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Does pono's 24-bit audio matter? Hear for yourself.

blog.beatunes.com

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Re: Does pono's 24-bit audio matter? Hear for yourself.

#31

Post by nollidge »

tmikaeld wrote: post #2

It's not only the difference (or none) between 16 or 24-bit, but it's mostly about the quality of the DAC that is being used - in this case a very high-end one. Then again, it's been proven time and time again that the average person can't even hear the difference between mp3 or FLAC. Considering you'd also need proper high-end monitor headphones, i believe this is more about marketing, the brand and the pitch than i…

And it's a bulky weird triangle shape, which to me is the stupidest part of the whole endeavor.

Re: Does pono's 24-bit audio matter? Hear for yourself.

#32

Post by joshstrange »

twobeard wrote: post #19
coldpie wrote: post #10

This test is pretty uninteresting, but I'm glad the author linked to the Xiph article because it's one of the best articles on the subject I've read. http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

The author admits that "16 bits does not quite cover the entire theoretical dynamic range of the human ear in ideal conditions". But then the author concludes "let's not use 24 bits anyway because it doesn't really help anyway, and it wastes space" Wastes space? In an age where we stream gigabyte movies? Do we need to remind the author that we're no longer in 1982 and that we have evolved beyond floppy disks?

>> Wastes space? In an age where we stream gigabyte movies? Do we need to remind the author that we're no longer in 1982 and that we have evolved beyond floppy disks?

Clever way of leaving out just how much space it takes up (takes up 6 times the space [0][1]) also as both this author and Xiph concluded you can't really hear the difference. When we stream HD (As you put it "Gigabyte movies") we are getting a clearly superior product. I can easily see the difference between 480/720/1080 whereas I seriously doubt I can hear the difference between 16 and 24bit audio. Yes space is cheaper than it used to be but it's neither free nor unlimited, not to mention the primary way people listen to music nowadays is probably on mobile devices where space is still at a premium or they enjoy their music via a streaming service a la Spotify/Rdio/Google Music where bandwidth is at a premium (And storage factors in here as well due to either being able to store less songs locally or in cache due to larger file size).

[0] http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

[1] http://blog.beatunes.com/2014/04/does-24-bit-audio-matter.ht...

Re: Does pono's 24-bit audio matter? Hear for yourself.

#33

Post by ygra »

joshstrange wrote: post #32
twobeard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author admits that "16 bits does not quite cover the entire theoretical dynamic range of the human ear in ideal conditions". But then the author concludes "let's not use 24 bits anyway because it doesn't really help anyway, and it wastes space" Wastes space? In an age where we stream gigabyte movies? Do we need to remind the author that we're no longer in 1982 and that we have evolved beyond floppy disks?

>> Wastes space? In an age where we stream gigabyte movies? Do we need to remind the author that we're no longer in 1982 and that we have evolved beyond floppy disks? Clever way of leaving out just how much space it takes up (takes up 6 times the space [0][1]) also as both this author and Xiph concluded you can't really hear the difference. When we stream HD (As you put it "Gigabyte movies") we are getting a clearly…

The six times figure is for 192kbps and 24 bit. The move from 16 to 24 bit alone would just result in an increase of 50 %.

Re: Does pono's 24-bit audio matter? Hear for yourself.

#34

Post by coldtea »

twobeard wrote: post #19
coldpie wrote: post #10

This test is pretty uninteresting, but I'm glad the author linked to the Xiph article because it's one of the best articles on the subject I've read. http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

The author admits that "16 bits does not quite cover the entire theoretical dynamic range of the human ear in ideal conditions". But then the author concludes "let's not use 24 bits anyway because it doesn't really help anyway, and it wastes space" Wastes space? In an age where we stream gigabyte movies? Do we need to remind the author that we're no longer in 1982 and that we have evolved beyond floppy disks?

>Wastes space? In an age where we stream gigabyte movies? Do we need to remind the author that we're no longer in 1982 and that we have evolved beyond floppy disks?

Well, he probably also knows that we now increasingly use SSD disks for our laptops, that are more expensive and sold in lower capacities than HDs on average.

Or that we also listen to music on mobile phones, with like 16 or 32 GB or space (which we also want for apps, photos, videos and other stuff).

Or that we might have "evolved beyond floppy disks" but we have also evolved beyond having 20-100 albums in our collection. In fact digital music collections of 1000 or 10.000 albums are not uncommon.

Now, 1000 albums of 500MB each would make it 500GB for an music lover's collection. That's a non starter in 99% of modern laptops, and impossible on an mobile phone.

I'd rather have it compressed more or in less than 24bits, and fit more stuff to have with me to listen.

(Also keep in mind that music lover is not the same as audiophile).

Re: Does pono's 24-bit audio matter? Hear for yourself.

#35

Post by jrabone »

ferongr wrote: post #20
jrabone wrote: post #5

One thing that is alluded to but perhaps not explored fully is the use of noise-shaping dither techniques which rely on pushing the noise out into the ultrasonic region. Xiph mentions it in the context of 16 bit resolution, but I believe it interacts with the discussion of 192 kHz sampling. Significant noise power at ultrasonic frequencies (or even a skewing towards higher audible frequencies) represents a problem fo…

VLC doesn't soft-clip to my knowledge.

From previous discussion, quoting 'jbk'

VLC allows amplification of the INPUT above the sound that was decoded. This is just like replay gain, broken codecs, badly recorded files or post-amplification and can lead to saturation. ... snip ... At worse, this will reduce the dynamics and saturate a lot, but this is not going to break your hardware.

Except it can - because the saturation skews the power distribution towards higher frequencies which weren't designed for. This is very, very well known - it's the reason why one always chooses an amplifier with higher output rating than the speakers, often by a factor of two. It's counter-intuitive but driving a low-rated amp into saturation can overheat and destroy tweeters. (Guitar amps get away with it by having massive voice coils on a speaker which will only ever need to reproduce up to about 5kHz.)

Re: Does pono's 24-bit audio matter? Hear for yourself.

#36

Post by joshstrange »

ygra wrote: post #33
joshstrange wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Wastes space? In an age where we stream gigabyte movies? Do we need to remind the author that we're no longer in 1982 and that we have evolved beyond floppy disks? Clever way of leaving out just how much space it takes up (takes up 6 times the space [0][1]) also as both this author and Xiph concluded you can't really hear the difference. When we stream HD (As you put it "Gigabyte movies") we are getting a clearly…

The six times figure is for 192kbps and 24 bit. The move from 16 to 24 bit alone would just result in an increase of 50 %.

Do you have a source for this? I was under the impression that:

    filesize(192kbps + 16bit) = 6*filesize(192kbps + 24bits)
Also the point of both articles is that: You can't hear the difference.

Look at MP3 vs WAV (or FLAC), MP3 won out (for consumers) because of it's filesize being so much smaller. Look at the compression differences:

>> Uncompressed audio as stored on an audio-CD has a bit rate of 1,411.2 kbit/s,[note 2] so the bitrates 128, 160 and 192 kbit/s represent compression ratios of approximately 11:1, 9:1 and 7:1 respectively. [0]

At the best quality listed here (192kbps) MP3 is 7 times smaller than it's WAV counterpart. I just don't see people paying for 6x the space for something they can't tell the difference between. If anything history has proven this not to be the case.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MP3#Bit_rate

Re: Does pono's 24-bit audio matter? Hear for yourself.

#37

Post by ygra »

joshstrange wrote: post #36
ygra wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The six times figure is for 192kbps and 24 bit. The move from 16 to 24 bit alone would just result in an increase of 50 %.

Do you have a source for this? I was under the impression that: filesize(192kbps + 16bit) = 6*filesize(192kbps + 24bits) Also the point of both articles is that: You can't hear the difference. Look at MP3 vs WAV (or FLAC), MP3 won out (for consumers) because of it's filesize being so much smaller. Look at the compression differences: >> Uncompressed audio as stored on an audio-CD has a bit rate of 1,411.2 kbit/s,[not…

Trivial arithmetic:

    192 ÷ 48   = 4
     24 ÷ 16   = 1.5
      4 ×  1.5 = 6
The six times is also on the wrong side of your equation, I guess.

But if you need a source, I can cite what you cited:

> Unfortunately, there is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format. Its playback fidelity is slightly inferior to 16/44.1 or 16/48, and it takes up 6 times the space.

They were talking about both sampling rate and bit depth.

Oh, and just for the record, I do agree with the general idea that it's useless to ship audio to consumers as 192/24, for the same reason it's unwieldy to publish photos online as 20+ MiB raw files (even if browsers could display them). I was just noting that the size comparison included both sampling rate and bit depth and not just one of them.

Re: Does pono's 24-bit audio matter? Hear for yourself.

#38

Post by jrabone »

rrrooss wrote: post #28

There has been a lot of talk about quantative aspects of but little about the qualitative. What does a 18khz square wave look like wher recorded and reproduced in 44.1 kHz. How is phase affecte?. Phase of an audio signal reaching the ears helps you perceive distance and position. How many samples are used to represent the frequencies at the higher end of the audible range. What is the quantization error difference be…

An 18 kHz square wave sampled at 44 kHz looks like an 18 kHz sine wave, everything after the fundamental frequency is well outside the Nyquist limit and will have been thrown away by anti-aliasing filters. And furthermore you couldn't hear it even if it wasn't. Fourier decomposition of a square wave gives the sum of odd multiples of the fundamental, the next frequency is 3 x 18 kHz = 54 kHz.

Re: Does pono's 24-bit audio matter? Hear for yourself.

#39

Post by acjohnson55 »

ohwp wrote: post #6

Newborns can hear a SNR of about 120dB which is around 21-bit. So 24-bit seems useless for playing back audio. But I always wonder how much of the sound we hear by feeling (skin, hair vibrations). Because maybe I can't hear 1Hz, but I can very well feel it.

A lot of music is felt through the body. That's simply a result of low frequency at high levels. That's just one reason why live performance is a more dynamic experience than listening over headphones, but adding dynamic range won't create this effect over headphones.

24-bit is pretty much useless for playback. While human hearing range may extend past 16-bits of dynamic range, that doesn't mean that full range is musically useful. It is, however, quite useful to record and mix in 24-bit for the headroom.

Re: Does pono's 24-bit audio matter? Hear for yourself.

#40

Post by jrabone »

sp332 wrote: post #27
jrabone wrote: post #5

One thing that is alluded to but perhaps not explored fully is the use of noise-shaping dither techniques which rely on pushing the noise out into the ultrasonic region. Xiph mentions it in the context of 16 bit resolution, but I believe it interacts with the discussion of 192 kHz sampling. Significant noise power at ultrasonic frequencies (or even a skewing towards higher audible frequencies) represents a problem fo…

Here's the discussion on that Dell issue. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7205759 "Simply said, the sound card outputs at max 10W, and the speakers only can take 6W in, and neither their BIOS or drivers block this."

That's actually good design - the intention being that any clipping can only be due to software (which you can fix), not underpowered amplification hardware (which you can't).
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