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There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

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Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#71

Post by davesims »

leephillips wrote: post #17
cmer wrote: post #4

There's a lot of scientific-sounded content in this, but unfortunately most of it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm an ex-audio engineer and studied digital and analog audio engineering; this has been debated to death over the last 15 years. Digitally recording a triangle is the best example of why 48kHz is very limiting. The distinct sound of the triangle constitutes of a high fundamental frequency, ballpark 5…

The linked article was accurate. You are confused. "I'm an ex-audio engineer" Hard to believe. "The distinct sound of the triangle constitutes of a high fundamental frequency, ballpark 10kHz" That's a pretty high note - higher than the top key on the piano. But an "audio engineer" would know that. "many very high-pitch harmonics" Since the next harmonic after the fundamental would be at 20khz, which only young people…

Another "ex audio engineer" here, you can believe or not at your leisure. Many hours spent in high-end recording and mastering environments.

I'm not sure what your background in audio is, but everything he says is correct. High end frequencies well past 15k and up (22.1k actually) are widely acknowledged to influence the lower frequencies and play a huge role in the perception of the quality of a recording. This is an old debate with pros and cons on both sides, but in general you'll find the "Golden Ears" mastering engineers (Stephen Marcussen, Bob Ludwig, etc.) come down on the side of higher sampling rates.

Now, if your original recording was mastered to 16/44.1, then a transfer by way of 24/192 will probably actually hurt the recording. But if you're mastering from an original analog or high-quality digital, in my experience there's no question, higher sampling rates deliver better experiences.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#72

Post by dj_axl »

Joeboy wrote: post #10
cmer wrote: post #4

There's a lot of scientific-sounded content in this, but unfortunately most of it couldn't be further from the truth. I'm an ex-audio engineer and studied digital and analog audio engineering; this has been debated to death over the last 15 years. Digitally recording a triangle is the best example of why 48kHz is very limiting. The distinct sound of the triangle constitutes of a high fundamental frequency, ballpark 5…

> Digitally recording a triangle is the best example of why 48kHz is very limiting The article's about distribution, not recording. I don't think anybody disputes the usefulness of higher sampling rates when recording. > In theory, it's true that the human hear can't hear above ~18kHz, but it can hear the influence of the very high pitch harmonics on a lower frequency. ...and 48kHz audio contains those lower frequenc…

> The article's about distribution, not recording. I don't think anybody disputes the usefulness of higher sampling rates when recording.

Didn't read the article, so commenting out of context, however it needs to be said that in sample-based music genres the distributed music gets used as if it were a recording. Maybe then it could be argued that higher sampling/bit rates should be available, if only for those who are sampling.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#73

Post by noonespecial »

I was under the impression that two inaudible high frequency tones could interfere with each other to create an audible interference pattern. (I think known as a "beat frequency").

If this is the case, then all of the arguments in the world about the maximum audible single frequency are irrelevant. Imagine music composed entirely of these beat frequencies and performed with a pair of oscillators between 25kHz and 35kHz. Without higher resolution encoding, it would be audible IRL but the recording would be silence.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#74

Post by noisebleed »

nileshtrivedi wrote: post #36

What I would love to have is: independent instrument/vocals tracks along with a default recommended "mix". The default mix would be used for normal playback and independent tracks would be great for custom mix / karaoke etc. Is this too unrealistic to expect? Has something like this been tried before?

Trent Reznor / Nine Inch Nails has done it several times: http://www.ninremixes.com/multitracks.php

Plenty of other artists have as well, but this is the most high profile example I can think of. I agree it would be great if it happened more often.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#75

Post by xiphmont »

wickedchicken wrote: post #14

For an article containing a lot of "well, if you knew signal processing..." there are two fairly major oversights: 1) Any well-designed system is going to have headroom. Period. Just because 48kHz can capture the frequencies the human hear theoretically, it's always good to have a little wiggle room. This comes into play even more with interactive situations: humans are particularly sensitive to jitter. Having an "ov…

1) 48kHz sampling does include headroom.

2) increased sampling rate does not improve timing. This also has been researched in detail (because it sounds like it could possibly be true given that the ears can phase match to much greater granularity than the sample clock). It was found false in practice, and in retrospect, the sampling theorem explains why. The Griesinger link discusses this with illustrations, and provides a bibliography.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#76

Post by agentgt »

I know this is slightly tangential but are hi-end DACs really worth it? I have always been amazed how much audiophile DACs cost ($300-1000). The reality is I listen to 320kbps music that was most likely recorded at 44100. DAC technology is not exactly new. So why the price?

Another tangent: To me it seems audio engineering should fix the "woofer". That is it seems subwoofers have terrible distortion.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#77

Post by shasta »

cmer wrote: post #49
Anechoic wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For example, the human hear will hear a 30kHz frequency if it's fundamental is 10kHz You are going to have to provide me with a citation to back that up because that goes against everything I've learned and experience in 17 years of working in acoustics.

Humans will hear the impact > 20kHz frequency has on the lower frequencies, not the 30kHz frequency itself. That's been proven a million times.

In other words, your theory is that the superposition principle doesn't hold for sound waves.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#78

Post by sjwright »

I must say I get rather irritated when people spend time worrying about dubious 'tweaker' methods to improve their audio, when the most under-performing component of most people's sound equipment also has the lowest-hanging fruit: The room itself.

When people ask me where they should spend money to improve the quality of their hi-fi or home theater system, in nearly every case my response will be something like "get a thicker rug" or "put something on this wall to absorb sound reflections, even if it's just a bookshelf."

Beyond that, I'd tend to say something like "stop being so paranoid about what you think you can't hear, and enjoy the damn music."

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#79

Post by zb »

noonespecial wrote: post #73

I was under the impression that two inaudible high frequency tones could interfere with each other to create an audible interference pattern. (I think known as a "beat frequency"). If this is the case, then all of the arguments in the world about the maximum audible single frequency are irrelevant. Imagine music composed entirely of these beat frequencies and performed with a pair of oscillators between 25kHz and 35k…

If the beat frequency is audible, it will be on the recording. Obviously.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#80

Post by femto »

glassx wrote: post #47
femto wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing Devil's Advocate... The statement that frequencies above 20kHz don't matter rests upon the assumption that the ear is linear. If the ear is not linear (I don't know whether it is not not) then frequencies above 20kHz will matter, as the ear will be able to mix higher frequencies down to less than 20kHz. For example, if we have frequencies of 56kHz and 59kHz, the ear MIGHT be able to discern a difference frequ…

> Having said all that, I'd guess that the speakers will be the limiting factor in most sound systems, not the recording format. Yes. And DACs, which normally have filters too.

Yes, though I tend to think of the reconstruction filters as being part of the recording format.

Here's an interesting article:

  http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=E5guAAAAIBAJ&sjid=d6EFAAAAIBAJ&pg=3183%2C2664048
In 1975, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation was using a head shaped microphone, which was presumably an attempt to reproduce the non-linearity of the ear. It would be interesting to do such experiments with digital sampling.

Thinking about it, if every person has a different non-linear response, in theory the only way to reproduce sound beyond a certain threshold of fidelity would be to reproduce the ultrasonic components, so each person would hear their own non-linearity. (That would be beyond what I can hear or care about, but it would be fun to play with. Beyond a certain level we also get to the point where we need to ask what it means to hear a sound.)

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