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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)

#251

Post by [deleted] »

aidenn0 wrote: post #34
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 at any bitrate cannot properly reproduce certain sounds, as preecho can happen and it is fairly easy to train yourself to notice it. Pretty much any modern lossy format can be made transparent at high enough bitrates though.

[deleted]

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

#252

Post by [deleted] »

PavlikPaja wrote: post #163
bch wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example?

Any sound that starts or end very suddenly. Drums of any kind will sound kind of weird in MP3. Applause used to be the bane of MP3. Encoders got better at it, but it's apparently impossible to get rid of completely. As far as I understand it it's the accoustic equivalent of ringing artifacts that you can see in low quality JPEG's or old MPEG videos.

[deleted]

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

#253

Post by [deleted] »

martin_a wrote: post #8
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…

But who is using MP3 players these days any more? I found myself to buy an iPod in... like... 2011 or so. Converted all the CDs I had to FLAC because losless was the way to go. Two or three years (let it be 5, doesn't matter) pass by, I got a better Smartphone, Spotify Premium and don't touch my 1xx GB of FLAC music anymore, because I don't want to carry around another device etc. I'm not sure but I think "owning" mu…

[deleted]

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

#254

Post by Applejinx »

iaresee wrote: post #132
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…

> This is also why modern vinyl releases sound a lot better than digital: they are mastered differently since its assumed everyone is going to be listening on good equipment. I'm going to disagree here. They are mastered differently because the physical limitations of the media require them to be mastered differently _and_ it just so happens that the physical limitations help limit mastering tricks in a way that prod…

NS10s are kicking around because they're unusually good at time domain performance. For instance, they have miserable bass not only because they're small boxes and smallish drivers, but because they're an infinite baffle design, which is significantly better for time domain performance than bass reflex. The enclosures also dissipate energy quite well, and it's well established that this contributes to being able to 'translate' mixes: you get a better sense of what's actually in the track using NS10s than you might with many 'better sounding' speakers.

They spotlight midrange with a presence peak right where the ear's most sensitive, and this is in part because the woofer is actually designed more like a midrange: thin paper, conical rather than curved cross-section, both of which also contribute to 'sounding bad' tonally while delivering energy more unforgivingly.

They're not really about mastering, though, they're about mixing because if you have elements out of balance it will be screamingly, annoyingly obvious on NS10s. That's not down to their bad-soundingness, it's down to their ability to be incredibly unforgiving.

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

#255

Post by [deleted] »

martin_a wrote: post #8
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…

But who is using MP3 players these days any more? I found myself to buy an iPod in... like... 2011 or so. Converted all the CDs I had to FLAC because losless was the way to go. Two or three years (let it be 5, doesn't matter) pass by, I got a better Smartphone, Spotify Premium and don't touch my 1xx GB of FLAC music anymore, because I don't want to carry around another device etc. I'm not sure but I think "owning" mu…

[deleted]

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

#256

Post by gmueckl »

kazinator wrote: post #248
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…

Some time ago, I stumbled across a YT channel of some guy, a self-professed studio expert, who "remasters" some 80's metal albums to give them a big, "modern" sound. The uploads are heavily commented with positive reviews. Basically, to my ears, it just sounds like a bunch of early reflection reverbs were added (an effect that was mature in the 1980's in its high-end implementations and used in studios to get "bigger…

Back up for a second with the last paragraph there: if the record was mastered for a room sized stereo, it assumes that the room adds its reverb to the sound. With loudspeakers, the room is a distorting filter in the signal path. This and the HRTF distortion are skipped over when listening to headphones/earbuds. So it does make a lot of sense to add these effects to the audio signal in the headphones case. Done right, the headphone playback is indistinguishable from a stereo in a room - mounted to your head, because the spatialized speakers are relative to your head, no matter where you look.

So, there is a case to be made for this kind of processing. But I won't trust a random mastering "guru" with unknown credentials to get that right.

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

#257

Post by Applejinx »

tomc1985 wrote: post #88
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 lev…

No, not at all. Vinyl has a wildly inconsistent noise level where rumble predominates, and people conflate this with bits of resolution. Vinyl's behavior is not easily pinned down relative to 'bits of resolution', because the noise floor is skewed so intensely towards low frequencies.

To say nothing of how generally available vinyl records (especially old ones) have wildly different rms/peak measurements than generally available CDs and digital recordings have. This is partly 'Loudness War' and partly vinyl's inability to even do the loudness war thing and cope with blocks of heavily limited audio in the first place.

So you'll end up with a record where you can play it, and the peaks are 30 freaking dB over the RMS and it sounds amazingly open and uncompressed… while there's also groove noise that is every bit as loud as the music is (admittedly annoying).

A person arguing the vinyl/CD dynamic range thing would make the claim that the record was equivalent to maybe TWO bit digital audio, or four bit. The most cursory listen to such a comparison will show how inadequate it is.

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

#258

Post by sickcodebruh »

penagwin wrote: post #166
KerrickStaley wrote: post #164

Question: Is 192 kHz better when you want to slow down (or speed up) a track significantly while keeping pitches the same? Does it produce less noticeable artifacts? When DJing, I often speed up or slow down a track I'm cueing in order to match the tempo of the playing song. So having 192 kHz tracks might be better (although usually you try not to change a song's tempo too far from the original anyway).

I personally read the article to be addressing 192 kHz as a consumer of the music, I have a feeling for those producing (or mixing, etc.) it's a bit different. It's kinda like how there's advantages of recording at 8k, better cropping, supersampling, etc. But for the average consumer there's no perceivable difference between the pixel density of 8k footage and 1080p footage on their 7" screen anyway.

I record and mix metal bands and have stuck with 48 kHz for years like many of the engineers I know. 96 kHz sounded better to my ears last time I checked in the studio (it's been years, maybe I wouldn't notice now that I'm older) but it's not worth the heavier storage and processing impact when nobody is actually going to use my stuff that way. I certainly don't feel limited by working at 48 kHz, either, but the hit to my workflow would be significant. Additionally, a lot of converters start imposing track limits when you go beyond 48 kHz, so that's one more reason to stay put.

More important than sample rate is AD/DA quality. I'll trust a new high-end converter at 48 kHz than an old prosumer device at 192 kHz.

Plenty of the albums we love as listeners were recorded at 44.1 or 48. Plenty were recorded with absolutely horrendous equipment but played and mixed by professionals who created magic. MANY modern vinyl releases where people brag about superior sound quality are just the CD master in all its 16/44.1 glory remastered for vinyl. Little of it matters when the end result is special.

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

#259

Post by Applejinx »

gwbas1c wrote: post #170

When I casually researched the upper limit of human hearing, I came across something that mentioned that some people can detect lowpass filtering up to 27khz. That's less than half an octave over the "traditional" 20khz limit. Even the 20khz limit is more of an average then a strict biological limit. It also means that a sampling rate somewhere at 54khz is the "ideal" limit when trying to pick a sampling frequency th…

I've been in an internet argument among very serious digital audio experts (such as from Bell Labs) where the consensus reached was this: for properly done audio export as a final stage to be heard by the most critical listeners, and by properly done I mean the output is dithered and not simply truncated and everything else is done properly:

20, possibly 22 bit, and 60 to 80K.

Given that people screw that up by failing to dither to fixed point formats, you could push it to 24 bit, which is a generally supported word length. Since multipliers of common lower sample rates (44.1 and 48) give us 96K, that is also a good 'extra padding' to be certain of never encountering an issue.

I'm with Dan Lavry w.r.t 192K being unnecessary. Done properly, 96K gets everything, including extreme phenomena or artificial sound (for instance, I have a Farfisa organ that's capable of producing reedy thin sounds of extraordinary clarity, from simple electric tone generator circuits). I use 24/96 for my music stream recordings, while also streaming to YouTube at a much lower quality.

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

#260

Post by Applejinx »

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #207
ehutch79 wrote: post #197

Please do not confuse the usefulness of 24/192 for playback and listening enjoyment, and it's usefulness for recording and heavy 'in the box' processing.

In the box processing uses 32-bit or 64-bit float. Fixed-point DSP processing was a thing maybe ten years ago, and even then the standard was 56-bit. 24-bit is nowhere close to good enough for ITB DSP. That aside - the bit depth part of this article is silly and wrong. With an unprocessed acoustic recording, the difference between 16-bit and 24-bit sources is fairly easy to hear on professional equipment. By the time…

Very inadequately. There was a quadrophonic vinyl system that failed commercially, which played back surround speakers using modulation of a 30K carrier tone. You had to use a special (aka 'good') stylus, and it sort of worked. The resulting carrier tones would go from 18 kHz to 45 kHz and the fact that this worked at all is evidence that vinyl goes up that far if you let it: wear will tend to scrub off that information unless it's a high energy transient, in which case there's a big chunk of plastic refusing to be worn off (but you'll dull it).
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