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24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

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Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#81

Post by stcredzero »

mruts wrote: post #4

Problem with music sounding bad doesn’t really have much to do with the distributed format: V0, V1, or 320 mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac. You can only the difference between mp3 and flac at shitty bitrates no one uses anymore (like 120). The reason why a lot of recent digital music sounds bad is because of the intentionally terrible mastering. Since everyone is listening of crappy ear…

Since everyone is listening of crappy earbuds, they compress the hell out of it and destroy all dynamic range.

More compression and less dynamic range is beneficial for certain environments. Noisy subways. Watching TV in a noisy downtown apartment. Basically, crappy, noisy environments. In those, compression will help you actually hear the music and speech. However, the fact that this should be done in the master is an artifact of an earlier time. Now that signal processing is small and cheap enough to be ubiquitous, music should be mastered for the best equipment, then appropriate signal processing should be done by playback.

The problem is, that there is a lot of older equipment out there that wouldn't be able to do this. So the signal gets compressed before distribution, as a compromise for the least common denominator of equipment out there. Otherwise, a big chunk of the population would think the master sounds like crap. To them, in their particular situation, it would.

EDIT: Come to think of it, the current system, where most music is more compressed, but where the people who care can still get a high dynamic range version, is a very good compromise. The problem is that the latter group's selection isn't quite filled out by the market.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#82

Post by mixmastamyk »

TL;DR: 24/192 is useful at the mastering stage, to avoid error creep from mixing and effects. This is way beyond human hearing however, so scaling down to 16/44.1 (CD quality) in the final mix for playback won't result in noticeable degradation. CD quality was chosen on principles of human limits.

Perhaps we could give a bit of extra headroom for kicks, to widen the envelope at extremes however. A useful amount would look more like 20/48 rather than quadruple or sextuple the resolution. No one produces in this format though, the next one up is typically 24/96.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#83

Post by PascLeRasc »

sideshowb wrote: post #47
vortico wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you think our senses transcend what tools have the ability to measure? Maybe that was the case in 1970, but in 2000+, hearing (and vision) is completely understood scientifically and far surpassed by measuring apparatus at every frequency range. Saying otherwise is an appeal to what is called audio mysticism and is caused by placebo and confirmation bias, which was mentioned in the article.

Actually that's a defensible position when you're mixing and mastering audio. A spectrogram won't tell you which settings sound better, but your ears will. Maybe not relevant in the context of GP's post though. In the context of digital tools telling you two signals are identical, then I suspect they are, and if you want to prove to me your ears hear better then you're going to need a blind A/B test.

But I don't care about proving anything to you. I don't need you to believe me for me to enjoy my music. You can tell me you prefer coffee from Brazil to coffee from Honduras and we can talk about what characteristics you notice, not whether or not you've done a blind A/B test.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#84

Post by babypuncher »

badfrog wrote: post #24
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #5

Thanks to this article, when I torrent music that is shared in 24/192 format, I always resample to 24/96: ffmpeg -i foo.flac -ar 96000 -acodec flac bar.flac

I'm curious why you torrent music still when streaming is so widely available and free/cheap? I did a lot of torrenting back in the 2000s, but thinking back on it I spent a ton of time finding things, organizing my file system, transcoding, editing metadata, etc. I do not miss that hassle at all now.

Streaming music services lack all the options in foobar2000 that I've grown accustomed to over the last 10+ years.

Personally, I buy music rather than torrent, but the pace at which I buy new music (either on bandcamp or physical CDs) costs me about the same as a Spotify premium subscription anyways, only I get to keep the music forever.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#85

Post by rsync »

mruts wrote: post #4

Problem with music sounding bad doesn’t really have much to do with the distributed format: V0, V1, or 320 mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac. You can only the difference between mp3 and flac at shitty bitrates no one uses anymore (like 120). The reason why a lot of recent digital music sounds bad is because of the intentionally terrible mastering. Since everyone is listening of crappy ear…

"Since everyone is listening of crappy earbuds, they compress the hell out of it and destroy all dynamic range."

For readers of your comment and your child comments, it is important to note that the compression you are talking about in that sentence is not the same as the compression that most people are thinking of when discussing digital file formats (mp3, etc.).

This might be helpful:

https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/the-common-audiophile...

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#86

Post by mikeash »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #76
mikeash wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If two wines were chemically identical but someone claimed that one of them tasted “warmer” than the other, would you just go with that?

Sure. I don't need to invalidate someone else's experience.

What if they were wasting a bunch of money on it and trying to convince others to do the same?

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#87

Post by blattimwind »

IWeldMelons wrote: post #53
newaccoutnas wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Umm, Nyquist-Shannon Theory? Listening to 24Bit 192Khz can actually damage the cillia in your ear

Bingo! Exactly, Nyquist theory. But no one can make a truly good, brickwall filter at this frequency. It is much easier to make a lot less steep frequency response, whilch would start at 22 khz and would slowly go down all the way to 96 kHz. By the way, how would it damage the ears if it was thoroughly filtered?

Except that audio DACs are generally oversampling; for example, an output filter for the AD1955 DAC is only needed to reach -3 dB at 100 kHz, even if you are feeding it a 48 kHz PCM signal. This allows these DACs to produce essentially zero energy in the frequency band from Nyquist cutoff of the input signal to filter cutoff.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#88

Post by tomc1985 »

mruts wrote: post #4

Problem with music sounding bad doesn’t really have much to do with the distributed format: V0, V1, or 320 mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac. You can only the difference between mp3 and flac at shitty bitrates no one uses anymore (like 120). The reason why a lot of recent digital music sounds bad is because of the intentionally terrible mastering. Since everyone is listening of crappy ear…

So vinyl has only about the equivalent of 10-14 bits of resolution (I don't remember the exact number I heard and it has been a while) and waveforms within our hearing range are far larger than what 192khz can potentially accomodate. The only use I've found for such high-resolution is audio is using it as base material for further effects processing... certain distortion units and whatnot that operate on a sample level can sometimes give nicer output when fed super hi-res audio

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#89

Post by Kaiyou »

mruts wrote: post #4

Problem with music sounding bad doesn’t really have much to do with the distributed format: V0, V1, or 320 mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac. You can only the difference between mp3 and flac at shitty bitrates no one uses anymore (like 120). The reason why a lot of recent digital music sounds bad is because of the intentionally terrible mastering. Since everyone is listening of crappy ear…

> mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac

I did a blind test between 128-mp3, 320-mp3 and flac hearing classical music. While it's true that the 128-mp3 is obvious to find, it also isn't too difficult to find the 320-mp3. Flac just sounds better. Described as a feeling, flac is more voluminous and doesn't feel cut short. For fun, I also let my parents take this test and they could tell, too.

That's why I converted all our CDs to FLAC. Storage is cheap anyway.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#90

Post by vortico »

PascLeRasc wrote: post #70
vortico wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, this is what I can't fathom. We can detect exoplanets with telescopes with 0.01 arcsecond accuracy, hear whale calls 100 miles away with an array of low frequency transducers, and model the shape of structures by forcing seismic vibration and measuring the response to 1 part in 100 million. We can image the HIV virus and detect DNA changes due to cancer. It's unlikely that we don't understand everything we need…

I don't mean to shift the goalposts, but neuroscience isn't completely understood, and that's what I mean by hearing and how music makes you feel.

Completely true, but the auditory nerve only "knows" what the mechanical part can respond to. If we don't understand how sound information is interpreted by the nervous system, we can still answer the question "is any neural/electrical/chemical signal whatsoever produced by a stimulation of a frequency or amplitude?"
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