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

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

#131

Post by nok22kon » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 10:48 PM UTC

Arodex wrote: post #46

I completely accept that human audition has limits that are easy to determine by playing a pure sound. But is it the same with music, where multiple frequencies are played and interfere with each other? Aren't some harmonics or effects created by these "inaudible" frequencies? To try to imagine something similar: the human eye is unable to see UV light, yet fluorescent paint has a visible quality of its own compared…

when beams of ultrasounds interract they can produce audible frequencies

this has practical applications

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

#132

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 10:49 PM UTC

speak_on wrote: post #104

labcomputer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would. It’s really simple. The human threshold-of-hearing curve intersects the threshold-of-pain curve at about 20 kHz. Above that frequency (or thereabouts) the sound has to be so loud that it will literally instantly damage your hearing before you can hear it. This has been replicated across many studies for more than 100 years. Flicker threshold is completely different. You can’t damage your vision by increasing…

Would you agree that a trained human could identify artifacts produced by an imperect conversion process? If you lean "yes", then that's your answer: AD/DA is not a Rust function perfectly implementing the Nyquist theorem, it's a collection of physical components many of which introduce artifacts into the audio path. This thread is not about the theory of human hearing, the electronic components are literally imperfe…

They're no more imperfect than the pickups on an electric guitar, the assembly inside the microphone, the circuit in the compressor and everything else in the analog signal chain that exists long before AD happens.

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

#133

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 10:50 PM UTC

speak_on wrote: post #99

Blackthorn wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed. And what is the max frequency that a human can hear?

The artifacts produced by pure 44.1 kHz convertion are aliased back down to lower frequencies. It's not about a theoretical human ear, it's about the actual physics of AD/DA conversion.

But the energies of the signal present above the Nyquist frequency (22050Hz in this case) are almost always incredibly weak, and double blind testing rarely shows any indication that humans can actually hear the aliasing.

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

#134

Post by Blackthorn » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 10:50 PM UTC

speak_on wrote: post #97

Blackthorn wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As I responded below, you are confusing math with physical reality. A true 44.1 kHz converter can't realistically capture frequencies ~18-20 kHz due to the limitations of filters used in the process. A perfect lowpass brick-wall filter just does not exist - they all introduce artifacts, which a trained ear can identify. You don't need to be a dog to hear the difference, just someone who does not assume that Nyquist t…

That extra 4.1 khz sample rate is for headroom for a low pass filter (and not necessarily a brick wall one). Leftovers or any such artifacts are below the noise floor, which is also an important part of the physical reality.

Would be happy to see an actual, real study to prove that humans can notice, but to my knowledge none exist that confirm they can. Not even any on teenagers or younger (the only group that can even hear close up 20khz).

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

#135

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

speak_on wrote: post #95

UtopiaPunk wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to hear the difference between an audio file recorded at 44.1 and 88.2kHZ, then you need slow the audio playback down. Otherwise, a trained ear cannot physically hear the difference.

44.1 is "enough" only in theory. This assumes a physically impossible steep filter. Realistically, frequencies around 20 kHz will create audible artifacts (aliasing). So yes, a trained ear can tell the diffrenece between 44.1 and even 48 kHz. Like many other commenters in this thread, you are mixing up math theory with physical limitations of AD/DA converters. Oversampling is a common way to address this limitation,…

> Realistically, frequencies around 20 kHz will create audible artifacts (aliasing)

The energy of the signal components above the Nyquist is generally very low, and very few double blind tests have given any indication that humans can detect the resulting aliasing (even though many people claim to be able to do, almost always in non-double-blind environments).

Badly written digital synthesis can generate high energy signal components above 22kHz, but that's because they're badly written, not because the theory is wrong.

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

#136

Post by ses1984 » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 10:51 PM UTC

speak_on wrote: post #104

labcomputer wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would. It’s really simple. The human threshold-of-hearing curve intersects the threshold-of-pain curve at about 20 kHz. Above that frequency (or thereabouts) the sound has to be so loud that it will literally instantly damage your hearing before you can hear it. This has been replicated across many studies for more than 100 years. Flicker threshold is completely different. You can’t damage your vision by increasing…

Would you agree that a trained human could identify artifacts produced by an imperect conversion process? If you lean "yes", then that's your answer: AD/DA is not a Rust function perfectly implementing the Nyquist theorem, it's a collection of physical components many of which introduce artifacts into the audio path. This thread is not about the theory of human hearing, the electronic components are literally imperfe…

Can you give any examples of people identifying these artifacts in a/b tests?

Who has the best ears? What can they detect?

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

#137

Post by emtel » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 10:52 PM UTC

dist-epoch wrote: post #11

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…

audiophiles (https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/turntables-with-pace....) also claim that turntables can be rated on "timing, rhythm, and pace" in which supposedly the timing of the music can be affected by the turntable's mass and other properties.

How this would occur without also producing grossly audible pitch distortion never seems to be discussed.

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

#138

Post by Applejinx » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 10:54 PM UTC

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…

Hydrasynth aliases like a mad thing. My flagship synth ended up being Summit, and its oscillators are digital but run at a crazy high sample rate. Did likewise with some Chord Organ modules: that Teensy board it was built on could do chord audio at 300k and over a megahertz if you were just generating one wave as simply as possible. The freedom from aliasing really helped the sound, for all that it's a 12 bit analog output. A squarewave is a 1 bit signal…

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

#139

Post by PaulDavisThe1st » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 10:54 PM UTC

codedokode wrote: post #105

justsomehnguy wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's just means you have a shitty audio tract with not enough shielding. Move to SPDIF/TOSLINK.

I have an external audio card, if I put it on a laptop I can hear the modem-like sounds. I wonder why it is so sensitive, should not DAC produce strong signal that cannot be easily affected by radio waves? Also my headphones are extremely sensitive. I can touch the ring and sleeve of a jack with a finger, and touch a metal bed frame with a tip and I hear quiet clicks as I move the tip along the metal. Sometimes I do…

Bad grounding everywhere. This is insanely basic stuff.

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

#140

Post by nullc » Thu, Jul 02, 2026, 10:55 PM UTC

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…

> 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.

So if your synthesizers do not use proper band-limited oscillators then 192KHz is _FAR_ too slow. You'd want to be running at hundreds of KHz, perhaps a few MHz.

In reality synth software that doesn't sound like crap uses band limited oscillators and should work okay at 48KHz too. That said, even if the oscillators are band limited it may be the case the varrious modulations aren't band limited properly, as getting those wrong won't sound instantly wrong (in particular because you have to modulate to make it wrong, and the underlying change of the modulation may make it harder to tell its wrong).

Though also in those cases if you're not counting on every step being properly band limited then 192KHz may be an improvement but you're still probably getting some meaningful aliasing. I think given how fast computers have become relative to digital audio there is probably a good case to just make any "modular synth" run at 32-bit 480KHz or even 4.8MHz through every stage that could process the audio.

Maybe 192KHz really is enough to suppress the aliasing artifacts but I think to be convinced of that I'd want to see a system that supported both and validate that the difference between a downsampled 48KHz output from the two modes was below -90dB or something.

Or otherwise you can just declare that the aliasing is part of the sound and then there are no right choices... 24khz sampling, 48k, 192k ... who cares, use what you like best. :)