24/192 music downloads are silly • Hacker News Board

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#281

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 6:35 AM UTC

plaguuuuuu wrote: post #271

rasz_pl wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>Agile^^key'hole/RohdeShwartz multi gigahertz arbitrary waveform generators here I don't even know what that is. But that's what I'm calling my next breakcore track.

[deleted]

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#282

Post by kalleboo » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 6:37 AM UTC

esaym wrote: post #210

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…

I don't know about comparing digital to digital, but I know I can tell the difference between a 320kbs mp3 and a good quality LP record. Its in the treble. I guess any kind of digital just ruins that.

MP3 in particular has issues above 16KHz. This is solved in modern formats such as AAC and Ogg Vorbis. It has nothing to do with "any kind of digital".

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#283

Post by SwellJoe » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 6:59 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…

There are a few more brands and models that pros use. The AKG K240 has been in use for decades, and I think they're quite charming. Audio Technica has made a lot of in-roads into mid-level pro studios in particular (i.e. not million dollar rooms, but still quite good studios that make good records regularly). I've also seen Shure SRH series headphones in professional contexts.

But, your statements about "pro" headphones are accurate. They aren't the nicest looking, but they are really good, and I always recommend a good pro set of headphones over the marketed crap from Beats, Bose, Monster, etc. $250 will buy a lot of headphone quality from one of the pro audio manufacturers.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#284

Post by danbmil99 » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 7:00 AM UTC

Not sure about this one. I'm pretty sure at one point I could hear the difference between 44.1 and 48 khz sampling. I agree 192 is overkill, but 44.1 is just above the Nyquist limit. At that resolution, the top breathy harmonics of a piccolo are only getting 2-3 samples per cycle, which seems to leave room for some possible aliasing if you are not 100% sure about your filters. So why not just go crazy and throw 4X samples at the problem, eliminating any question of proper anti-aliasing?

As to # of bits, the issue there is the wide dynamic range of music, and the fact that our ears can adjust to this wide range. Probably you would get the same effect as 24 or 32 bits with the right dynamic range adjustments, but then we'll have to argue about which algorithm is "right". A surfeit of bits just makes the question go away.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#285

Post by SwellJoe » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 7:03 AM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #193

cthalupa wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Almost every studio used to have nothing but AKG K240 phones for monitors in the room. I haven't worked professionally directly in the field for years (I work in live sound occasionally now, and do interact with recording engineers occasionally), but I still see them discussed regularly enough online to assume they are still common. I love the look of them, and always have. To me, they are the definition of "studio headphone". (They aren't what I use in my home studio, as there are better phones, if you're willing to spend more money, but they are a good headphone for a good price.)

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#286

Post by Bahamut » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 7:08 AM UTC

Florin_Andrei wrote: post #214

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.

> 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.

I have a pair of Sennheister 280 HD Pros - they've lasted me about 7 years, an excellent set of headphones. I used it to help critique music for lots of artists on their production, and I know lots of artists who use it as a cheap pair of mixing headphones.

Work bought me a pair of 380 HD Pros, and I'm impressed on how much of an upgrade they are over the 280s - I can only imagine how good the other Sennheisers are.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#287

Post by rconti » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 7:11 AM UTC

Demiurge wrote: post #217

copperx wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people listen to music using headphones nowadays.

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

I have no source either, but I'd bet a very small sum of somebody else's dollars that "most people" in the US, at least, listen to most of their music in the car.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#288

Post by ChrisGranger » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 7:20 AM UTC

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #265

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've completely misunderstood the article. It's discussing differences in the the PCM sampling rate, not the MP3 encoding bitrate. Or in otherwords, all these samples they compare are FLAC. 192 KHz has nothing to do with 192 kbps. I'm one of those audio engineers who mistakenly thinks I can tell between an MP3 and a FLAC. Yet somehow I understand the difference between sample rate and encoding bitrate, and you do n…

Bit depth affects dynamic range, and that's it. The only thing a 24-bit sample can do better than a 16-bit sample is accurately reproduce the difference between very loud sounds and very quiet ones. That's all. For the vast, vast majority of music listeners, the difference will be insignificant, as they don't listen in an environment where a dynamic range of 144 dB can be used to anywhere near its full effect.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#289

Post by oaktowner » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 7:21 AM UTC

jboggan wrote: post #266

Stratoscope wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh sure, your rips may be perfect at the bit level, but how do you know that they're free of sub-bit quantization that isn't detectable by electronic circuits but can be heard by the human ear? This sub-bit jitter and interference can travel along with a digital file and sneak right past your ordinary bit-level error detection and correction, no matter how lossless you make it. That's because these errors aren't visi…

We've discovered digital homeopathy.

Funniest reply I've read all day.

Re: 24/192 music downloads are silly

#290

Post by ChrisGranger » Wed, Dec 03, 2014, 7:24 AM UTC

retrogradeorbit wrote: post #265

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've completely misunderstood the article. It's discussing differences in the the PCM sampling rate, not the MP3 encoding bitrate. Or in otherwords, all these samples they compare are FLAC. 192 KHz has nothing to do with 192 kbps. I'm one of those audio engineers who mistakenly thinks I can tell between an MP3 and a FLAC. Yet somehow I understand the difference between sample rate and encoding bitrate, and you do n…

I think you're misreading what the OP said. He wasn't making the mistake of associating 192 kbps with 192 kHz. It was just a coincidence that he used 192 kbps MP3 transcodes. He could just as easily have used 224 kbps MP3s versus 24/192 FLACs in the test he described. The point was that his friend couldn't tell the difference between MP3s and FLACs.