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24/192 music downloads are silly

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Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#191

Post by alecdbrooks »

aroman wrote: post #58
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…

Talk about recent... that article was published yesterday .

In case some people skipped the bottom:

>Edits and corrections made after this date are marked inline, except for spelling errors spotted on Dec 30, 2012 and March 15, 2014, and an extra 'is' removed on April 1, 2013

That study is 8 months and 16 days younger than the last edit to the article.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#192

Post by gumby »

Wicher wrote: post #131
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…

> some people buy mats to put onto your CDs before putting the CD in a player An 80-minute, 700 MB CD-R fits 80 * 60 * 44100 * 2 * 2 / 2^20 ~= 807 MB of audio. Why is that? The 100MB difference is not just due to the audio TOC being of smaller size than the ISO9660 or UDF file system metadata. It's also because of differences in error correction. I don't have the spec on hand but I recall from when I was investigatin…

> Vibration is one of the factors that would make the same audio CD, read with the same CD player, produce different digital signals some of the time or even every time.

Err, no.

That makes sense when you have an analog version of the audio picked up by an analog transducer (i.e. a vinyl record) but makes no sense with an isochronous stream of quantized samples.

I suppose a vibration could cause a small phase shift in when the sample physically appears under the LED, but but since the D->A conversion is clocked by a PLL it is irrelevant.

If you have extreme warping or shaking (e.g fling your discman onto the floor or stick your finger on the disk while it's spinning) then a sample might not appear at all, but that's something different than you are talking about.

I suppose it's theoretically possible that some extreme warping or vibration could cause a bit flip, but that's what the ECC is for.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#193

Post by anigbrowl »

cthalupa wrote: post #187
anigbrowl wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

There's a fair amount of pros that utilize Audeze and HiFiMan gear as well. Planar magnetics are popular. Erik Larson is pretty vocal about his use of LCD-2s for mastering. Which... Honestly, I'm not generally a fan of his work, so it's not necessarily a ringing endorsement. Also kind of surprised at your lack of mention of AKGs - they're another very popular brand for studio work.

Honestly I forgot about AKG. They're pretty good, although I don't see them a lot in commercial environments (~15 year window).

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#194

Post by mxfh »

dietrichepp wrote: post #182
mxfh wrote: post #163

I think most effective way to improve sound quality is to get a good DAC as close as possible to the output. Headphone amps with integrated DACs do wonders for little money. When possible go for XLR on the last mile to the speakers (good neutral studio speakers) to cancel out distortion from external electromagnetic pulses. To me differential, or balanced signalling is still the most clever, yet so simple, analog inf…

> When possible go for XLR on the last mile to the speakers (good neutral studio speakers) to cancel out distortion from external electromagnetic pulses. A couple minor corrections: XLR is just a connector, the equipment has to be balanced and there's plenty of equipment on the market with XLR jacks but unbalanced signals. Second, electromagnetic interference does not cause distortion, but it does cause noise. Balanc…

In a professional audio context XLR (as in RS-297-A) is pretty much equivalent with balanced audio, of cause this requires a balanced output and signal chain. Just as well as a stereo phono connector can be used for a balanced mono signal.

You surely heard a GSM pulse on your speakers before; that's not just noise. Especially when living in an apartment where you can't control what kind of cold fusion reactor your neighbor from hell is running, this a significant improvement over RCA and extensive shielding also in a home setting.

I'm not talking about using the full dynamic range in a linear fashion, more about doing the compression at home and not in the studio. Like being able to listen to a whisper, a piano and a chainsaw from the same recording, recorded at it's original amplitude, at playback mapped to a pleasant listening range at full fidelity, yes that's not the normal casual use case but that's what a higher bit depth enables.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#195

Post by calinet6 »

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…

Preface: I consider myself an audiophile, but keep reading before you judge. I completely, wholeheartedly agree with the original article and the science behind it. There's no question that our hearing just isn't good enough to discern the minute differences between sound of sufficient quality (which is well defined in the Xiph article).

However, all I'll say is, it's very different to hear or feel a difference, than to prove it 100% without any doubt in the exacting conditions of an ABX test. You behave differently and aim your listening at different things in the special case of critical testing, than when normally listening.

You have to know and respect this to make good arguments against hardcore audiophiles. Only once you give credence to the possibility can you bring on the real science: that the true bandwidth of the ear and the nyquist theorem truly does mean that any signal within our range of hearing can be encoded perfectly in double the sampling frequency and some 65 thousand steps—assuming an ideal decoding, of course, which means, yes, you should respect the idea of DAC design.

The world is full of idiots who are easily parted with their money. But don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Pursue good quality audio equipment, to a point, because damn, it is enjoyable.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#196

Post by cthalupa »

bryans wrote: post #178
kstenerud wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

To put it simply and honestly, you are not paying enough attention. There is no human-discernible difference between FLAC and V0/320kbps. But implying that 192kbps and 160kbps are sufficiently perfect is somewhat ludicrous. You can still hear noticeable artifacts on cymbals at 192kbps. They will sound like an absolute mess of warbling, and all of the audio will be imbued with a slight tinge of white noise. There is a…

>There is no human-discernible difference between FLAC and V0/320kbps

I can't on almost any modern music (which is the majority of what I listen to), but when I was going through the philips golden ears course, I did a fair amount of blind ABX on harpsichords, cymbals, and a few other instruments at v0/320kbps and didn't have much trouble identifying them.

Granted, at that point I had been going through something specifically intended to help train you for discerning differences in audio, but they were distinct enough I don't think I would have had any trouble beforehand, either.

On some stuff I couldn't immediately tell that some sounded better - just different. Though on some of the samples the FLAC was easily better to my ears.

(My criteria for a 'successful' ABX was accuracy of at least 8 out of 10 using the foobar ABX comparator plugin)

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#197

Post by wodenokoto »

cthalupa wrote: post #181
threeseed wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Bose and beats* are by, every /objective/ measure, shitty products. Subjectively, you might like them, but the faithfulness of audio reproduction is not a subjective matter. You can play a tone and measure how well that tone is actually played back. You can then also objectively compare things that produce that playback quality at various price points and figure out if they're priced competitively. There is plenty of…

Are Beats shitty or just expensive? How little would I have to pay to get same quality?

I am finding it hard to believe that they are actually shitty, while I find it very easy to believe that they are way overpriced.

I have never listened to Beats headphones but I imagine they have a lot of base-boost (based on absolutely nothing), but that is not the same as shitty.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#198

Post by scarecrowbob »

the_duck wrote: post #82

There's a special irony to the fact that this high fidelity audio format is being promoted by Neil Young. Young's a rock musician. He's been around loud noises (e.g. rock concerts) most of his life. He's also 69 years old. Our ability to hear high frequencies decreases dramatically with age and exposure [1]. If anyone were able to discriminate 24/192 from 16/44.1, it sure as heck wouldn't be an elderly rock musician.…

To be fair, I have worked with older sound engineers, and they can hear a lot of audio artifacts that I miss, just because they've been paying closer attention for a lot longer than I have, much in the same way my wife (who plays violin 6+ hours most days) can hear tuning and pitch problems better than I can.

High frequency limiting is not the only artifact that results from data compression.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#199

Post by anigbrowl »

tempestn wrote: post #175
anigbrowl wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

From all the reviews I've seen, Bose noise-cancelling headphones are pretty much the best you can buy. Especially if you want earbuds (the QC20s). They're extremely expensive though. Do you (or anyone) have suggestions for alternatives?

I believe they're good as far as they go because Bose has the strongest patent portfolio in this area, but wearing any kind of noise canceling headphones immediately gives me the unpleasant sensation of having my eardrums sucked outwards. I'm not sure why; I think it's a side effect of the tiny latency inherent in the design. It's so unpleasant to me that I stopped paying attention to new products in that category so I'm a bad person to ask.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#200

Post by gumby »

ansible wrote: post #117
masklinn wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Far from me the idea to defend them, but $350/m is about 3 times higher than Monster's most bullshitty bullshit cable. Even their "2000HD HyperSpeed HDMI cable" only had a $115/m MSRP in 5ft, falling to $32/m in 35ft: http://www.monsterproducts.com/Monster_Video_ISF_2000HD_Hype...

My great business idea was to produce a line of "organic" cables. Our company would go to the remote places of the earth to hunt down copper dragons (as in DnD) and harvest their veins to make audio cables. The "natural", "organic" copper has a warmth to the audio signals flowing through it that artificially produces cables just can't provide (they have harsher undertones). Then we'd also have silver and gold cables,…

I plan to disrupt the audiophile business (and crush you in passing) with my homeopathic cables.

As we melt the gold we mix in a few atoms of "rare earth" elements (rare == expensive == so good "they" don't want you to have access) which is then diluted by adding more melted gold until only the imprint of the rare earth atom remains.

The gold will the be hand drawn by virgins (in truth these will be strong, hairy, 50-yo virgins with dreadful hygiene and B.O. though strong enough to pull, but we need not add all that confusing stuff, we'll just say "virgins"). The wire will be lovingly laid into hand-made insulation made from organic pinniped leather.

I see a variety of future applications both in the home (connect your cable modem to your WiFi access point) and business (data centers). To quote Rony Abovitz, we'll soon be "the size of Apple".

Invest now, while you still can!

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