Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

people.xiph.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 326 posts

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#101

Post by polshaw »

I have to say that was probably the most comprehensive dealings with the issue of sample-rates I've ever come across. I'm not going to make the mistake others have of claiming falsehoods (all of which i've read so far have been debunked to my satisfaction by the HN users-- i'm impressed, guys).

As pointed out, mastering has vastly greater effect on the audio quality (and is often pretty poor[1]), and is the reason vinyl records often can sound better than their digital counterpart, despite being an inferior technology[2]. The DAC used also has a massive effect on the sound once you get into decent quality equipment.

Like the author, i'd also love to see some expansion of mixed-for-surround music.

[1] a lot because of loudness wars, as pointed out in the post, but also just due to a lack of time/care/love(/demand?).

[2] http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6175... This thread explores the bit-depth of vinyl records, beginning with a claim of a maximum 11-bit resolution-- limited by the width of a PVC molecule the record is made from.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#102

Post by hackinthebochs »

One thing I don't see addressed is the experience of feeling frequencies that can't directly be heard. There was a study done with a particular piece of classical music, with and without a particular inaudible component to it. The presence of the inaudible component drastically changed the listeners perception of the music. They described it as more dark or creepy (perhaps not the actual words used, but it matches the sentiment). The point is that there may be value in reproducing frequencies that we can't "hear", as inaudible notes can alter the experience of the music.

*not the study I was referring to but its along the same lines: http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/xpl/freeabs_all.jsp?arnumber=5291...

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#103

Post by yzhou »

sjwright wrote: post #88
yzhou wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why do you think "This difference gets lost in the THD already at the DAC "? Do you have numbers to back it up? What's the noise floor of DAC? What's the noise floor of an output stage? Do you have the number?

The number is somewhere between the amplitude of an ant pissing on cotton, and an ant not even thinking about pissing on cotton.

high dynamic range is not about the lowest volume you can hear, it's about the voltage resolution between this sampling point and the next. Base on your assumption, we can all see black whether we use 16bit RGB color or 24bit RGB color, what's the point of using 24bit RGB?

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#104

Post by jaylevitt »

aiscott wrote: post #45
jaylevitt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that #2 isn't true; signal processing folks will be able to phrase this better than I can, but I think that if you have enough information to capture the waveform at a given frequency, you also have enough information to precisely place it in time - phasing errors are more likely due to quantization error, which is about bit depth, not sample rate. No?

[edited: I was wrong]

But at a given sample rate, if I'm sampling at bit depth 2, doesn't that quantization error end up temporally shifting the sine wave I'm reconstructing?

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#105

Post by ErikRogneby »

sjwright wrote: post #78

I must say I get rather irritated when people spend time worrying about dubious 'tweaker' methods to improve their audio, when the most under-performing component of most people's sound equipment also has the lowest-hanging fruit: The room itself. When people ask me where they should spend money to improve the quality of their hi-fi or home theater system, in nearly every case my response will be something like "get…

I agree. It should be about the performance, not the sonics. There are plenty of old Motown and even Beatles recordings with distorted vocals, bad edits, etc. Your brain passes right over them because of the emotional content of the music.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#106

Post by agentgt »

TylerE wrote: post #90
agentgt wrote: post #76

I know this is slightly tangential but are hi-end DACs really worth it? I have always been amazed how much audiophile DACs cost ($300-1000). The reality is I listen to 320kbps music that was most likely recorded at 44100. DAC technology is not exactly new. So why the price? Another tangent: To me it seems audio engineering should fix the "woofer". That is it seems subwoofers have terrible distortion.

A low-end dedicated DAC is likely to be a substantial upgrade over a built-in soundcard (I'm assuming we're talking PC sound here). A PC case is a pretty noisy place, electrically - I know one one work PC I had once you could actually here the mouse move, if you had heaphones on and cranked the volume with nothing playing - horizontal and vertical movement had different frequencies. The move from a low end ($150-300)…

Oh yes I agree an off board DAC is better. I own the Fiio E7 which I highly recommend for laptops and only costs $80.00. In fact I run a 50 foot USB cable from my laptop to my DAC and the improvement is much better than running a 50 foot 3.5mm TRS.

But the high end ones that are 24 bit 192khz that cost $1k (Cambridge Soundworks DAC magic comes to mind) I have to seriously doubt I'm going to hear it. I really only hear the DAC difference (compared to my laptop and FIIO) when I use headphones.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#107

Post by mfarris »

blackhole wrote: post #94

You always record stuff at 24-bit/192 kHz for many reasons usually involving minimizing analog artifacts and to give you a lot of information to work with. You use 32-bit float wavs to transport stuff around so you don't have to worry about normalizing levels and clipping. Lossless formats drastically improve the quality of transients by an enormous degree. But every single objection to this is either ignoring the po…

You're getting two entirely different things mixed up.

192 kHz is the sample rate. 192,000 slices per second. It does not refer to the audible sound spectrum.

20 kHz in speakers refers to the cycles per second of the audible waveform. Normal human hearing rage is 20 hz - 20 kHz. For most people, it's less than that.

A speaker can certainly play back music sampled 192,000 times per second. Most of them can't play tones that are higher pitched than 20 kHz, which is fine because mostly only dogs can hear up there anyway.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#108

Post by ferongr »

davesims wrote: post #95
hackermom wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same goes for 16/24 bit, however, the difference between 16 and 24 bit is actually audible No, the difference is not audible at all. At 16 bits of depth on a normal low-level audio signal (~0.3 volts), we're talking about less than 0.000005 volts per amplitude step. This difference gets lost in the THD already at the DAC in your audio output stage. Then it gets lost again in the amplifier. And again in the cable to y…

Heh, it's funny to see this late-nineties debate get re-hashed here. Also kind of fun. If it were true that there's no audible difference between 16 and 24 bit, companies like Alesis, Otari, ProTools, etc. wouldn't have spent the last 15 years ditching 16 bit like an old pair of smelly sneakers. (better metaphors welcome). Seriously, anyone who has sat down in a real listening environment for 5 minutes A/Bing 16 vs 2…

Bigger numbers are better. Right?

It's all marketing, baby!

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#109

Post by rmcclellan »

aiscott wrote: post #45
jaylevitt wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that #2 isn't true; signal processing folks will be able to phrase this better than I can, but I think that if you have enough information to capture the waveform at a given frequency, you also have enough information to precisely place it in time - phasing errors are more likely due to quantization error, which is about bit depth, not sample rate. No?

[edited: I was wrong]

This is completely incorrect, by shannon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist%E2%80%93Shannon_samplin...). The sampling frequency determines the maximum frequency that can be captured, not the temporal resolution. That said, a transient containing higher frequencies will be sharper than a transient that doesn't, but its onset time resolution will not be determined at all by the sample rate.

Said another way, two band limited pulse signals with different onset times, no matter how arbitrarily close, will result in different sampled signals.

Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.

#110

Post by runeks »

Anechoic wrote: post #43
cmer wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stripping frequencies above 20kHz negates the effect on the lower frequencies since those lower frequencies are not "modified" by the higher ones. The human hear can actually hear the very high harmonics when they're combined with a lower fundamental frequency. For example, the human hear will hear a 30kHz frequency if it's fundamental is 10kHz. If it's played at 44.1kHz, the 30kHz frequency is gone and all you'll he…

For example, the human hear will hear a 30kHz frequency if it's fundamental is 10kHz You are going to have to provide me with a citation to back that up because that goes against everything I've learned and experience in 17 years of working in acoustics.

It's definitely possible for two sounds to be indistinguishable when played separately, but when played together it is revealed that they are in fact different (see link below). Whether this applies for sounds with frequencies above 20kHz I don't know. I'd like to see a citation as well. Doesn't seem like it would be the hardest experiment to set up either.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cent_(music)#Sound_files

Post reply on HN