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

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

#241

Post by rdtsc »

davesims wrote: post #201
hackermom wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and anyone who has ever sat down infront of an LCD flatscreen watching their favorite movie on DVD/BD using gold-plated $200 HDMI cable instead of $4.99 Walmart HDMI cable see the extra sharpness immediately. This is why non-gold plated non-OFC HDMI cables are down to $4.99 a piece from their original $49.99 during introduction.

That's cute. Obviously you've never recorded a rock band while riding the pre to compensate for 16bit's terrible noise floor and horribly limited headroom. You've never had the joy of ruining a perfectly good take because of that wonderful sound it makes when the volume spikes into digital distortion despite compressing the wazoo out of the input source. Glorious sound, digital distortion. Run a dentist drill through…

It looks like you are jumping in without actually having read the article in question. That's ok, but you are wasting space building a straw man proceeding to vigorously demolish him.

The original article explicitly mentions how 24bit is useful for recording.

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

#242

Post by Derbasti »

ferongr wrote: post #38
Derbasti wrote: post #7

He raises a lot of valid points. However... 192 kHz is clearly overkill for listening. Not so for further editing of the data. Same goes for 16/24 bit, however, the difference between 16 and 24 bit is actually audible. 44100 is not a bad sampling rate, but it necessitates very sharp aliasing filters, which are audibly bad. A bit more headroom is well needed there. That bit about intermodulation distortion is complete…

>Same goes for 16/24 bit, however, the difference between 16 and 24 bit is actually audible. This [1] (widely accepted in the scientific audio community) study's conclusions disagree with your assertion. >44100 is not a bad sampling rate, but it necessitates very sharp aliasing filters, which are audibly bad. This is not the 1980s, hardware has progressed beyond that point. Modern (i.e. anything from 1995 onwards) DA…

> Modern (i.e. anything from 1995 onwards) DACs do not suffer from aliasing problems.

True, but they do so using (long, high-quality) high-cut filters. And these filters are pretty sharp, as they have to close within, say, 18-22.1 kHz. You can design them as linear-phase FIR filters with oversampling and all the good stuff, but physics dictates that sharp filters introduce distortion. A sharp filter like that is audible.

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

#243

Post by rdtsc »

wickedchicken wrote: post #14

For an article containing a lot of "well, if you knew signal processing..." there are two fairly major oversights: 1) Any well-designed system is going to have headroom. Period. Just because 48kHz can capture the frequencies the human hear theoretically, it's always good to have a little wiggle room. This comes into play even more with interactive situations: humans are particularly sensitive to jitter. Having an "ov…

> it's always good to have a little wiggle room

48kHz already has enough 'wiggle room'. How many people do you personally know that can hear a 24kHz sine tone?

> more granular timing for the start and stop of transients. ... it's something I don't see mentioned often.

Probably because it doesn't make sense. Human ears cannot hear frequencies about 24kHz and Nyquist tells us that 48kHz is enough to completely capture all the detail of a signal at that frequency and below.

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

#244

Post by rdtsc »

_zeo8 wrote: post #118

In normal listening conditions and for most people the difference between 16/44 and 24/192 is inaudible. Given a 5 minute song, if I have the choice to download a 11MB file (320kpbs MP3) or a 330MB file (24/192) I would of course choose the 11MB file. The sound quality is perfectly acceptable and the file size much more convenient to manage (storage, backups, etc.). In terms of the convenience of managing the file si…

But then for every 10 people like you there is 1 person who is willing to pay 20x as much so they can get a "higher fidelity" product.

For a producer and manufacturer the rational approach would be to cater to that craziness and extract as much money from it as possible. In other words if you are selling HDMI cables, spend $2/cable to make it, then sell most for $5 and then re-brand some and sell for $500. If only takes 1 out of 100 people to buying that to make the same profit. You know these people are obsessed and irrational so you cater to that. And that's basically how we end up with ridiculously overpriced Monster cables and recordings distributed to customers @ 192kHz.

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

#245

Post by davesims »

rdtsc wrote: post #241
davesims wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's cute. Obviously you've never recorded a rock band while riding the pre to compensate for 16bit's terrible noise floor and horribly limited headroom. You've never had the joy of ruining a perfectly good take because of that wonderful sound it makes when the volume spikes into digital distortion despite compressing the wazoo out of the input source. Glorious sound, digital distortion. Run a dentist drill through…

It looks like you are jumping in without actually having read the article in question. That's ok, but you are wasting space building a straw man proceeding to vigorously demolish him. The original article explicitly mentions how 24bit is useful for recording.

Speaking of jumping in without reading...I wasn't responding to the article. I was responding to the commenter that said you couldn't tell the difference between 16 and 24 bit.

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

#246

Post by davesims »

lambda wrote: post #222
davesims wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's cute. Obviously you've never recorded a rock band while riding the pre to compensate for 16bit's terrible noise floor and horribly limited headroom. You've never had the joy of ruining a perfectly good take because of that wonderful sound it makes when the volume spikes into digital distortion despite compressing the wazoo out of the input source. Glorious sound, digital distortion. Run a dentist drill through…

Did you read the original article at all? > Professionals use 24 bit samples in recording and production [11] for headroom, noise floor, and convenience reasons. ...snip... > Modern work flows may involve literally thousands of effects and operations. The quantization noise and noise floor of a 16 bit sample may be undetectable during playback, but multiplying that noise by a few thousand times eventually becomes not…

Did you read the comment thread at all? I wasn't responding to the article, I was responding to a comment:

...snip...

>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.

...snip...

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

#247

Post by davedx »

icarus_drowning wrote: post #229
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…

stop being so paranoid about what you think you can't hear, and enjoy the damn music. I'm a composer who works in film/games. I can assure you this is exactly what I'd like people to do when they listen to my music. I spend 99% of my time trying to create good musical ideas, and I spend 1% of my time getting the mix down. I get criticized (rightly) for this quite a bit, but it is hard to care about someone sitting in…

What's wrong with caring about both sides of it?

A good sounding catchy tune is something work spending that little bit more time on.

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

#248

Post by aiurtourist »

Science be damned! Onwards with subjectivity!

• 24-bit audio is magical. When I recorded myself playing guitar in 24-bit and played it back through my amp, it sounded like I was still playing. 16-bit sounded like a CD.

• With MP3s, 192 kbps is a huge step up from 128 kbps. 192 doesn't exhibit any of the "swooshiness" heard in the upper range of 128 kbps MP3s for regular rock/pop/hiphop music.

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

#249

Post by inghoff »

aiurtourist wrote: post #248

Science be damned! Onwards with subjectivity! • 24-bit audio is magical. When I recorded myself playing guitar in 24-bit and played it back through my amp, it sounded like I was still playing. 16-bit sounded like a CD. • With MP3s, 192 kbps is a huge step up from 128 kbps. 192 doesn't exhibit any of the "swooshiness" heard in the upper range of 128 kbps MP3s for regular rock/pop/hiphop music.

ahem 192 kHz. We're talking sampling frequency, not bitrate.

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

#250

Post by danbmil99 »

aiurtourist wrote: post #248

Science be damned! Onwards with subjectivity! • 24-bit audio is magical. When I recorded myself playing guitar in 24-bit and played it back through my amp, it sounded like I was still playing. 16-bit sounded like a CD. • With MP3s, 192 kbps is a huge step up from 128 kbps. 192 doesn't exhibit any of the "swooshiness" heard in the upper range of 128 kbps MP3s for regular rock/pop/hiphop music.

I believe you are confusing 192kbit compression with 192 khz sampling rate. Not at all the same thing.
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