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

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

#61

Post by arrakeen »

nollidge wrote: post #31
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.

It's not portable in the sense of an iPod or an iPhone where you carry it around with you in your pocket. It's portable in the sense that you keep it on your desk at home, grab it and take it to work, then sit it down on your desk at work.

The design is not for everyone, but I think when viewing it through this use case, it has a much more successful design than a flat form-factor like most portable music players

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

#62

Post by jrabone »

rrrooss wrote: post #56
jrabone wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off, forget about MP3; I'm not arguing for a lossy standard. You can't get an 18 kHz square wave out of a system with 44 kHz sampling. You need at least 1 harmonic before it'll even LOOK square, and that requires a frequency response out to 54 kHz, ie. a sampling frequency of 108 kHz. You CERTAINLY won't find one in a reverb tail, even assuming you had a generator for one in the first place (you might JUST get…

Good an audio nerd. I am making the point about the square wave close to the nyquist to point out the short comings of a format for accurately reproducing an input. Square waves in the real world are rare but I am arguing for a format that produces the most accurate representation of the intended signal. Imagine the situation where i have my guitar cab set up and I have a square wave (distortion) coming out of it and…

...right up to about 20 kHz, whereafter YOU CAN'T HEAR THEM. Hence 44 kHz sampling.

Seriously, A/B test this, you might be surprised.

Also if you think that's anything like a square wave coming out of a guitar speaker (or that that is even desirable in the most case), I've got a bridge to sell you. And yes, I do play.

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

#63

Post by TheLoneWolfling »

valdiorn wrote: post #17
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.

You can definitely "experience" the sub-audio range, but you don't need 24 bits to do that. I have very sensitive hearing, I hear things most others cannot. I can detect 192kbps vs 320kbps mp3 encoding. I cannot have any switch-mode AC/DC transformers in my bedroom because the switching noise actually keeps me awake (I charge my phone in the kitchen, most people think I'm mad when I complain about the "noise" :) Stil…

My laptop whines when I scroll down image-heavy pages. Thus far, I've had a grand total of one other person comment on it.

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

#64

Post by calinet6 »

calinet6 wrote: post #41
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…

Another problem is that "hear the difference" is so often defined as "hear the difference between 30 second samples repeated a dozen times." The testing impacts our experience immensely. It isn't equivalent enough to real music, and the human auditory sensory perception and recall systems just aren't perfect enough to make accurate judgements in those test cases. When testing you end up looking for discrepancies you…

Of course, shut down the infidel. Believers in the church of the empirical only here.

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

#65

Post by calinet6 »

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?

I think the definition of "wastes" is very important here.

Don't use space that is literally wasted, because it adds zero information.

It's equivalent to a database which adds a sequence of 32 bits of 1's after every field. It adds nothing for any purpose, yet it uses space. This space is truly wasted.

Same with storing audio we cannot possibly hear.

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

#66

Post by calinet6 »

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

Great article. True science and understanding combined with rational recommendations and reasoning.

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

#67

Post by harshreality »

ygra wrote: post #50
harshreality wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That equation is so wrong. filesize(192kHz + 24bit) = 6 * filesize(48kHz + 16bit) It also only applies directly to raw audio like pcm. Once you encode it (to, say, flac) some of that size increase could disappear depending on the waveform. I don't know how mp3 is defined for higher dynamic range, but I know frequency range/sampling rate doesn't matter, because a 128kbps mp3 is 128kbps whether the frequency cutoff is…

All this isn't about MP3, but FLAC which is lossless, so even for the compressed version the same ratios should approximately hold.

Approximately? Either it does or it doesn't. What I'm thinking is that a 4x increase in sampling rate doesn't necessarily lead to a 4x increase in waveform complexity except for certain types of random noise.

With the references to 192kbps and mistakes, it wasn't clear what parent was talking about.

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

#68

Post by microcolonel »

dankoss wrote: post #30
microcolonel wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect it's heavily compressed audio. His argument is that you'll have a hard time hearing it at all, so if anything's going to help you hear it in the first place, it's garbage in. garbage recordings are the only ones which will survive this test. Anyway, nobody here is both qualified and willing at the same time to tell you what you need to know about this topic. The article referred to, written by Monty at Xiph…

> nobody here is both qualified and willing at the same time to tell you what you need to know about this topic. Maybe people who work in professional (not consumer) audio? Who design these systems for a living?

Hence "and willing".

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

#69

Post by rrrooss »

jrabone wrote: post #62
rrrooss wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good an audio nerd. I am making the point about the square wave close to the nyquist to point out the short comings of a format for accurately reproducing an input. Square waves in the real world are rare but I am arguing for a format that produces the most accurate representation of the intended signal. Imagine the situation where i have my guitar cab set up and I have a square wave (distortion) coming out of it and…

...right up to about 20 kHz, whereafter YOU CAN'T HEAR THEM. Hence 44 kHz sampling. Seriously, A/B test this, you might be surprised. Also if you think that's anything like a square wave coming out of a guitar speaker (or that that is even desirable in the most case), I've got a bridge to sell you. And yes, I do play.

http://www.eirec.com/DPimages/digisqwvtest.jpg

Okay here is a picture of what I'm trying to explain. And the author of this picture used a frequency much further inside human hearing range. This is transient response test I guess. My main argument is for the verbatim capture of the input wave. It will make the sound at 10k but it isn't the same wave that went in.

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