24/192 music downloads are silly • Hacker News Board

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#241

Post by tomc1985 » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 4:11 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?

I've a pair of Sennheiser HD280's that knock out background noise passively better (their website says 32db attenuation... and I swear they are a sanctuary from sound) than a lot of active (as in powered) noise-cancelling headphones. They're also some of the most unbiased headphones I've heard at $100 (which may or may not suit your tastes)

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#242

Post by ArkyBeagle » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 4:12 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #124

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.

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…

I have to try the Beyer some time. Agreed on the Sennheiser ergonmics - and the price.

I can't stand the Sonys. They're specifically designed for tracking & editing - all that screech points up Bad Things Happening. But they fatigue my ears.

Laugh now, but I landed on the Koss KTXPRO1 ( which are $20 to $40 ) and have basically stopped looking :) Most comfortable thing I've ever used and they're actually pretty flat, except for a little bass bump and a smidgen of upper mid. I think I'm on my tenth pair. They're a bit too light weight - if you catch the cable on something they'll fly off your head.

And yeah - I bet the $500 vs $20 figures into my perception of things.

I can mix on 'em, at least to the rough stage.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#243

Post by tomc1985 » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 4:14 AM UTC

As a listener its difficult to tell fidelity better than 44/16.

But if you like to remix or chop up or process recorded music for production, 96/24 or even 192/32 can make a huge difference in the quality of your edits. A distortion unit that modifies the waveform on a sample-by-sample basis now has twice the resolution to work with, and as a result its effect will sound considerably smoother and less harsh.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#244

Post by TheOtherHobbes » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 4:18 AM UTC

mmastrac wrote: post #40

TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't say being a data compression geek makes anyone a master of DSP or of psychoacoustics. The basic issue with 16-bit is that low level details like reverb tails and hall ambiences or very quiet musical passages get the equivalent of 14-bit (f) 12-bit (mf) to 8-bit (ppp) sampling. This sounds noticeably grainy and digital. It's not about total dynamic range or sine waves, it's about the fact that human ears ca…

If this is so relevant and obvious, why not put up two files: one 192/24 and one 48/16 and allow people to run their own double-blind test as he notes in the article? If you could produce a repeatable test where some number of people can tell that one is better, that would be a powerful argument. He's argued that people have done this test over and over, and nobody can ever tell the difference.

Firstly people haven't 'done this test over and over.'

There's been exactly one serious sort-of peer-reviewed paper in the AES journal, and that paper compared high-res commercially mastered audio sources of possibly questionable parentage with a 44.1/16 downconversion.

It also included SACD, which isn't a fixed bit depth linear PCM technology, and has been justifiably criticised for it.

I'm not aware of any tests that compare raw high-res unprocessed recordings with downsampled content.

Secondly, a fair comparison would be 48/16 and 48/24.

Personally I'm not very sold on high sample rates. I know there are technical reasons why it's easier to make antialiasing filters sound transparent at 96k than it is at 44.1k, and in practice it's not easy to pull apart practical design from theoretical limits. (Nyquist is only ever an ideal. No hardware is ever Nyquist-perfect.)

Basically psychoacoustics is hard. Ears are ridiculously sensitive, brains are occasionally delusional, and marketing people lurk everywhere.

It's extremely difficult to pull apart fact from reality.

But that's no excuse for having a misleadingly superficial understanding of the theory - which the original article does.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#245

Post by ArkyBeagle » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 4:28 AM UTC

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…

Different frequencies aren't stored in different bits. It's all mixed together. If you mix -10dB of 100 Hz and -20db of 1000Hz, the composite will be the same at 8 bits, just much, much noisier. There is, curiously enough, nothing at all like "vertical resolution" in digital audio - resolution in the amplitude dimension.

24 bits is great for recording, but the end distribution medium only needs to be 16 bits, after you normalize the thing you tracked at 24 bits.

You can get libsndfile and FFTW and do the tests yourself.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#246

Post by radley » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 4:29 AM UTC

pierrec wrote: post #36

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…

Wait until he gets some of'em Shakti Stones! [1] One reviewer [2] notes: " The effect of the first few Shakti products was not as apparent as when the effect became compounded. Each built on the others' ability to eliminate EMI in the component on or under which it was placed. Music became more relaxed, with greater clarity. Space and ambience increased. The soundfield became considerably more open and defined. At a…

Curious - what's the difference between Shakti and Ferrite beads?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrite_bead

I used ferrite beads to remove EMI in a pair of self-powered speakers. I was hearing the local college station broadcast at a very low level when nothing was playing. I added them to the speaker wires, along with a basic EMI power strip, and the interference was gone.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#247

Post by radley » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 4:31 AM UTC

tomlu wrote: post #239

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…

The article is correct, but it's not true that nobody can't tell the difference between an MP3 and a FLAC. I've personally done blind A/B testing in my (then) studio to discover the point at which I can't distinguish between MP3 and uncompressed audio. These days the encoders are really good, so it gets real hard at around 256kbps. I'm confident I could reliably pick out 192kbps though.

Why expect audio clarity to be uniform among everyone. Not everyone has 20/20 vision. Some have 20/100, others 20/10.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#248

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 4:34 AM UTC

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…

[deleted]

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#249

Post by storrgie » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 4:35 AM UTC

rasz_pl wrote: post #234

storrgie wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 buil…

You are mixing two things. There is a difference between Intel charging you >$1K for a CPU that is 5% faster (in games) than overclocked $300 one versus scammer selling magical power cables (made by gypsy virgins in Romanian monastery on top of the highest mountain, in full moon) to some rich retards. $40,000 DAC? someone really went ahead and fabbed their own silicon (~$1mil for low volume run)? or did they maybe pi…

It costs a good deal to make a discrete R2R ladder dac instead of buying a chip from TI (http://www.msbtech.com/products/dac4.php), however I've now seen some cool DIY projects that are doing even this on the cheap: http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/vendors-bazaar/259488-referen...

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#250

Post by storrgie » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 4:38 AM UTC

dcohenp wrote: post #223

storrgie wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 buil…

It's one thing when you plop down a ton of cash for something where you embrace the "silliness" or whatever makes it special (e.g. buying exotic cars with monstruous engines to drive them into traffic). It's another, however, believing something is objectively "better" because it cost more; e.g. spending money on Monster Cables thinking you can hear a difference. In audio, you have people who love vinyl because they…

I completely get that as I personally prefer to collect Old Stock vacuum tubes for my listening purposes (http://imgur.com/a/INXVX). I just think folks should be left to their own devices to enjoy an avocation as they please.

Trying to defend something through completely subjective argument is silly, I've a hard time discussing 'objectively better' technology with audiophole folks, but if someone said 'I like this more' I really can't hope to debunk that through any sort of mathematical characterization of performance.