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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)

#381

Post by ksk »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #379
ksk wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are some examples of popular songs that had their loudness boosted?

Almost any reissue of material that has already appeared on CD in an earlier generation. Compare the post-millennial CD remasters of Slowdive's Souvlaki or the Cocteau Twins discography to the original CD issues of those albums in the early 1990s. Generally anytime an album is announced as "newly remastered" these days, the sole significant change is decreasing its dynamic range.

Any examples that I can listen to online?

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

#382

Post by ehsankia »

anyfoo wrote: post #125
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.

Yeah, when you leave the possibility open, everyone wants to believe they are that special one with amazing ears that can tell the difference where no one else can, but it's always placebo.

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

#383

Post by svachalek »

knute wrote: post #347
72deluxe wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm not an audiophile at all but satellite radio sounds worse to me than anything other than AM/FM radio. Spotify over LTE and Bluetooth sounds night-and-day better.

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

#384

Post by jancsika »

jancsika wrote: post #178
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.

> Not 192 kHz; no friggin' way. That's an anthropocentric statement. I want to leave it at that for now just to see if I get dinged for low effort.

Only one ding? I'm disappointed.

Anyway, check out the frequency range for other animals:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hearing_range

Notice that there are a number of species whose range extends well past 20kHz. Even with 192kHz you're still chopping off the upper end of what dolphins and porpoises can hear and produce.

So please convince Apple and friends that you need 200+kHz to truly capture the "warmth" of Neil Young's live albums. Then we'll be able to crowdsource recording all the animals and eventually synthesize the sounds to communicate with them all.

Maybe then we can synthesize a compelling, "We're really sorry, we promise we're going to fix all the things now," for the dolphins and convince them not to leave. :)

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

#385

Post by soundwave106 »

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...

Some people like it (obviously, the "loudness war" would've never occurred if it didn't work commercially), some people don't.

My personal example of a song where it doesn't work is Johnny Cash's "Hurt". Around 3 minutes into the song, Johnny Cash's vocal noticeably distorts. From my perspective, the distortion is absolutely a loudness war phenomenon: if you look at the waveform in an editor, the song starts off pretty "hot" given that there's a very noticeable crescendos at the end. At the end of the song, where the music is pretty much maxing out, there is no bandwidth left. There is no other option to stand out but to push Johnny's voice to distortion.

I've seen people in message boards say the distortion in the vocals adds "intensity". Personally, I'd love to see an un-Loudness War version where Johnny Cash gets several dB more to cleanly sing over the music. Where dynamics, not distortion, is what is driving the intensity. For my tastes, it would be much preferred.

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

#386

Post by stplsd »

JohnBooty wrote: post #328
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 24/192 downloads or SACD releases are often the only way to hear the album with real dynamic range. Yeah, this is often true. Some of Green Day's (a band I've never previously been into) albums were released in 24/192 or 24/96 a few years back and they actually sounded really great, with real dynamic range. Also true? The completely absurd fact that sometimes a vinyl rip of an album will actually have the highest…

Vinyl DR values are not accurate, vinyl made from the same digital master as CD usually will have DR value higher by 3 or more points.

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

#387

Post by 0xCMP »

anyfoo wrote: post #48
0xCMP wrote: post #9

I've always been able to tell when something on Spotify I've heard before is lower quality now. I can instinctively tell in my car when that's the case. It's mostly due to how loud certain parts of the song are or how it sounds at higher volumes. I guess, given what he says, that wouldn't be the case if made sure they were the same dB.

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…

So how about for Spotify? It's all digital media, but I pay more to be able to have the highest quality version streamed/pre-downloaded for songs and I can pretty much tell the difference. I've had anecdotal experiences were I noticed a distinct difference and checked to find out somehow my settings were changed.

Is it that Spotify changes the dynamic for lower and high quality encodings of the songs?

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

#388

Post by borkt »

soundwave106 wrote: post #385
haywirez wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Some people like it (obviously, the "loudness war" would've never occurred if it didn't work commercially), some people don't. My personal example of a song where it doesn't work is Johnny Cash's "Hurt". Around 3 minutes into the song, Johnny Cash's vocal noticeably distorts. From my perspective, the distortion is absolutely a loudness war phenomenon: if you look at the waveform in an editor, the song starts off pret…

50 cent get rich or die trying is an excellent example of a poorly mastered album produced around the same time as well, vocals distorted throughout almost (if not) the entire album. I can't even imagine what the engineers were thinking when recording these, similar to the overuse of autotune in country these days - see george straight - cowboy walks away

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

#389

Post by ljcn »

dagw wrote: post #342
dom0 wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It shouldn't make much too much difference unless you like to listen to them really loud (damaging-your-hearing levels).

Two things come to mind though: voltage/current delivery of your amp, and damping ratio.

The first depends on the characteristics of your amplifier. Some are better at delivering current, some voltage. The lower impedance (32) is better suited to high-current/low-voltage sources, which includes most portable devices, phones, etc. Conversely, the higher impedance (250) is better for high-voltage/low-current sources like tube amps.

The second is about the ratio of the headphone impedance to the amp output impedance. You want a high ratio, so if your source has a large output impedance then the higher impedance headphones will sound better. Good headphone amps sometimes specify the output impedance, or you can measure it.

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

#390

Post by [deleted] »

soundwave106 wrote: post #368
5zBFyURxgY wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still very silly IMAO. Very, very few recordings are done in 24/192 because of the many implications this has on your entire studio setup. You'll need an exceptional good clock to start with, and all other equipment needs to align to that clock. Then all plugins/processing you use needs to be in the same 24/192 domain, otherwise your signal is reduced to the limit of that plugin/processing and all previous efforts ar…

This depends on whether you are in the studio or are just playing back things. In the studio, I would say that 24 bit at least should be the norm for recording purposes. 24 bit recording gives you very noticeable increased headroom (about 20dB). This gives you quite a bit more flexibility recording lower levels without concerning yourself about the noise floor. The difference isn't huge for most prosumer setups in pr…

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