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24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

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Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#151

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

andybak wrote: post #33
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if the lower sample rate of 48kHz would be entirely reasonable and 96kHz is overkill, 24 bits still makes an audible difference for the material I listen to (modernist classical music and ECM jazz), which is why you can find 24/48 from some labels. For pop music, which of course is distinguished by little dynamic range, then 16 bits would be fine just like on the CD format.

> 24 bits still makes an audible difference The article (and numerous other sources I've seen over the years) disagrees with you so I'm curious why you're so certain?

As the article notes:

"It's true that 16 bit linear PCM audio does not quite cover the entire theoretical dynamic range of the human ear in ideal conditions."

Now, 24-bit may be overkill, but 24-bit is the next step up from 16-bit among standard encoding formats, and as the article notes, there are no drawbacks with 24-bit encoding except greater use of disk space.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#152

Post by mruts »

iaresee wrote: post #132
mruts wrote: post #4

Problem with music sounding bad doesn’t really have much to do with the distributed format: V0, V1, or 320 mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac. You can only the difference between mp3 and flac at shitty bitrates no one uses anymore (like 120). The reason why a lot of recent digital music sounds bad is because of the intentionally terrible mastering. Since everyone is listening of crappy ear…

> This is also why modern vinyl releases sound a lot better than digital: they are mastered differently since its assumed everyone is going to be listening on good equipment. I'm going to disagree here. They are mastered differently because the physical limitations of the media require them to be mastered differently _and_ it just so happens that the physical limitations help limit mastering tricks in a way that prod…

That may be true, but I've seen some vinyl mastering jobs that looked as bad as digital. I won't claim to be a mastering engineer or anything, but after comparing many vinyl releases and digital releases, it seems like there is something going on besides the physical limitations of the medium.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#153

Post by mark-r »

leetcrew wrote: post #67
vortico wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that the difference is not large. A 128 kbps opus or AAC might be comparible to a 160 or 192 kbps MP3. So it's less than 2x improvement of file size.

AAC has an additional advantage though, which is that many phones and receivers can transmit AAC files over Bluetooth without reencoding. this is technically possible for MP3 too, but very few devices implement it. the loss of quality from transcoding lossy to lossy is usually a lot worse than the difference in quality between codecs and bitrates (within reason).

Even though it's theoretically possible to send over Bluetooth without reencoding, I wonder if it happens in practice. The audio pipeline has too many stages and each of them would have to retain the encoding.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#154

Post by jrace »

widerporst wrote: post #118
Kaiyou wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac I did a blind test between 128-mp3, 320-mp3 and flac hearing classical music. While it's true that the 128-mp3 is obvious to find, it also isn't too difficult to find the 320-mp3. Flac just sounds better. Described as a feeling, flac is more voluminous and doesn't feel cut short. For fun, I also let my parents take this test and they could tell, too. Th…

Interesting. Are you sure you were using the right settings and a recent version of LAME for this? The only artifact I can reliably hear in 320 kbps MP3s is pre-echo, for instance with castanets, and only in a few very specific situations. Apart from this, V2 and above sounds completely indistinguishable from the original to me.

Which is great ...for you...

but what if in the future you could hear the differences? And now your entire collection is in MP3 V2 - now what?

No reason to not rip everything in uncompressed FLAC these days.

But if your happy with your audio now, great!

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#155

Post by pslam »

jrace wrote: post #150

This same argument can be made for many things Why have an engine in my car that can exceed all speed limits? Why have a heating and cooling system in my house that can exceed any comfortable level? Why have lights that get brighter than I need? Why have an internet connection that exceeds what I need now? ======== I keep all my music rips in uncompressed FLAC - 1) because i can 2) because I have the most flexibility…

> No point in bottlenecking my audio just because _other_ people are unable to appreciate it.

The entire point of the post is that _nobody_ can appreciate it. It is entirely a waste of space at best, and a cynical marketing ploy at worst.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#156

Post by PaulHoule »

stcredzero wrote: post #81
mruts wrote: post #4

Problem with music sounding bad doesn’t really have much to do with the distributed format: V0, V1, or 320 mp3s should sound pretty much the same compared to 16-bit flac. You can only the difference between mp3 and flac at shitty bitrates no one uses anymore (like 120). The reason why a lot of recent digital music sounds bad is because of the intentionally terrible mastering. Since everyone is listening of crappy ear…

Since everyone is listening of crappy earbuds, they compress the hell out of it and destroy all dynamic range. More compression and less dynamic range is beneficial for certain environments. Noisy subways. Watching TV in a noisy downtown apartment. Basically, crappy, noisy environments. In those, compression will help you actually hear the music and speech. However, the fact that this should be done in the master is…

Dynamic range is a solved problem if people cared.

You attach some metadata to the audio file that says certain parts should be level boosted in a noisy environment and there you go.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#157

Post by lozf »

nirvdrum wrote: post #41
mark-r wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rip my CDs in a two-step process: first to FLAC, then convert to mp3. The mp3s go in my phone, I have 33GB so far and my collection isn't even half ripped. I haven't checked how big the FLACs are lately but I'm sure they'd be a much bigger burden.

Slightly off topic, but do you use something other than iTunes for this process? I'm looking for a good way to manage a FLAC library.

On Windows "foobar2000" is fantastic for playback and transcoding, looks pretty basic, but performs well and has lot's of plugins to modify look and feel as well as extra functionality.

On Mac, XLD is great for ripping and transcoding, but I'm not sure what's the hot favourite for playback these days.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#159

Post by aidenn0 »

vortico wrote: post #51
bch wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Example?

Playing a set of high-frequency pure sine waves is the failure point for MP3, AAC, Vorbis, and Opus. Dial-up noises are close to this, which you can try encoding/decoding. And this is no surprise, since the point of the V.90/92 protocols is to cram as much information as possible into analog frequencies, and the point of psychoacoustic lossy codecs is to remove the least efficient frequency information of our log-fre…

V.90 and V.92 both sound largely like spectrally shaped noise. Even if you give very regular inputs, the data is compressed and scrambled, then spectrally shaped and then output as 8-bit 8kHz log-weighted PCM.

Re: 24/192 Music Downloads and why they make no sense (2012)

#160

Post by function_seven »

jrace wrote: post #150

This same argument can be made for many things Why have an engine in my car that can exceed all speed limits? Why have a heating and cooling system in my house that can exceed any comfortable level? Why have lights that get brighter than I need? Why have an internet connection that exceeds what I need now? ======== I keep all my music rips in uncompressed FLAC - 1) because i can 2) because I have the most flexibility…

Your examples all have good reasons though.

> Why have an engine in my car that can exceed all speed limits?

So I can drive faster than the speed limit if I want to. (And I do)

> Why have a heating and cooling system in my house that can exceed any comfortable level?

Well, you shouldn't oversize your HVAC system if you want to save money. But it's nice to be able to achieve your target temp in a reasonable time period. Any system that can heat your house by 10°F in 20 minutes will—as a side effect—also be able to heat it to 90°F if you were to set it there.

> Why have lights that get brighter than I need?

Other people may need that extra brightness. You can choose dimmer lights if you want. In any case, there's a clear difference between the two choices.

> Why have an internet connection that exceeds what I need now?

Again, other people may need that extra bandwidth. If you can choose a slower one, then do so.

The point of this article is that 24/192 downloads do not improve anything. It's like having a car engine with blue anodized cylinder heads. Nothing about the performance will benefit from the color change of the heads. Or using gold plated ducts for your heating system. The quality of the air is not affected by that.

Our ears are not capable of hearing the differences when they affect only frequencies above our range. Imagine if those lights boasted that they rendered 200nm light more faithfully. That improvement is wasted on your eyes.

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