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

Post by escapecharacter » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 1:32 AM UTC

diminish wrote: post #19

teknico wrote: post #10

Already discussed. Main posts: [2012] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3668310 [2014] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8689231 [2015] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10520639 [2017] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15127633

It's a very good article which shows up again and again. Think it's 2040, singularity reached. AI runs the world and on HN we have this article popping up very frequently like every hundred Planck time unit .

Post by sjwright » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 2:02 AM UTC

magduf wrote: post #112

shams93 wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly if it’s mastered wrong the nitrate has nothing to do with the issue this music would sound just as awful cut to vinyl from a bad master. Now you just can’t hear beyond 22050 so 192 is insanely wasteful. But poor mastering is absolutely the core issue not encoding algorithms

Actually, no, it might sound better cut to vinyl. Remember, vinyl doesn't have the frequency range or dynamic range that digital audio does, and it has to be mastered using the RIAA Curve because of the properties of the medium. One factor here is that the stereo separation on vinyl can't be too large, or else the needle will literally jump out of the groove! In short, you can't just take CD music (no matter how well…

Post by sjwright » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 2:12 AM UTC

meatmanek wrote: post #262

penagwin wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I personally read the article to be addressing 192 kHz as a consumer of the music, I have a feeling for those producing (or mixing, etc.) it's a bit different. It's kinda like how there's advantages of recording at 8k, better cropping, supersampling, etc. But for the average consumer there's no perceivable difference between the pixel density of 8k footage and 1080p footage on their 7" screen anyway.

Yeah, the author is not arguing against using 24 bits when recording, just when distributing to end users. If the producer is planning to slow down the audio (and wants the ultrasonic components to become audible), then recording at higher sample rates makes sense, and the author doesn't address this; probably this is pretty rare in practice. You'd also need ultrasonic-capable microphones. The much more common operat…

Post by xkcd-sucks » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 2:15 AM UTC

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…

Post by sjwright » Thu, Mar 07, 2019, 2:22 AM UTC

vortico wrote: post #45

aidenn0 wrote: post #36

The only rebuttal to this that I have found compelling is that 24/192 downloads make sense if you are going to sample the music in your own creations. Recording and mixing with extra dynamic range, combined with only needing to low-pass once at the end has demonstrable advantages. Of course this was a response to marketing that was definitely not targeted at samplers, so it's not so much of a rebuttal as arguing at c…

Yes, adding any sort of nonlinear distortion to audio will make frequencies depend on other frequencies, i.e. audible frequencies in the output of an effect can depend on supersonic frequencies in its input. For example, if you add a 100 kHz sine wave through a high-gain guitar amplifier, you'll definitely be able to hear it. I didn't really see a mention of this point in the article since there was no "So when do yo…