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

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

#181

Post by panacea » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 12:56 AM UTC

tzs wrote: post #169

eatmyshorts wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but our ears only hear 20Hz-20KHz. So, according to Nyquist theory, you can recreate the entire signal that the human ear hears by recording those sonic artifacts that result from interference between supersonic harmonics. So while it's true that the human ear can't hear well above ~18KHz, and the interference between high order harmonics are audible, it's also true that a properly recorded signal, sampled at 44…

What about sound outside 20-20k that affects us via mechanisms other than being directly sensed in the air by our ears? For instance, consider frequencies below 20 Hz that we can feel with our feet as vibrations in the floor, instead of hear with our ears? Or what about the possibility of sound above 20k causing a vibration in something other than our ears, which could have a subharmonic in 20-20k that gets conducted…

>I'd prefer recording technology to err on the side of capturing what we need to reproduce all of that, even if we aren't sure that we need it.

Again, this article is about distribution, not recording.

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

#182

Post by blackhole » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 12:56 AM UTC

mfarris wrote: post #107

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 tone…

I am not getting these things mixed up, because the sample rate is related to the maximum frequency that can be stored, and lo and behold, look at all these people claiming that those higher frequencies matter. 44.1 kHz sample rate can only encode tones up to about 22 kHz, whereas 192 can encode frequencies of up to 81 kHz, and those people up there are arguing that these higher frequencies are exactly why 192 kHz is superior. Now, if you want to say that sampling a tone at 44100 times per second somehow won't sound as good than 192000 times per second, I'm not saying that isn't possible, but I don't really take that claim seriously at all.

The fact is, simply distributing music in lossless format carries the vast majority of audible improvements. Arguing over whether or not its 24-bit or 16-bit or making a chunk of sound last 5.2 microseconds instead of 22.67 seems incredibly stupid to me, because you're better off simply improving the mix itself then fiddling over such microscopic differences. These things only become relevant if your mix and performance and recording equipment (or synths) are absurdly close to perfection. This becomes even LESS relevant in an age of indie-musicians.

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

#183

Post by jpdoctor » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 12:57 AM UTC

JangoSteve wrote: post #179

Even without debating the science and signal processing arguments raised... In any test where a listener can tell two choices apart via any means apart from listening, the results will usually be what the listener expected in advance; this is called confirmation bias and it's similar to the placebo effect. It means people 'hear' differences because of subconscious cues and preferences that have nothing to do with the…

> If people want to pay for 24/192, and even he just admitted that they will legitimately enjoy it more, how can you conclude there is no point?

Sorry, no time to reply. I gotta run and write up my biz plan to distribute 32/384 audio.

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

#184

Post by rmcclellan » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 12:59 AM UTC

wickedchicken wrote: post #170

rmcclellan wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

> two band limited pulse signals with different onset times, no matter how arbitrarily close, will result in different sampled signals. This is true, but different than what I am arguing. You're saying that a listener over time will be able to tell that the two signals differ. I am saying that a listener will be able to determine this at fractional wavelengths. It's similar to dithering a high dynamic range signal on…

I'm not sure what you're getting at.

As a thought experiment, let's consider a pulse that has been band-limited to 20kHz. Are you arguing that the analog output of a (filtered, idealized) DAC would look different depending on whether the dac was running at 44.1kHz vs 192kHz? If so, I don't think many people would agree with you.

Any difference in the "timing" of the output wave would have to come from energy that falls above nyquist of the slower sample rate. So, while I agree with you that the timing would be sharper, this is exactly caused by "higher frequencies", not by some other sort of timing improvement.

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

#185

Post by joshAg » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 1:00 AM UTC

nitrogen wrote: post #163

bigiain wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deal is just that you're getting older. Your ears just don't work as well as a 12year old's. Neither do anybody else's your age (within the bounds of typical human variation - probably well over 95% of use _never_ heard 22kHz, not matter _how_ "young" our ears were).

I was once in a small, treated room working with some rather large PA speakers. I was curious how far my hearing range actually extended, and did something very unwise: I played a 20kHz tone and very briefly ramped the volume up and down. I definitely heard it, but I also induced quite a lot of pain. I learned two lessons: 1. my threshold of hearing at 20kHz is near or above the threshold of pain, and 2. don't do tha…

heh, your story reminded me of the bar scene in Good Will Hunting:

WILL: The sad thing is, in about 50 years you might start doin' some thinkin' on your own and by then you'll realize there are only two certainties in life.

CLARK: Yeah? What're those?

WILL: One, don't do that. Two -- you dropped a hundred and fifty grand on an education you coulda' picked up for a dollar fifty in late charges at the Public Library.

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

#186

Post by texel » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 1:00 AM UTC

cmer wrote: post #12

Joeboy wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Digitally recording a triangle is the best example of why 48kHz is very limiting The article's about distribution, not recording. I don't think anybody disputes the usefulness of higher sampling rates when recording. > In theory, it's true that the human hear can't hear above ~18kHz, but it can hear the influence of the very high pitch harmonics on a lower frequency. ...and 48kHz audio contains those lower frequenc…

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…

I think you're referring to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_fundamental

Which, since it's a psychoacoustic phenomenon, wouldn't hold true when the partials involved are above the audible spectrum.

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

#187

Post by cop359 » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 1:07 AM UTC

Anechoic wrote: post #99

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…

Agree one-hundred percent about the room (although the prescription isn't always as simple as "get a thicker rug" etc). The other issue regarding high-frequency sound reproduction is that in most cases, the loudspeaker won't be outputting much beyond 22-25 kHz (assuming very good quality loudspeakers, cheap consumer grade units might struggle to hit a -6 dB point at 18 kHz) and even for the speakers that have usable…

I don't really know much about this, but wouldn't the 22kHz sounds potentially create beats in the lower frequencies?

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

#188

Post by joshAg » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 1:08 AM UTC

jpdoctor wrote: post #183

JangoSteve wrote: post #179

Even without debating the science and signal processing arguments raised... In any test where a listener can tell two choices apart via any means apart from listening, the results will usually be what the listener expected in advance; this is called confirmation bias and it's similar to the placebo effect. It means people 'hear' differences because of subconscious cues and preferences that have nothing to do with the…

> If people want to pay for 24/192, and even he just admitted that they will legitimately enjoy it more, how can you conclude there is no point? Sorry, no time to reply. I gotta run and write up my biz plan to distribute 32/384 audio.

SUCKER! I'm already working on 48/768 audio. It's amazing how clear the recordings are.

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

#189

Post by Anechoic » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 1:11 AM UTC

eatmyshorts wrote: post #165

Anechoic wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That article describes hetrodyning which happens because ultrasonic frequencies at high amplitudes interacts nonlinearly with air. You are not going to see that effect with sound waves generated near the audible spectrum, and normal loudspeakers are going to generate ultrasonic sound waves.

Yes, but the effects of interference patterns between multiple ultrasonic frequencies is the same, and definitely does affect the audible spectrum. This is why we must filter the square wave that comes out of a DAC. And the limitations of filters (phase shifts and roll-off) are why modern CD players oversample the signal--so that the filtering can be performed well beyond the audible spectrum.

This:

Yes, but the effects of interference patterns between multiple ultrasonic frequencies is the same, and definitely does affect the audible spectrum

has nothing to do with this:

This is why we must filter the square wave that comes out of a DAC

The only reason that square waves "must" be filtered is to reduce the potential of damaging tweeters. If you want to record a square wave with the purpose of later reproducing the square wave, than you don't want to filter it - once you filter it, it's no longer a square wave.

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

#190

Post by blahblahblah » Tue, Mar 06, 2012, 1:13 AM UTC

I mostly agree with the article in the context of distribution of a final mix. However, the article ignores one glaringly obvious reason to distribute in 24/192 format: to allow the listener to be a participant in the creative process, enabling better results for amateur musician listeners who want to sample or remix the audio or for DJs to get better results when altering the tempo for beat matching one track with another, etc. Of course, if you're going to do that, you might as well distribute in a multi-track format instead to maximize flexibility for the end user (Want to sing karaoke? Just turn off the lead vocal track for playback).