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24/192 music downloads make no sense

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Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#121

Post by darkmighty »

donatj wrote: post #110
darkmighty wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have mixed feelings about it. But I fully agree all music should be uncompressed by default. The good thing about compression is that it allows you to save your hearing quite a bit. Some music have dramatic parts that get super loud, which can have awesome emotional response; but it does take a toll on your hearing, unless you are in a very silent environment or have fantastic headphone insulation (I have none) --…

I'm truly curious how having good isolation would help your hearing? Is the room noise a large additive?

Yes, specially for the quieter parts (where the Signal-to-noise ratio is lower) I noticed considerable difference, at least for my urban environment. You can get away with lower sound pressure levels [volume].

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#122

Post by [deleted] »

lmm wrote: post #112
ska wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, dithering (properly) is usually what you should be doing when you quantize. See Vanderkooy and Lipshitz 1987 for why.

Paper seems to be paywalled. I can't imagine any possible purpose for dithering before encoding that wouldn't be better served by dithering on playback.

[deleted]

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#123

Post by donatj »

darkmighty wrote: post #121
donatj wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm truly curious how having good isolation would help your hearing? Is the room noise a large additive?

Yes, specially for the quieter parts (where the Signal-to-noise ratio is lower) I noticed considerable difference, at least for my urban environment. You can get away with lower sound pressure levels [volume].

Oh. I see. The problem is that they cause you to turn your volume up, lol. That's my favorite part of Pink Floyd's The Wall, most of the album is really quiet which lets it get REALLY LOUD on a couple occasions.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#124

Post by ska »

lmm wrote: post #112
ska wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, dithering (properly) is usually what you should be doing when you quantize. See Vanderkooy and Lipshitz 1987 for why.

Paper seems to be paywalled. I can't imagine any possible purpose for dithering before encoding that wouldn't be better served by dithering on playback.

You dither before quantization in order to decorrelate the quantization error. If you don't do this, you risk artifacts in any digital filtering (or for that matter, playback) done afterwards. This includes any requantization.

In audio if I recall correctly it is also important to avoid obvious noise modulation.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#125

Post by TheCoelacanth »

Johnny555 wrote: post #33

Wouldn't this question be answered with a large-scale double blind trial? If more people prefer the sound at the higher bitrate and sampling rate, then that's the better format, even if there's no technical reason why that format is superior. Much like how some people prefer the "warm" sound of tube amps, even if that means more distortion.

> Much like how some people prefer the "warm" sound of tube amps, even if that means more distortion.

The difference from my perspective is that an amp is a tool for sound production while a digital music format is a tool for sound reproduction. When producing sound, choosing more distortion over less distortion is a valid choice. When reproducing sound, the goal should be accurate reproduction of the original.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#126

Post by cthalupa »

lawnchair_larry wrote: post #30
andy_ppp wrote: post #5

Why do high quality DACs clearly sound better then? And they sound better with better files. Maybe it really is all in my head but I mean listening to a £20000 hifi the other day (vinyl) really just shocked me. I was listening to Marvin Gaye on my friends system and I could hear that there were several different backing singers all moving and at different distances from the microphone. Are there any double blind tria…

Vinyl actually has far less fidelity. You also physically change the recording every time you play it back. Even on the same equipment, no two plays of a vinyl LP sound exactly the same, unlike digital. This fact alone should cause you to question your subjective experience. You have no idea what part of that system was contributing to what you found pleasant. Someone who knew what they were doing could probably buil…

>Vinyl actually has far less fidelity.

Vinyl mastering is sometimes better than CD mastering though, due to the loudness war.

I would love to sell my turntable and vinyl collection and rely purely on digital formats. Takes up less space, technically superior format, etc.

But one thing keeps me buying vinyl:

AWFUL mastering on CDs. A significant portion of LPs are released with more normal mastering on the vinyl, while the CD will be brickwalled all to hell.

I listen to metal, and rock as a broader genre is particularly bad about it. One of my favorite albums of last year, Fallujah's The Flesh Prevails, had a dynamic range of 2 to 3 on almost every track on the CD. The vinyl master? 9 to 10. Still not great, but leaps and bounds better. The CD actually clips if you convert the songs into MP3.

Until they go back to not murdering CD mastering, I'll continue buying vinyl :(

(I know your comment isn't directly about vinyl being bad or anything - I just have a compulsion to bitch about the loudness war any chance I can)

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#127

Post by cthalupa »

klodolph wrote: post #32
rudolf0 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excessive data compression will also lower dynamic range, though, no?

Not really, no. Maybe if you really mangled your audio by encoding at extremely low bit rates. But in general, no.

Go find a CD that has been mastered to be just below the clipping point. (e.g. Fallujah - The Flesh Prevails)

Convert it to MP3 directly, use whatever settings you want

Watch as the mp3 rip is now clipping due to further compression of the dynamic range.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#128

Post by rcthompson »

ska wrote: post #55
earlz wrote: post #26

I can't hear a difference between 96khz/44khz in it's raw form. However, I can tell the difference from effects in audio mixing. The extra detail can really make a difference in how well an audio effect VST works. I have a 96khz/24bit interface that I use and ATH-M30X headphones, and I can tell a difference between at least some 24bit FLAC files and 16bit highest-quality-possible MP3s. I was mixing my own music and t…

The article is pretty clear about this too - higher bitdepths and sampling rates can be quite useful in mixing and recording situations. They're pointless for playback.

I think the point was that sometimes you do want to apply some effect to the sound at playback time, e.g. an equalizer, and in that case a higher bit depth could maybe conceivably become useful.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#129

Post by nosuchthing »

earlz wrote: post #119
shmageggy wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastering for vinyl is very common in the industry. I don't have time to dig up a reference right now, but the medium has different constraints than digital so is usually mastered separately, especially for big budget stuff. The differing constraints are mainly that while CD has a hard amplitude limit (hence brickwall limiting), the constraint on vinyl is not hard in the same way -- it mostly has to do with amplitude…

My understanding is that with vinyl, if the signal has too high of an RMS at low frequencies the needle can literally skip off the groove, and for this reason vinyl can't necessarily be as compressed and loud..

    • The audio is subjected to low-pass or all-pass 
  filtering, which can result in broad peaks becoming 
  slanted ramps.
    • The amount and stereo separation of deep bass content 
  is reduced for vinyl, to keep the stylus from being 
  thrown out of the groove.
http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_%28Vinyl%29...

http://www.laweekly.com/music/why-cds-may-actually-sound-bet...

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#130

Post by [deleted] »

some-guy wrote: post #118
derefr wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I was trying to get across is: every file has two potential purposes—listening and serving as input for sampling. So, if we care about enabling "remix culture", wouldn't make sense to offer a "24/192 FLAC" option for download, push DVDA over CD, etc., anyway? I've never seen the hype from artists about 24/192 as being about better listening experience. It's about handing their consumers a better master so as to…

Yeah I think that's not obvious from the title of the article: 24/192 are useful downloads for the sake of editing.

[deleted]
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