71–80 of 274 posts
Some previous discussions:
2023 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34698427
2022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30138561
2019 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19318898
2017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127633
2015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10520639
As they say, most people listen to their music with equipment. Audiophiles listen to their equipment with music.
If I have an option to get a 16bit version of a recording or a high-res version, I choose the highest quality version very time
Same with a physical copy. A limited edition, better quality vinyl LP is more attractive if you are going through the trouble of curating a collection.
I’ve been curating a music library of digital files since before the iPod was released and I will always go for the highest quality version out of principle. I can always downsample it to any thing that makes sense.
At a minimum, anything above 16/44.1 requires far more than just files: monitors, a treated room, listening position, DAC, etc... but most importantly - a trained ear. That last one is the most uncomfortable truth.
Are you, per chance, a dog posting on the internet? Since 44.1khz sample rate is already past the range of the human ear, regardless of training.
Now in terms of realistic audio encoding, 16 bit at 44.1 kHz is designed to be a faithful representation as far as human hearing is concerned. Can someone with a trained ear potentially tell the difference between that and 24 bit at 192 kHz? In a studio environment it's possible. Most audiophile claims are dubious and a blind A/B test catches them out on most of it but the Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem does not directly apply to quantized samples, it's about exact samples and with quantization, sampling rate is intertwined somewhat with the quantization depth.
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 discontinuou…
I can tell when my CPU usage spikes because it causes a hum through my speakers, so this does not seem that far-fetched.
Nobody downloads music these days and everybody just streams. Audio at 24 bit still takes a small fraction of the bandwidth that 1080p video takes, so I don’t understand the hate for it. I use a DAC by focusrite which can do 24-bit, and if I want to listen to higher fidelity audio on my planer headphones then I should be able to. Why should I limit myself to 16-bit
If I like an artist that I find on streaming, I buy an LP and get a lossless download for free. I still have a music library and I will never rent my favorite music.
Artists prefer to connect directly with their fans and BC is probably the best platform for people who care to pay and support acts directly. They have high res downloads and I import them.
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 discontinuou…
> My favourite: "audiophile-grade" audio players which allocate a single contignuous buffer of RAM into which they load/decode the whole .WAV/.FLAC file, because supposedly the CPU "jumping" between "fragmented memory" causes audible "jitter". Thanks for the laugh... this is absolutely bonkers. In case anyone is wondering, before sound hits our ears it has to go through a digital to analog conversion, which takes pla…
This really is driving a muscle/super car, or drinking expensive wine. At the end none of specs or tests matter. It is a form of art. If it makes the listener feel better (even if its just psychological) then its probably worth it.
https://www.carwow.co.uk/blog/carwow-quarter-mile-400-metre-...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_N%C3%BCrburgring_Nords...
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
Proper audio resampling should not be identifiable. Of course, the OS mixer probably doesn't do proper (CPU expensive) resampling. But a quality audio player should account for this and do it's own.
It would have cost the same for the entire stack to be 16bit/44.1kHz at every step, but with excessive resolution I can control the volume anywhere. The bits right before the analog conversion at the end are essentially the same whether I turn down the volume in the software player, the operating system, or the DAC/amplifier.
Nobody downloads music these days and everybody just streams. Audio at 24 bit still takes a small fraction of the bandwidth that 1080p video takes, so I don’t understand the hate for it. I use a DAC by focusrite which can do 24-bit, and if I want to listen to higher fidelity audio on my planer headphones then I should be able to. Why should I limit myself to 16-bit
Also the playback rate and the file rate are different topics. The former can get into scenarios more like the audio processing section of the article e.g. I had this one shitty headset for work which required me to set the volume to 1-2 (out of 100) on the computer and I could actually blind test tell when it was in 16 bit or 24 bit mode because it was cutting and boosting it so much it effectively lost precision in 16 bit mode.