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24/192 music downloads are silly

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Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#121

Post by agumonkey »

masklinn wrote: post #30
errantspark wrote: post #18

I once spent ~2 hours explaining all of this (well maybe not all of it) to a friend of mine who was studying sound design at the time. He didn't believe me. I even transcoded some 24/192 FLAC Pink Floyd I had lying around and made him do a double blind test to show him that he'd prefer the slightly louder song every time, even if the louder song was 192kbps vs the FLAC. He did. He still doesn't believe me. He still t…

> Some people buy $500 wooden knobs to make their volume pots sound better. (or was that a hoax? i can't tell anymore) Some people buy small pyramids to elevate their cables off the floor, some people buy mats to put onto your CDs before putting the CD in a player ( http://dagogo.com/millenniums-m-cd-mat-carbon-cd-damper-revi... ), some people buy $1000+/meter digital interconnect cables ( http://www.theabsolutesound…

On the other side of their spectrum, I went "near" an audiophile shop test booth and I was sucked by clarity and density of the sound in the air (this was a drum solo track). Some audiophileness is good.

I'll head back to my 40$ crappy mp3 player now.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#122

Post by tracker1 »

KeytarHero wrote: post #104

24/192 playback isn't entirely silly. It's probably true that you can't hear a difference between a perfectly reconstructed 16/44.1k audio and perfectly reconstructed 24/192k audio. But the quality of your DAC certainly does matter, as well as the analog hardware that's after it. If a device has a 24/192k DAC, it means the manufacturer didn't just use the cheapest DAC they could find, and it's more likely to be high-…

Not sure about that... when 100mbps hubs started rolling out, there were 10mbps ones that actually ran better... same goes for the 100/1gbit change. Eventually the higher capacity cheap versions got good/better enough. But just because the sample rates are higher, doesn't mean the parts/materials are better.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#123

Post by rubberbandage »

scarecrowbob wrote: post #84
TylerE wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The margin isn't exactly healthy at 44.1khz. The video guys went with 48khz for a reason.

Yes, timing to video frames :D

More specifically, timing to film frames, since 48kHz gives you 2000 samples per film frame (at the standard 24fps film speed).

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#124

Post by anigbrowl »

threeseed wrote: post #78
masklinn wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Some people buy $500 wooden knobs to make their volume pots sound better. (or was that a hoax? i can't tell anymore) Some people buy small pyramids to elevate their cables off the floor, some people buy mats to put onto your CDs before putting the CD in a player ( http://dagogo.com/millenniums-m-cd-mat-carbon-cd-damper-revi... ), some people buy $1000+/meter digital interconnect cables ( http://www.theabsolutesound…

> Self-styled audiophiles are, by and large, idiots with way too much money plagued by magical thinking. Not just that. But the arrogance and fanboyism is rampant. God forbid you ever consider buying a Bose or Beats product.

Those are low-budget audiophile products, ie they are still marketed mainly to boost the ego of purchasers.

There are three brands of headphones that pros use: Beyerdynamic (typically DT-100 or DT-770), Sennheiser (typically HD-5/650) and Sony (typically MDR-7506/9). Beyerdynamics have somewhat better isolation so they're more popular in music studios, Sonys are more comfortable when you have to wear them all day so they're more popular on film sets; I favor the 7506 and am on my 4th or 5th pair. Some people love Sennheisers but I personally don't care for the ergonomics.

They're not beautiful, lightweight, or fashionable, but they're a lot nicer to listen to - which is why one or other of them was almost certainly used at the recording stage. If it was good enough for the people who made the recording, it's good enough for you. Also, you'll save money compared to the 'quality' consumer brands.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#125

Post by joosters »

zippergz wrote: post #88
caseydurfee wrote: post #85

Fascinating article. Is there any reason to believe that upsampling an audio file should produce a better analog signal than playing it at its native sample rate? I find that playing high quality mp3's through an upsampling DSP filter and a 24/192 DAC seems to produce a better listening experience. (As the article points out, this could be due to confirmation bias, or the filter making the music a tiny bit louder.) I…

Maybe it's just a better DAC overall? Even at the same bitrate, I think a better DAC can make a difference.

That's circular reasoning - surely the definition of a better DAC is one that makes a difference?

Anyway, the author also makes this point in the video referenced by other commenters. The computer hardware he demonstrates with is mid-range at best and yet the DAC and ADC are far more than adequate.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#126

Post by kazinator »

sillysaurus3 wrote: post #60
diydsp wrote: post #41

I agree with the silliness of 192kHz, but not 24-bits. Here is why: In typical PCM recordings, like CDs, mid-range frequencies (e.g. 1kHz to 4kHz) are recorded with lower amplitudes because our ears are more sensitive to them. Sampling theory is correct and 16-bits can reproduce any waveform with ~100dB of range, however, in a complex waveform consisting of low, mid and high frequencies, the mid- and hi-range frequen…

The correct way to attack this isn't by attacking the theory. It's to gather a lot of people and ask them to press a button indicating whether the audio they hear is 16-bit or 24-bit. If the results are no better than chance, then 24-bit doesn't matter, regardless of how sound the underlying argument is. EDIT: The experiment would also be extremely difficult to design. For example, you'd need to run this test with mu…

24 bit resolution is important for capture, because it leaves headroom for mistakes. 16 bits is enough for mastering.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#127

Post by kstenerud »

janussi wrote: post #106
errantspark wrote: post #18

I once spent ~2 hours explaining all of this (well maybe not all of it) to a friend of mine who was studying sound design at the time. He didn't believe me. I even transcoded some 24/192 FLAC Pink Floyd I had lying around and made him do a double blind test to show him that he'd prefer the slightly louder song every time, even if the louder song was 192kbps vs the FLAC. He did. He still doesn't believe me. He still t…

You can't hear the difference between MP3 and FLAC? I'm sorry but either you're deaf or your equipment is very poor. Bad example.

I keep FLAC copies just so that I have lossless versions that I can convert into the lossy format du jour, but for actually listening, I mass-convert to lossy. I've listened to FLAC and properly encoded MP3 files (@192 and 160) on $50,000 audio equipment, and I can't tell the difference.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#128

Post by hansjorg »

ay wrote: post #119
nkurz wrote: post #55

No one can see X-rays (or infrared, or ultraviolet, or microwaves). It doesn't matter how much a person believes he can. Retinas simply don't have the sensory hardware. The author seems to have stumbled into a poor example, as a recent study shows that humans can indeed see infrared light using an unexpected process. Should we read anything into the audio case from this? Probably not, but it's a sign that even those…

The thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8210878 (assuming StavrosK was not lying like one of the comments suggested), shows an interesting discrepancy in the vision of different people.

Monty actually mentions this in the footnotes of the article:

> The original version of this article stated that IR LEDs operate from 300-325THz (about 920-980nm), wavelengths that are invisible. Quite a few readers wrote to say that they could in fact just barely see the LEDs in some (or all) of their remotes. Several were kind enough to let me know which remotes these were, and I was able to test several on a spectrometer. Lo and behold, these remotes were using higher-frequency LEDs operating from 350-380THz (800-850nm), just overlapping the extreme edge of the visible range.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#129

Post by whiddershins »

Edit: I forgot to mention I don't think the author does a good job of addressing how jitter can reduce the effective sample rate. This is a real issue, and why dsd was conceived of. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_Stream_Digital

Regardless, for non pop music, a strong case can be made for 24 bits. The assumption that music doesn't need that kind of dynamic range is based entirely on a subset of music that happens to be what most people listen to: highly compressed popular (rock/hiphop/edm/etc) music.

The author falls for the "this makes sense in terms of physics and biology therefore must be true" way of thinking.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#130

Post by hackcasual »

masklinn wrote: post #23
corysama wrote: post #14

Anyone here who has not already seen Xiph's Digital Show and Tell ( http://xiph.org/video/vid2.shtml ) should do themselves a favor and sit down for a watch. It makes sense of a lot of mysteries and misconceptions around digital audio.

Starting with the first video of the series is probably a good idea, it's aptly named "a digital media primer for geeks" http://xiph.org/video/ for the series.

Though vid2 was specifically made to address misunderstandings from this article.
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