws even a Beyerdynamic DT 770 Pro is a very good headset that's head and shoulders above...

As someone who knows nothing about 'good' headsets, should I get the 32, 80 or 250 Ohm

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

#343

Post by graphitezepp »

mixedCase wrote: post #313
Fifer82 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have! I really have! My friend spends all his money on audio. I sadly just don't understand. You are correct. I was going to say that he pays infinite money for what to me is a 10% increase in enjoyment, but perhaps for you and him, your brain is better with sound, and you guys might get a 1000% improvement for your dollar. Although in any case, nothing justifies the pricetag dished out to audio enthusiasts.

An 100-150 dollar headset of the right type is hardly "infinite money" and I would call it paradigm-changing compared to what most people seem to be using, at least over here. It's only at higher tiers that the difference might really be imperceptible to many ears.

Yeah the full on audiophile stuff is mostly nonsense as far as I can tell, but my god I do not understand how so very many people put up with those crappy apple earbuds as there primary sound playback. The difference with a proper set of headphones is massive.

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

#344

Post by kazinator »

nayuki wrote: post #194
Const-me wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sta…

float has scale-independent error because it is logarithmic/exponential.

If you quiet the amplitude by some decibels, that is just decrementing the exponent field in the float; the mantissa stays 24 bits wide.

If you quiet the amplitude of integer samples, they lose resolution (bits per sample).

If you divide a float by two, and then multiply by two, you recover the original value without loss, because just the exponent decremented and then incremented again.

(Of course, I mean: in the absence of underflow. But underflow is far away. If the sample value of 1 is represented as 1.0, you have tons of room in either direction.)

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

#345

Post by kazinator »

leni536 wrote: post #314
kazinator wrote: post #147

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.

What if I simply want to slow down the signal 2 times (without pitch correction)? Then 44.1 kHz is obviously not enough. Maybe 192 kHz is way overkill though, but I would argue that that's the point. You don't want it to become a bottleneck ever for any effects.

It is only insufficient if there are components beyond 20 kHz that you want to bring down into the audio range as you're slowing down.

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

#346

Post by haywirez »

DCKing wrote: post #323
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #190

Not entirely silly. Yes, the purported benefits of this high-fidelity audio are imaginary or even include undesirable traits. However, when most "remasters" of pop music today involve the dynamics being boosted to "loudness wars" standards for a target audience of people listening to the music through earbuds in the street, the 24/192 downloads or SACD releases are often the only way to hear the album with real dynam…

The loudness war seems to have been a temporary problem, prevalent mostly because music was primarily listened as downloads of individual files or small collections of files. Music streaming services have since become a very important music listening medium. Spotify, Google Music, Apple Music and others do normalization of these loudness levels. This neutralizes the loudness wars as it makes loudness wars treatment o…

The loudness war was great. I totally appreciate the extremes it reached and the new music production techniques that were developed in response. Some utterly squashed, distorted albums like The Prodigy's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned are masterpieces. Same goes for some 10-15 year old Mr. Oizo, SebastiAn albums. Over-compression can be very aesthetic. Dynamic range is overrated...

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

#347

Post by knute »

72deluxe wrote: post #282
lz400 wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I've heard people putting the threshold in ~192kbps. Above that it's pretty much impossible these days. I can also tell the difference in 128kpbs, although sometimes it's a bit of nitpicking (can only hear differences in the sounds of hihats and things like that)

I think the type of music you are listening to assists with being able to differentiate. To me (much rock, blues, guitar music) 128kbps MP3 sounds like somebody chewed it first. Cymbals and bizarre snares that sound like the snare is now made of paper indicate the low bitrate. But 256+ and I certainly cannot tell the difference reliably.

I had satellite radio for a while but had to cancel it because I couldn't stand the sound of cymbals at whatever bitrate they encode at. Weirdly, when the phone operator asked why I was cancelling and I told him "audio quality" he acted like he had never heard that before.

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

#348

Post by [deleted] »

rplst8 wrote: post #337
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #190

Not entirely silly. Yes, the purported benefits of this high-fidelity audio are imaginary or even include undesirable traits. However, when most "remasters" of pop music today involve the dynamics being boosted to "loudness wars" standards for a target audience of people listening to the music through earbuds in the street, the 24/192 downloads or SACD releases are often the only way to hear the album with real dynam…

> Not entirely silly. Yes, the purported benefits of this high-fidelity audio are imaginary or even include undesirable traits. However, when most "remasters" of pop music today involve the dynamics being boosted to "loudness wars" standards for a target audience of people listening to the music through earbuds in the street, the 24/192 downloads or SACD releases are often the only way to hear the album with real dyn…

[deleted]

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

#349

Post by cholantesh »

haywirez wrote: post #346
DCKing wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The loudness war seems to have been a temporary problem, prevalent mostly because music was primarily listened as downloads of individual files or small collections of files. Music streaming services have since become a very important music listening medium. Spotify, Google Music, Apple Music and others do normalization of these loudness levels. This neutralizes the loudness wars as it makes loudness wars treatment o…

The loudness war was great. I totally appreciate the extremes it reached and the new music production techniques that were developed in response. Some utterly squashed, distorted albums like The Prodigy's Always Outnumbered, Never Outgunned are masterpieces. Same goes for some 10-15 year old Mr. Oizo, SebastiAn albums. Over-compression can be very aesthetic. Dynamic range is overrated...

That's a pretty homogeneous sample. I can't imagine Bergtatt or Beethoven's 6th being as enjoyable on a poorly mastered recording.

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

#350

Post by rplst8 »

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.

Wow, I hadn't seen this until now,but it is definitely the best video I've ever watched to explain the basics of digital sampling. Great find!
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