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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.

#31

Post by cmer »

leif wrote: post #24
leephillips wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The linked article was accurate. You are confused. "I'm an ex-audio engineer" Hard to believe. "The distinct sound of the triangle constitutes of a high fundamental frequency, ballpark 10kHz" That's a pretty high note - higher than the top key on the piano. But an "audio engineer" would know that. "many very high-pitch harmonics" Since the next harmonic after the fundamental would be at 20khz, which only young people…

You clearly have little to no musical background, and think that your basic math skills are a substitute. The overtones present in a cymbal or triangle are not straight multiples of the fundamental, they are chaotic, and are very important in determining the timbre. Anyone (and I mean that) can easily tell the difference between a cymbal with and without a low-pass filter with the threshold around 22kHz, because thes…

This is a much more polite response than what I had in mind. Better this way I guess :)

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

#32

Post by hackermom »

There is no point with going over 16 bits, but there is definitely a point with going over 44.1khz, as it allows you to actually reproduce waveforms more accurately than 44.1khz. Try reproducing f.e. a sinewave accurately over 4-5khz with a sample rate of just 44.1khz - it cannot be done, and at this point we haven't even taken into account the issue of varying slew-rate characteristics of the thousands or so different DAC output stages in use in personal audio equipment.

44.1khz gives too much aliasing distortion, but 192khz is quite the overkill. Ideally, digital audio could sit on 16 bits of depth sampled at 96khz.

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

#33

Post by coopersloan »

masklinn wrote: post #23
coopersloan wrote: post #3

Huh, I think people truly advocating 192 as a distribution format will be few and far in between, a really good and cheaper sampling system can be put together at 96. Still, a lot of things in this article perplex me. Human hearing is limited to 20k because frequencies higher than that are perceived as painful? Dont agree with that one. 24 bit doesn't offer any advantages to sound quality? Sheesh. And the crux of the…

> Human hearing is limited to 20k because frequencies higher than that are perceived as painful? Dont agree with that one. You misread the article. It's because there is so little response that being able to hear it would blow your eardrums (and even then, it might still be beyond your ability to hear it). There's no value in that. > 24 bit doesn't offer any advantages to sound quality? Sheesh. Not quite what TFA say…

I can admit that I misread the article when it comes to hearing limits. I was reacting to my perception as an audio engineer that a lot of people dismiss the importance of that frequency range.

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

#34

Post by yzhou »

A person can not hear a 22kHz tone doesn't mean he can not hear a sound that contains 22kHz components. For example, a square wave contains lots of high frequency harmonics, the more higher frequency harmonics it have, the "squarer" the square wave gets. An ideal square wave forms ideal "0" "1" states. A person's ear might not be able to hear a 22Khz sine wave tone, but he might be able to sense the steepness of "0" "1" state.

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

#35

Post by astrange »

cmer wrote: post #19
nwhitehead wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The article doesn't suggest only using 48kHz for recording and mixing. I don't think the author would disagree that recording triangles is difficult. He would argue that once you've decided what final audible frequencies you want to present to the listener, the best way to distribute them is at 16-bit 44.1/48kHz. It's a compelling case.

I completely disagree with the article having heard the difference many times myself. You can't record at 192kHz and hope to keep the same quality by distributing the final mix in 44.1kHz. It just doesn't work that way.

Would you like to post double-blind test results?

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

#36

Post by nileshtrivedi »

What I would love to have is: independent instrument/vocals tracks along with a default recommended "mix". The default mix would be used for normal playback and independent tracks would be great for custom mix / karaoke etc.

Is this too unrealistic to expect? Has something like this been tried before?

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

#37

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#38

Post by ferongr »

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) DACs do not suffer from aliasing problems. Also see [1]

>That bit about intermodulation distortion is complete bogus. He talks about problems when resampling high-fs audio data.

I did not notice that in the article. It talks about IMD in the context of the analog chain and the transducers following the DAC, and it's possible that high frequencies can increase it.

[1] http://www.aes.org/e-lib/browse.cfm?elib=14195

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

#39

Post by hackermom »

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

No, the difference is not audible at all. At 16 bits of depth on a normal low-level audio signal (~0.3 volts), we're talking about less than 0.000005 volts per amplitude step. This difference gets lost in the THD already at the DAC in your audio output stage. Then it gets lost again in the amplifier. And again in the cable to your speakers or headphones. And then it gets lost again in the speaker elements. What survives in a normal low-level audio signal is about 14 bits of resolution.

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.

44.1khz IS a bad sampling rate for accurately reproducing anything except a triangle wave or square wave above 5khz.

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

#40

Post by Anechoic »

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…

humans are particularly sensitive to jitter.

Humans are sensitive to jitter, but jitter isn't a major problem with modern digital electronics and reclocking strategies. This ArsT thread hashed out these issues a couple of months ago: http://arstechnica.com/civis/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1164451...

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