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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)

#261

Post by Applejinx »

andybak wrote: post #243
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the article notes: "It's true that 16 bit linear PCM audio does not quite cover the entire theoretical dynamic range of the human ear in ideal conditions." Now, 24-bit may be overkill, but 24-bit is the next step up from 16-bit among standard encoding formats, and as the article notes, there are no drawbacks with 24-bit encoding except greater use of disk space.

The article says: "[...] does not quite cover the entire theoretical dynamic range of the human ear in ideal conditions." Note the words "theoretical" and "ideal". In your post it sounds like you're claiming that you can regularly hear a difference under normal listening conditions - which contradicts my reading of that sentence. My gut feeling is that the difference you're hearing is placebo. To put it another way -…

The article is making numerous inaccurate statements, because it's got an agenda and the author is invested in lossy media encoding quite heavily. There's a degree to where it's relative: in the car with the windows open you'll not be hearing 16 bits of audio resolution.

Monty's gotta monty, and this argument has been going on from the very earliest days of digital: back when people behaved exactly the same way over digital recordings that are now commonly accepted to be excruciatingly bad for a variety of reasons (generally having to do with bad process and wrong technical choices).

You can get a HELL of a lot out of 16/44.1 these days if you really work at it. I do that for a living and continue to push the boundaries of what's common practice (most recently, me and Alexey Lukin of iZotope hammered out a method of dithering the mantissa of 32 bit floating point (which equates to around 24 bit fixed for only the outside 1/2 of the sample range, and gets progressively higher precision as loudness diminishes). Monty is not useful in these discussions, nor is anyone who just dismisses the whole concept of digital audio quality.

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

#262

Post by meatmanek »

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.

Yeah, the author is not arguing against using 24 bits when recording, just when distributing to end users.

If the producer is planning to slow down the audio (and wants the ultrasonic components to become audible), then recording at higher sample rates makes sense, and the author doesn't address this; probably this is pretty rare in practice. You'd also need ultrasonic-capable microphones.

The much more common operation is to filter or amplify the signal, and for that, more bits per sample is better to avoid amplifying your quantization error. The author covers this in the "When does 24 bit matter?" section.

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

#263

Post by robdachshund »

rurp wrote: post #173

I have a related question that someone here probably has a good answer for. I recently heard a song I like on the radio while driving. Shortly after it played I pulled up the same song on Spotify with my phone, plugged my phone into the car stereo through the headphone jack, and played it. The quality was MUCH worse. What's the likely reason for that? I know very little about audio but my best guesses are: 1. The med…

Spotify has compressed audio at pretty low bitrate. The FM signal has a full 20hz to 20khz frequency response and they are probably playing CD quality audio. Since it's just raw analog audio represented by radio frequency, it sounds better than the compressed stuff on spotify.

If you have a good signal, FM can be very high fidelity. Ever since people ditched CDs we've been listening to low quality streams and rips.

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

#264

Post by Applejinx »

turdnagel wrote: post #2

Should this have a (2012) tag? Neil Young did end up releasing music in this format with his Pono player, which failed[0]. [0]: http://www.noise11.com/news/r-i-p-pono-neil-young-kills-off-...

It did fail, but note that it did sound freaking awesome. I have one. The thing rivals all the rest of my studio gear which includes a Lavry Black and a MOTU 16A capable of 24/192k (which doesn't actually sound better than the Black, but does spec better)

The Pono is kind of 'polite' sounding, and possibly not the most mastering-grade accurate playback compared to far more expensive DACs, but by God it sounds good. If you come across any at pennies on the dollar you'd be a fool to not snap them up, it's an extraordinary little piece of tech. (if you do and you don't want them, give 'em to me!)

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

#265

Post by robdachshund »

ecocentrik wrote: post #182
rurp wrote: post #173

I have a related question that someone here probably has a good answer for. I recently heard a song I like on the radio while driving. Shortly after it played I pulled up the same song on Spotify with my phone, plugged my phone into the car stereo through the headphone jack, and played it. The quality was MUCH worse. What's the likely reason for that? I know very little about audio but my best guesses are: 1. The med…

3. The A/D converter used by your car stereo headphone jack is low quality and introduced sampling artifacts. 4. You have a high definition radio and were listening to a high quality digital signal over FM as opposed to an FM analog signal. It's probably a combination of all of these.

Digital radio is very very low bitrate. A good FM signal is superior.

FM is capable of the same frequency response as CD, and it's a purely analog signal. If you don't have interference, you are getting a very pure stream of audio. The station is also probably using CD grade audio, so most of that quality is preserved.

From an audio standpoint, FM is a pretty decent sound medium. It's going to depend on your equipment, signal, and if you are moving.

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

#266

Post by kazinator »

gmueckl wrote: post #256
kazinator wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Right. Only, the accompanying obnoxious rhetoric was along the lines that those studio engineers didn't have the techniques and equipment for this modern sound, and that these old albums need a face lift.

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

#267

Post by atoav »

stcredzero wrote: post #237
jabl wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> More compression and less dynamic range is beneficial for certain environments. Noisy subways. Watching TV in a noisy downtown apartment. Basically, crappy, noisy environments. Good point, I think particularly for movies or such this makes sense. I want to be able to watch a movie such that I hear what the characters are speaking, without blowing my windows out of their frames during some action scene. Yes, I reali…

Yes, I realize in real life explosions, guns etc. are really loud, and this makes the movie less realistic. Really loud? Ear-damaging loud! When the realism becomes actually endangering to your health, your escapist media has gone a bit too far.

Film is mixed with much more dynamic range than music, modtly due to the fact that the environment is typically quite controlled.

This means usually the digital -6db is the maximum loudness with a short term maximum of -1db and dialogue at -9db.

Music today should be mixed according to the EBU R128 today (at least in Europe and for radio) which is a serious win against loundess maximizers and limiters.

I’d argue for in decice DSP compression for small earbud people, and give the whole dynamic range to the rest of us : )

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

#268

Post by atoav »

PaulHoule wrote: post #156
stcredzero wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dynamic range is a solved problem if people cared. You attach some metadata to the audio file that says certain parts should be level boosted in a noisy environment and there you go.

Just give everbody the full range and use dsp compression on decices with well defined sensible defaults.

Similar to the thing we did witb vinyl back in the day where we wanted to fit more music onto the thing and applyed the standardized RIA filter when cutting the template — every phono preamp reverses this effect.

The tbing is people need to have specs they can mix and master for. Making something up makes mixinf unpredictable and that is bad.

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

#269

Post by floatingatoll »

floatingatoll wrote: post #21
turdnagel wrote: post #2

Should this have a (2012) tag? Neil Young did end up releasing music in this format with his Pono player, which failed[0]. [0]: http://www.noise11.com/news/r-i-p-pono-neil-young-kills-off-...

Footer of the page suggests 2024, not 2012, as the latest edit date. You can ask the mods to add it by emailing them (link in HN footer).

2014, sigh.

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

#270

Post by atoav »

glitchc wrote: post #104
stcredzero wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Isn’t radio a big factor in this? Broadcast radio is noisy and has pretty limited dynamic range. This may be a cause.

For those interestes, if you produce anything for radio in Europe you need to keep the EBU R128 guidelines which are actually quite well thought out https://www.iconnectivity.com/blog/2017/6/10/ebu-r128-the-im...
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