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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.

#291

Post by sjwright »

Derbasti wrote: post #237
Anechoic wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

44100 is not a bad sampling rate, but it necessitates very sharp aliasing filters, When you're talking about recording , sure, but in terms of storage and playback, we solved that problem 20 years ago with oversampling.

You will still need a aliasing filter that cuts off between, say, 18 and 22.5 kHz to avoid aliasing noise. That is one sharp filter no matter how you look at it. You can use a high quality, long, linear-phase FIR filter, but you can't cheat physics: sharp filters necesserily introduce distortion, and such a sharp filter so close to the hearing threshold does not go unnoticed.

I don't see how a sharp filter could be needed if the DAC is oversampling.

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

#292

Post by kahawe »

davedx wrote: post #247
icarus_drowning wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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

But in reality most of your customers want a ton-frakk of compression, loudness and filters on that catchy tune so it ultimately sounds HUGE on the tiniest phone, radio and car speakers... so all that audiophile mixing and dynamics are completely lost anyway.

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

#293

Post by kahawe »

b0rsuk wrote: post #290
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…

We have a lot in common. It is said that in most cases 192 kbit .mp3 is indistinguishable from >192, and blind tests support that. Granted, there are instruments like castanets which make it easier to hear the difference. In general though, I can't distinguish 128 from 192 and I listen to music a lot . Also it's unlikely that my hearing is already damaged because I try to keep volume low. But I've noticed that where…

This effect isn't sooo surprising seeing as it even occurs with dumb mono guitar cab speakers and is very, very, VERY clearly audible there, even just moving your head a few cm in or out of the cones' axis.

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

#294

Post by rdtsc »

davesims wrote: post #245
rdtsc wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

And you cannot tell the difference. The reason to record using 24 bits is so you don't have to be as precise centering the recording level. If that level is centered then you can capture fine with 16 bits (by the way that is also explained in the article).

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

#295

Post by gbog »

Anechoic wrote: post #121
brigade wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd disagree, at least among the people I know: they all have cheap HTIB systems and the single biggest, most cost-effective improvement you can make from there is to buy better speakers. Then you can worry about your room.

No, even in that case, the room can still overpower the speaker. A $200 HTIB system in a properly treated room will sound a lot better than $28,000 Wilson Watt Puppies in a bathroom for example.

Hum, my experience (I was sound engineer in a previous life) is that the first thing to fix bad sound is to flatten the equalizer and to remove bass enhancer. Then I'd put the speakers on a solid table in a relative symmetry regarding the listener, while checking they have the correct phase. All the rest is rarely necessary.

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

#296

Post by gbog »

nitrogen wrote: post #160
brigade wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd disagree, at least among the people I know: they all have cheap HTIB systems and the single biggest, most cost-effective improvement you can make from there is to buy better speakers. Then you can worry about your room.

You might be surprised how much of a difference EQ can make. As an experiment I once used 12 bands of parametric EQ to adjust the speakers in a cheap, old LCD monitor. Sure, you're not going to get any better bass response than before, but stereo imaging (nonexistent before EQ, perfect phantom localization after), spectral balance, clarity, distortion (due to not exciting resonances in the monitor), etc. were signifi…

Of course EQ can help with room reflection! In a square room you'll have a resonance at a given frequency, and you can mitigate a bit this problem with an EQ. But usually EQs are used too add bass and do more harm than good.

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

#297

Post by leephillips »

cynicalkane wrote: post #137
Anechoic wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harmonics in real-world instruments are not usually exact multiples of the fundamental. A simple diffeq model of a rigid oscillator will show you this mathematically. That is absolutely incorrect, mathematically speaking, harmonics are by definition "integral multiples of the fundamental." (Fundamentals of Acoustics, Kinsler & Frey).

Then one would be forced to conclude that many instruments have no harmonics at all, which is obviously not what 'harmonic' is referring to in this thread of discussion. Why be pedantic when it's obvious what everyone is talking about? Anyway, it's not as though mathematical literature requires you to use a term exactly one way. I had a diff eqs textbook that used the word 'harmonic' in exactly the way I used it abov…

> I had a diff eqs textbook that used the word 'harmonic' in exactly the [incorrect] way I used it above

So you had a textbook with a mistake in it. What book was it?

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

#298

Post by gbog »

marcusf wrote: post #251
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).

Yeah I get that I'm getting older. It's just, what's the point of having a stereo that gives perfect playback at 22 kHz if you can't hear it? I'm guessing there must be something since people buy gear like that, or is just a case of deranged audiophiles?

You might not hear a pure 22kHz sine but any sound from, say, a harpsichord will have much off these highs, and some think it is a part off the sound, that one feel without actually hearing it. I'm not endorsing this view, sound islike wine tasting, a lot of hand waving and few solid ground.

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

#299

Post by cbr »

goblin89 wrote: post #288
pja wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well, actually it was that long cymbal sounds “fade” quicker and just sound different with lossy music. IIRC I distinguished an mp3 encoded by iTunes with bit rate 192 or 256 kbps from its original in Apple Lossless (both played on same cheap acoustic system). I probably should test with AAC or Ogg, too. Although I have a feeling that it's pretty much impossible to keep intact those rich in high frequencies cymbals w…

"I distinguished"

Was this in a blind test?

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