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24/192 music downloads make no sense

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Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#61

Post by niels_olson »

ska wrote: post #55
earlz wrote: post #26

I can't hear a difference between 96khz/44khz in it's raw form. However, I can tell the difference from effects in audio mixing. The extra detail can really make a difference in how well an audio effect VST works. I have a 96khz/24bit interface that I use and ATH-M30X headphones, and I can tell a difference between at least some 24bit FLAC files and 16bit highest-quality-possible MP3s. I was mixing my own music and t…

The article is pretty clear about this too - higher bitdepths and sampling rates can be quite useful in mixing and recording situations. They're pointless for playback.

> higher bitdepths and sampling rates can be quite useful in mixing

That is really the central issue. It's much like imaging since the time of Ansel Adams: the sensor can capture more dynamic range than the human eye can experience. The producer may have use for that range when editing, but the audience will never know what was -- may have been -- missed. And we're not talking about limits of reproduction. We're talking about the human sensors both instantaneous and absolute upper and lower bounds.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#62

Post by yzhou »

yzhou wrote: post #58

There's a big difference in impulse response with different sample rates, any one can see it on a oscilloscope, I bet some one can hear the difference. Those who don't have a oscilloscope can see the picture here: http://i.imgur.com/wY0wzcW.png

The brick wall filters used on low sample rate sound cause ringing in the time domain, which can "blur" the neighboring impulse.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#63

Post by nosuchthing »

hammock wrote: post #29
hatsunearu wrote: post #10

The single worst thing that harms audio quality is excessive compression. It's ruining everything, I'd say. Heck, I'm sure everyone who knows their worth would agree that compression harms audio quality. Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war edit: compression as in dynamic range compression, not data compression like mp3 in audio

Dynamic range compression is an important part of the aesthetic of pop music today, like it or not. Pop hits don't sound the same without it. For this reason (unaffected by normalization on itunes/youtube) it will be slow to go away.

If you listen to pop recordings between 1950-1980, you'll notice there's more depth and character to every instrument.

Yes, dynamic range compression is currently used/abused extensively in pop music productions, but if mixes weren't compressed they would have a much wider range for the sounds to play around in.

  Not only is Justin Bieber's My World 2.0 louder than 
  Metallica's The Black Album, it's louder than The Sex 
  Pistols' Never Mind The Bollocks.
http://www.sonicstate.com/news/2011/02/21/why-is-justin-bieb...

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#64

Post by mmastrac »

earlz wrote: post #26

I can't hear a difference between 96khz/44khz in it's raw form. However, I can tell the difference from effects in audio mixing. The extra detail can really make a difference in how well an audio effect VST works. I have a 96khz/24bit interface that I use and ATH-M30X headphones, and I can tell a difference between at least some 24bit FLAC files and 16bit highest-quality-possible MP3s. I was mixing my own music and t…

MP3's perceptual model can still throw away information at the highest quality settings. FLAC doesn't throw away anything.

It's possible you are just hearing the difference between codecs. You'd have a fairer comparison with 24-bit vs 16-bit FLAC.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#65

Post by earlz »

pizza234 wrote: post #43
earlz wrote: post #26

I can't hear a difference between 96khz/44khz in it's raw form. However, I can tell the difference from effects in audio mixing. The extra detail can really make a difference in how well an audio effect VST works. I have a 96khz/24bit interface that I use and ATH-M30X headphones, and I can tell a difference between at least some 24bit FLAC files and 16bit highest-quality-possible MP3s. I was mixing my own music and t…

Compressed formats are not really relevant to considerations about the bit depth itself. Besides, mp3 [audio] compressions have difficulty in handling specific samples, or type of samples (eg. sharp attacks), and they may manifest artifacts independently of the bitrate; MP3, AFAIK, also has a ceiling of 320 kbps within the standard specification, which certainly doesn't help. Secondly, I'm not sure if you process fur…

I mean, I'm just some hobbyist, but my understanding is everyone renders to lossless and then converts that to the various MP3/AAC formats, never changing anything solely because of the final compressed format.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#66

Post by [deleted] »

muraiki wrote: post #12
hatsunearu wrote: post #10

The single worst thing that harms audio quality is excessive compression. It's ruining everything, I'd say. Heck, I'm sure everyone who knows their worth would agree that compression harms audio quality. Recommended reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loudness_war edit: compression as in dynamic range compression, not data compression like mp3 in audio

Reading "compression" as both a programmer and audio-minded person made that first sentence difficult to parse at first. :) But yeah, it's obvious when I have my car stereo nearly on max to listen to classical or jazz, and then if I turn the radio and get a pop music station my ears are about to explode.

[deleted]

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#67

Post by justin66 »

andy_ppp wrote: post #5

Why do high quality DACs clearly sound better then? And they sound better with better files. Maybe it really is all in my head but I mean listening to a £20000 hifi the other day (vinyl) really just shocked me. I was listening to Marvin Gaye on my friends system and I could hear that there were several different backing singers all moving and at different distances from the microphone. Are there any double blind tria…

See listening tests section of TFA:http://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html#toc_lt

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#68

Post by ChuckMcM »

I have a pair of Roger Sound Labs studio monitors for my speakers at home. I got to look at their insides when a technician was replacing a blown midrange speaker (they have a "lifetime" warranty, however that warranty expired when RSL did). Looking at the cross over filter network I could see a network selecting for frequencies > 20khz and it was shunted to a resistor. I asked about it, and the reponse was exactly like the authors, by filtering out signals higher than the tweeter could reproduce, they improved the listening experience.

It made sense to me, and I love how the speakers sound. Understanding is not inserting distortion makes even more sense.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#69

Post by yzhou »

yzhou wrote: post #58

There's a big difference in impulse response with different sample rates, any one can see it on a oscilloscope, I bet some one can hear the difference. Those who don't have a oscilloscope can see the picture here: http://i.imgur.com/wY0wzcW.png

In the real world, it is almost impossible to make a voltage divider with 24bit resolution. So all the DAC makers have to convert 24bit audio into lower bits(6bits to 1bits), this step requires oversampling the original audio. It is a lot easier to oversample a 192KHz/24bit audio than a 44.1K/24bit audio, and the ringing is much less after oversampling the 192KHz/24bit audio.
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