Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

24-bit/192kHz music downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

people.xiph.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 274 posts

Re: 24-bit/192kHz music downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#11

Post by dist-epoch »

The whole audiophile industry is built on stuff which doesn't make any sense

My favourite: "audiophile-grade" audio players which allocate a single continuous buffer of RAM into which they load/decode the whole .WAV/.FLAC file, because supposedly the CPU "jumping" between "fragmented audio" causes audible "jitter".

Of course, they don't know that what looks like continuous memory to user-code is probably discontinuous in kernel/physical RAM.

Didn't check in many years, I wonder if they created kernel level players to account for that, to have "true continuous memory"

Re: 24-bit/192kHz music downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#13

Post by evo »

viccis wrote: post #4

If you try to use empiricism when it comes to certain groups audiophiles, you are going to be sorely reminded that it's basically the equivalent of healing crystals for a different type of person. 24/192 is useful for mixing/mastering, but completely unnecessary for the end product to distribute for listening.

24/192 is also great for digital synthesizers--if you're generating a waveform like a sawtooth that has theoretically instantaneous transitions, they can eat as much frequency as you can give them. Running at 44khz loses noticeable high-end content.

Most modern digital synths have already caught onto this and run internally at much higher sampling rates even if their output gets downsampled, but sometimes you run across a vintage plugin that runs at the host audio rate and working in a higher sampling rate is audible.

Re: 24-bit/192kHz music downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#15

Post by b3orn »

metalman wrote: post #7

sheeesh , measly 24-bit/192kHz of course it makes no sense, unless it is downloaded through low oxyegen wire, which somehow and unfathomably, must have been omited or forgotten.

If it has been transmitted via hollow-core fibres it will obviously sound hollow.

Re: 24-bit/192kHz music downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#16

Post by Blackthorn »

dijit wrote: post #3

huh... So I guess the programmer equivalent is distributing .pdb's (or, symbols)

Pretty good analogy. Thing is though, the person who receives the 16-bit, 44.1khz music file can always upsample it to 192khz and not lose anything in the process (heck, lots of audio stuff oversamples internally to this level or beyond, for extra aliasing headroom!). I'm not sure about expansion from 16bit to 24bit though, downward expansion isn't necessarily perfect.

Re: 24-bit/192kHz music downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#17

Post by Aldipower »

viccis wrote: post #4

If you try to use empiricism when it comes to certain groups audiophiles, you are going to be sorely reminded that it's basically the equivalent of healing crystals for a different type of person. 24/192 is useful for mixing/mastering, but completely unnecessary for the end product to distribute for listening.

Even with mixing/mastering 96khz is enough for persisting to files. But as another commenter said, 192 is useful, if you bend and stretch samples!

Re: 24-bit/192kHz music downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#18

Post by PcChip »

I'm curious if the audio was being sent bit-perfect to the DAC for all of these tests (ALSA direct), or if it was being run through the audio mixer and being resampled

I can always tell if my 44.1 songs are being resampled to 48 because they're being run through the OS mixer

Re: 24-bit/192kHz music downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#19

Post by Blackthorn »

evo wrote: post #13
viccis wrote: post #4

If you try to use empiricism when it comes to certain groups audiophiles, you are going to be sorely reminded that it's basically the equivalent of healing crystals for a different type of person. 24/192 is useful for mixing/mastering, but completely unnecessary for the end product to distribute for listening.

24/192 is also great for digital synthesizers--if you're generating a waveform like a sawtooth that has theoretically instantaneous transitions, they can eat as much frequency as you can give them. Running at 44khz loses noticeable high-end content. Most modern digital synths have already caught onto this and run internally at much higher sampling rates even if their output gets downsampled, but sometimes you run acr…

You can generate perfect band-limited sawtooth waves at 44.1khz, there are multiple techniques for doing this and most production digital synthesizers use them.

Oversampling gives you headroom for aliases for the rest of the synth that is more vulnerable to it.

Post reply on HN