24/192 music downloads are silly • Hacker News Board

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#211

Post by tinco » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 2:53 AM UTC

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?

For the price of Bose noise-cancelling headphones you can get headphones from the three brands the parent mentioned (throw in AKG for good measure) that sound better in 'lab conditions'. But if your discerning feature is 'noise-cancelling', i.e. headphones that sound excellent in noisy environments like trains, coffeeshops or open work environments I believe Bose is the king and will be as long as their patents are enforced.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#212

Post by stinkytaco » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 2:53 AM UTC

cthalupa wrote: post #204

wodenokoto wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So, we have to define, in your opinion, what would make a pair of headphones shitty. If you are going to reduce them to the basest level of what the purpose for a speaker or headphone is, to reproduce the input sound, then yes, they are shitty, because they are not good at that. From a purely objective standpoint, you are going to have to judge them based on that. Why would you want the speakers or headphones to make…

>If you are going to reduce them to the basest level of what the purpose for a speaker or headphone is, to reproduce the input sound, then yes, they are shitty, because they are not good at that.

Though I don't personally like the cold, base heavy sound of Beats, I don't really get how you could know this, because most people have no idea what a piece of music should sound like. They know how they think it should sound, they know how they like it to sound, but very few know how it should sound. The only real exception to this is music with "real" instruments like pianos who's sound is familiar to enough people that their reproduction can be reliably determined. Even then, however, unless you know the piece well, it's unlikely most of us are in a good position to make a judgement about the speaker's quality.

So what factors are you using to determine if the sound is reproduces correctly?

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#213

Post by X-Istence » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 2:59 AM UTC

Wicher wrote: post #157

aidenn0 wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a decent drive, cdparanoia should successfully rip with no errors on a clean disc. I have done the md5sum test before.

Background here: http://www.xiph.org/paranoia/faq.html#play

"Oh, and virtually no PC on earth has that kind of I/O throughput; a Sun Enterprise server might, but a PC does not. Most don't come within a factor of five, assuming perfect realtime behavior."

Some statements just don't age well ...

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#214

Post by Florin_Andrei » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 2:59 AM UTC

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.

> God forbid you ever consider buying a Bose or Beats product.

Meh, they're okay, but there are better choices out there.

I've a pair of Sennheiser HD600 and it's one of those things that make you go "holy cow, all the hype is justified".

And no, I'm not one of those folks who think gold-plated cables make a difference. Right now I'm listening to MP3 Internet radio on a pair of cheap behind the neck street cans.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#215

Post by X-Istence » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 3:02 AM UTC

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…

Is this what allows me to see the very faint red/purplish glow of IR led's that form the ring around a lot of security camera's?

Or the IR light that is used to photograph my license plate for the license plate tolls?

Or is that just imperfections in the creation of the IR light in the first place?

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#216

Post by jongraehl » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 3:03 AM UTC

RogerL wrote: post #136

hamiltonkibbe wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He was referring to the specific example he gave in which the higher-frequency had an amplitude of 2^6 and the lower frequency sinusoid had an amplitude of 2^10

And that is not how digital sampling works - you don't allocate bits to different frequencies.

I guess it doesn't matter to human ears with a well-mastered 16 bits, but the video linked in the OP explains that typically dithering noise is shaped (toward frequencies we're less attuned to). The models used to lossy-compress also typically put more noise in some of the higher freqs.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#217

Post by Demiurge » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 3:06 AM UTC

copperx wrote: post #93

xorcist wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't end there. For most people, I strongly suspect moving around your furniture would affect your sound reproduction more than changing your equipment.

Most people listen to music using headphones nowadays.

I'm interested to know the source of this assertion?

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#218

Post by storrgie » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 3:09 AM UTC

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…

When someone spends money on something in a silly way, do you consider them to be an idiot? Would you make the same statement about someone who spends 200$ on a bottle of scotch versus buying a 35$ bottle?

Let the 'idiots' spend their money driving an industry that is combining the creation of electronics with functional art. I'm not sad to see a $40,000 DAC. I don't have to buy it, and it's cool to know someone built something of silly 'value'.

For example, look at this thing: https://www.naimaudio.com/statement It's absolutely silly, and the cost is outrageous. I'm happy that they built it though. It was actually built as part of the acquisition that Focal made of Naim. It seems that they allowed the engineers at Naim to go nuts once the company was acquired.

I like seeing silly things that people build. It doesn't make me sad that someone spends thousands on ridiculous items that from an engineering perspective don't make a difference.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#219

Post by vegedor » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 3:12 AM UTC

gumby wrote: post #192

Wicher wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 i…

> 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.

Well, the isochronous stream is picked up by an analogue transducer, isn't it?

> 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.

Well, at least you allow some doubt. With extreme warping, e.g. hitting the player slightly, you could easily bring the playback to a stop. Now, I don't know how weak a vibration we are talking, nevertheless it's clear the ECC in Audio-CDs is weak (e.g. ignoring the byte of lower significance? I did read about this somewhere, also related to an HN comment), but you barely addressed that.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#220

Post by cthalupa » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 3:12 AM UTC

stinkytaco wrote: post #212

cthalupa wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, we have to define, in your opinion, what would make a pair of headphones shitty. If you are going to reduce them to the basest level of what the purpose for a speaker or headphone is, to reproduce the input sound, then yes, they are shitty, because they are not good at that. From a purely objective standpoint, you are going to have to judge them based on that. Why would you want the speakers or headphones to make…

>If you are going to reduce them to the basest level of what the purpose for a speaker or headphone is, to reproduce the input sound, then yes, they are shitty, because they are not good at that. Though I don't personally like the cold, base heavy sound of Beats, I don't really get how you could know this, because most people have no idea what a piece of music should sound like. They know how they think it should sou…

So, uh, we can measure the frequency response made by headphones.

http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/headphone-measurement-p...

http://www.headphone.com/pages/evaluating-headphones

This is a pretty scientific matter - when I say "the purpose is to reproduce the input sound", we can tell exactly what is supposed to be reproduced, and we can tell exactly how capable the speaker is of reproducing it.

Some exceptions have to be made due to how having headphones on your head causes the sound to change, but again, these are pretty much known quantities - to get the equivalent of a flat response from a speaker, you will see change X in bass response, change Y in treble response, etc for headphones.

It's not a question of esoteric "The artist and recording engineer meant for this to be played on Kef blades powered by a Cary tube pre-amp feeding into a Mcintosh amp setup using a rail to rail ladder DAC", but a "We know how frequency response should look when measuring equipment and if it doesn't look like that then the sound you are getting out of it is different than the source material"