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

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

#141

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

colmmacc wrote: post #42
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.

32-bits are great for recording too because they do an incredible job of capturing the dynamic range without having to be precise on the preamp settings. It removes an entire job from the recording workflow. 192 for mixing and mastering can be useful especially if you're doing a lot of effects, especially anything that pitch shifts. But I've seen low quality phone-microphone recordings make it to the master; if you c…

The limit on current DACs is 18-22 bits. The rest is just brownian noise. Literally.

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

#142

Post by speak_on »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #132
speak_on wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely! All these examples have imperfect audio paths - that is the point.

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

#143

Post by handedness »

meowface wrote: post #29
Tsarp wrote: post #8

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.

Correct. I've paid for Tidal for a decade because I just like the peace of mind that it's closer to the original recording. I'm sure it's mostly placebo, but I like it.

I tried Tidal nearly a decade ago, and the audible fluttering effect caused by their audio watermarking totally ruined certain types of music, like choral recordings, strings and such. It was obviously apparent on $20 ear buds driven by any device, far beyond the more stereotypical audiophile gripes.

I opened a support ticket but they never responded. After that it was difficult to take their lossless claims seriously when the labels were providing such garbage source material. Their whole value prop was totally hollowed out.

I don't know whether the labels still impose such horrible practices, but I largely gave up on streaming services after that experience and now focus on keeping good digital archives of my physical library.

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

#144

Post by speak_on »

ses1984 wrote: post #136
speak_on wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

OK, so we are entering the stage of "can you provide a double-blind study link". I can look it up, I am not a researcher. Here is one: https://qmro.qmul.ac.uk/xmlui/bitstream/handle/123456789/134...

I know from my 20-ish year mixing experience that I can hear the difference when mixing. Is it good evidence? No. So we can agree to disagree then.

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

#145

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

speak_on wrote: post #142
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Absolutely! All these examples have imperfect audio paths - that is the point.

But the central point is that there's no reason to pick on the digital elements in any particular way. Recorded music in 2026 is a pretty good recreation of the original acoustic pressure waves when it is intended to be, but (a) not perfect, even in the pure analog domain and (b) it is frequently not intended to be.

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

#146

Post by nullc »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #117
geraldmcboing wrote: post #109

The OP is a bit off with their description of why pro audio engineers work in higher bit rates and sample rates. We use 24bit to preserve low level sounds eg reverb, breaths etc and use 32bit float when recording as the headroom is so massive clipping is not an issue (other than of course still neeing to avoid overloading microphones with max SPL - cleanly recorded distorted sound is still a fail). Unclipping 32bit f…

Have you ever actually checked the number of actual bits your ADC can use? Most 24 bit converters struggle to get to 18 bits. Nobody uses 32 bit float for recording (to do so is just to capture at least 10 bits of noise, most of that being brownian); its strictly a format for mixing and processing. You don't get any more resolution from 32 bit floating point than you do from 24 bit integer formats, but the result of…

> Nobody uses 32 bit float for recording

Yes they do, almost all high end field recorders used for film work are 32-bits now and have been for much of the last decade, often with some fancy preamp integration so that there is no expertise required for gain staging the recording. (I believe the implementations use a second matched 24bit ADC with 48 dB less gain in front of it).

The result obviously doesn't have a noise floor which is lower (as the noise of a room temperature _resistor_ gets in the way of that even at the 24-bit level) but they have more dynamic range so that your recording isn't ruined by hard clipping some unexpected loud sound.

It's a big improvement for practical usage, and also likely does improve SNR somewhat because you can run higher gains without as much fear that you'll ruin the recording. The reason it would pay off is that the SNR loss you get from splitting the signal is easily smaller than the SNR loss you would get from gain reduction to avoid clipping.

(maybe... capsule self noise is also limiting... at these levels, and usually people aren't using microphones designed for the lowest possible self noise unless they're doing something special)

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

#147

Post by az226 »

pimeys wrote: post #108
z_open wrote: post #33

As they say, most people listen to their music with equipment. Audiophiles listen to their equipment with music.

I might be something from the middle. Yes, I did spend a hefty 5000 euros to my headphone setup. And yes it sounds absolutely magical and every day I'm happy listening to music with it. But I also have a large multi-terabyte music collection, I follow new music, go to concerts, go to parties, talk about music with my friends in signal group chats. It's a hobby, and when you get a bit older and start having some savin…

What’s the quality of this trove? As in bitrate or similar.

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

#148

Post by nok22kon »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #129
dist-epoch wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you're not on a US-based IP, you should check out https://src.infinitewave.ca/ It is an incredible resource to see the quality of the resampling algorithms used by the actual production software likely used in any digital audio workflow. You will see that while the best are indeed almost 100% transparent, many are not.

I remember using Adobe Audition for resampling audio, this site shows I had good intuition

your software is among the best, but not pitch black best :)

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

#149

Post by speak_on »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #133
speak_on wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Mixing process often involves hundreds of tracks, and if each introduces aliasing, this can become a problem. Some engineers do swear by "the final mix is 16/44.1 so why mix at a different resolution?" mantra - that's fine too.

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

#150

Post by PaulDavisThe1st »

nullc wrote: post #146
PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you ever actually checked the number of actual bits your ADC can use? Most 24 bit converters struggle to get to 18 bits. Nobody uses 32 bit float for recording (to do so is just to capture at least 10 bits of noise, most of that being brownian); its strictly a format for mixing and processing. You don't get any more resolution from 32 bit floating point than you do from 24 bit integer formats, but the result of…

> Nobody uses 32 bit float for recording Yes they do, almost all high end field recorders used for film work are 32-bits now and have been for much of the last decade, often with some fancy preamp integration so that there is no expertise required for gain staging the recording. (I believe the implementations use a second matched 24bit ADC with 48 dB less gain in front of it). The result obviously doesn't have a nois…

There are precisely zero 32 bit ADCs in existence.

There are ADCs that will provide 32 bits per sample but that's entirely different.

Current technology limits the bit depth to 18-22 bits and going beyond that you'd be very quickly recording brownian (atomic) noise anyway.

The point about 32 bit float is that it is a useful format for mixing, editing and general processing, so it is widely used in digital audio tools. But it is not a format that ADCs generate "natively" via their electronics - almost all of them are generate a 24 bit integer or fixed point value and then just supplying that as a 32 bit float value because the software asked for it (the software could have done it all by itself.

[EDITED: DAC->ADC since that is what I meant and what this is all about]

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