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There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.
271–280 of 326 posts
Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
Note the lack of citation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtones I don't know about the physics of the speaker itself generating the overtone (in cabinet), but it could certainly resonate a wine glass in the room, for example.
Yes, overtones exist, and yes, overtones affect the sound, and yes, if you filtered the sound to remove overtones in the audible range then it would sound different. However, if you remove overtones outside the audible range then it will not make an audible difference (this is what xiphmont was saying in TFA).
So no, your wikipedia link is not a citation for the claim that cmer made.
Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Acoustic "beat tones" aren't "real" tones— you hear them because of non-linearies in the ear-brain system, but you have to hear the initial tones first. (Well, unless you're talking >>130dB SPL levels where the air starts becoming non-linear, but then lower frequency recording would capture it fine) If you could hear subharmonic beats from ultrasonics then it would be _very_ easy to demonstrate, alas.
Curious, what does non-linear mean in this context?
IIRC, linearity is when you put a sound wave frequency into the medium (air) a some point, you can predict the frequency of the sound wave at some other place using a linear function - meaning that there is no distortion. Non-linear is when the physics of the medium starts screwing with that function.
Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.
#274I 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. Yes. Do a couple of blind tests with your acoustic system first. > It's true enough that a properly encoded Ogg file (or MP3, or AAC file) will be indistinguishable from the original at a moderate bitrate. Disagree. This claim seems to be ungrounded compared with others. I can believe limitations with bit depth and sampling rate (…
There's a specific "bug" in the mp3 encoding scheme which means that you get a pre-echo effect on fast attack waveforms. It's inherent in the encoding, so it can't be eliminated (although the higher the bitrate, the less obvious it is IIRC). If you how know to listen out for it then you'll spot it immediately.
AAC / Ogg don't have that limitation & at high enough bitrate should be indistinguishable from the source in a blind listening test, as demonstrated in a number of Hydrogen Audio listening tests down the years, unless of course you're using crappy encoders at which point all bets are off...
(Really, LAME is very good indeed these days. I eventually decided that I was going to get with the program and just encode all my CDs (backed up to flac files) as mp3 for portable listening. It's good enough, and I've decided not to listen for the pre-echo artifacts so that I won't notice them :) )
Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Yes, there will be inter-modulations from higher frequencies. There are also from the audible spectrum but if the amp is linear enough they will be low.
Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.
#276In 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 ta…
Agreed, that market exists. My point is, why discuss the subtle difference between 16/44 vs 24/192 when there are far more audible and damaging practices going on in the music industry. For example, aggressive compression and brick limiting which adds distortion to achieve maximum loudness ('loudness wars').
Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.
#277I think this only applies to headphones. People also 'hear' sound with there body (skin). Maybe you could call it experiencing sound. And then there are resonating sounds that cannot be heard but help to create other sounds. But maybe this won't apply to a recording because your will record the result and not the tones that make the result. This is a great article but I'm still not convinced people cannot have a sens…
Never mind. I read 192kbps instead of 192kHz.
24 bit might have some advantages but 192kHz not.
Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.
#278Minor nitpick
> The FLAC file is also smaller than the WAV, and so a random corruption would be less likely because there's less data that could be affected.
At the same time, if you flip a bit on a WAV file, you may hear a "pop" sound. On a FLAC file, the whole encoding block may be inaudible (or worse).
Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.
#279Even 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 there's no point arguing against something that people will eat up regardless of evidence or fact,
why are you arguing against the conclusion of an article that has this many upvotes on HN?
Re: There is no point to distributing music in 24-bit/192kHz format.
#280I find mp3 and aac compression artifacts to be monstrously irritating. I have no idea how the majority of the world seemingly can ignore them.
Further, I can hear a difference between 44.1kHz and 96kHz. Whether you can hear that difference is up to you. (The word-length is a red herring - there's no new information contained in a 24-bit recording vs 16.)
IMO anything less than flac and you're missing something. Higher sampling frequencies do add to the sound, but in a way that is almost invisible to the untrained ear. Perhaps these should be distributed at a premium the way SACDs and similar "audiophile" formats were in the past?