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24/192 music downloads make no sense

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Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#81

Post by aidenn0 »

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…

Better masters are the key difference. See for example [1]; everyone agreed that the DVD-A and SACDs sounded better when truncated to 16 bits then a printed CD.

1: http://drewdaniels.com/audible.pdf

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#82

Post by some-guy »

This article hits close to home: before I became a programmer I worked as an audio engineer at a fledgling studio in my hometown.

The amount of misinformation / junk-science in the audio world is preposterous. There's a religious-cult of an industry that feeds off the ignorance and placebos of its participants. I have many friends who swear by their What.cd 24/192 FLAC vinyl rips and spend hundreds of dollars on audiophile AC wall outlets. Not to say that there are no differences in high-end audio equipment, but so much of what's "good" is subjective.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#83

Post by rplst8 »

First, let me state that I believe that CD audio, played through a modern DAC and quality stereo equipment is pretty much the pinnacle of home audio listening. That is to say, I think 44.1kHz 16-bit PCM audio is plenty good and I'm in no rush to replace my CD collection, nor do I think significant investment in higher bandwidth audio (for playback, mixing and mastering are another story) buys you much.

That said, there's one thing the article does not address and that is "beating", or really inter-modulation distortion from instrumental overtones.

Instruments are not limited to 20-20kHz. They can have overtones well above this range. Additionally, note that short pulse-width signals, i.e. transients, like drum strikes, especially involving wooden percussion, can have infinite bandwidth. (Not really infinite, but pulse-width is inversely proportional to bandwidth.

In a real listening environment (i.e. live performance) these overtones have a chance to interact with one another in the air. It is possible that these overtones may beat with one another and cause inter-modulation products in the audible range. For an example of this, play a 1000 Hz tone through your left speaker, and a 1001 Hz through your right speaker. You will hear a distinct 1 Hz "beat". The audibility of these are largely dependent on listening position and amplitude, but it is possible to occur with instruments. Since most recordings are done using a "close mic" technique (placing the microphone very close to the source) the interactions such as this are never recorded.

However, if full bandwidth of the producing instruments is preserved, these interactions of the overtones can be reproduced in a playback environment given equipment having a wide enough bandwidth and degree of quality.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#84

Post by cynicalkane »

rplst8 wrote: post #83

First, let me state that I believe that CD audio, played through a modern DAC and quality stereo equipment is pretty much the pinnacle of home audio listening. That is to say, I think 44.1kHz 16-bit PCM audio is plenty good and I'm in no rush to replace my CD collection, nor do I think significant investment in higher bandwidth audio (for playback, mixing and mastering are another story) buys you much. That said, the…

Nope. Intermodulation distortion for out-of-range frequencies is inaudible. The 1hz beat you are hearing is not a 1hz sound wave, it's a 1000.5hz sound wave becoming louder and softer once per second.

The comparison of a 1hz beat to a 1hz sound should be absurd on its face: you need about 20-30hz to become audible, and it's a low rumble more felt than heard. Very low frequencies sound absolutely nothing like intermodulation beats.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#85

Post by Keyframe »

rplst8 wrote: post #83

First, let me state that I believe that CD audio, played through a modern DAC and quality stereo equipment is pretty much the pinnacle of home audio listening. That is to say, I think 44.1kHz 16-bit PCM audio is plenty good and I'm in no rush to replace my CD collection, nor do I think significant investment in higher bandwidth audio (for playback, mixing and mastering are another story) buys you much. That said, the…

Dumb question, but wouldn't you need to reproduce position of audio sources as well in order to replicate that?

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#86

Post by tonecluster »

cynicalkane wrote: post #84
rplst8 wrote: post #83

First, let me state that I believe that CD audio, played through a modern DAC and quality stereo equipment is pretty much the pinnacle of home audio listening. That is to say, I think 44.1kHz 16-bit PCM audio is plenty good and I'm in no rush to replace my CD collection, nor do I think significant investment in higher bandwidth audio (for playback, mixing and mastering are another story) buys you much. That said, the…

Nope. Intermodulation distortion for out-of-range frequencies is inaudible. The 1hz beat you are hearing is not a 1hz sound wave, it's a 1000.5hz sound wave becoming louder and softer once per second. The comparison of a 1hz beat to a 1hz sound should be absurd on its face: you need about 20-30hz to become audible, and it's a low rumble more felt than heard. Very low frequencies sound absolutely nothing like intermod…

"...and cause inter-modulation products in the audible range." AFAIK, this is true in acoustic environments under conditions as described in the original post.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#87

Post by radicalbyte »

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…

Cymbals are the biggest tell for compressed music. Even with crappy speakers they sound very strange.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#88

Post by kinghajj »

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.

I recall listening to a vinyl rip of Lady Gaga's first album, and found that "Pokerface" was much more enjoyable with the additional dynamic range. So I'm not sure if overcompression is necessary for newer songs, but rather that it's just what the mass market has become accustomed to because of the loudness war.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#89

Post by neltnerb »

JonnieCache wrote: post #78
sanoli wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> higher end DACs do sound better This hasn't passed the blind tests either. A good, 100 dollar dac (a schiit or an odac) will sound just as good as a 1000 dollar dac.

High er end DACs. My fireface 400 has many DACs in it and it cost £549 new when it came out, in 2007. It sounds obviously better than the ~£80 USB soundcards and various built-in DACs in laptops. I've done A/B testing. (I didn't buy it for the converters btw, I bought it for the features and the build quality, which are unmatched.) Forget about spending £1000s though. I'm sure that ODAC thing sounds better than the R…

Designing the circuitry around the DAC to provide ultra low noise reference voltages, to fully isolate ground loops, and provide a fully linear response (AC coupled, but linear in the relevant range) is not trivial even for 12-bits. It's not the hardest thing in the world, but lots of people do it wrong. Trivial sounding things like using a cheaper capacitor in the low pass filter or not finely regulating your power supply voltage can put audible noise onto things.

Worse of course if the sound card is integrated into a computer due to the opportunity to pick up much greater ambient RF noise from other components, although that is less of a problem now than it used to be back when I could hear my hard drive kicking up on my speakers...

In any event, I'd absolutely believe that the quality between a $100 DAC assembly and a $200 system is enough to be noticeable. More than that and I'm very skeptical. So I guess I don't really disagree with your statement, but I think that in current dollars $100 isn't necessarily enough to pay for solid underlying engineering and good components.

Re: 24/192 music downloads make no sense

#90

Post by derefr »

some-guy wrote: post #71
derefr wrote: post #50

So, no point in 24/192 because it makes no difference in playback... but having lossless downloads is important in part for enabling remix culture? There's a bit of a double-standard here. Maybe I can't hear 24/192 audio, but isn't it better input for sampling?

The article is specifying 24/192 as useless for playback quality only. Halfway down he addresses the benefits of 24/192 for the sake of mixing and mastering different digital audio signals, but a final mix offers no benefit to the human listener when choosing between 16bit/44Khz and 24bit/192Khz.

What I was trying to get across is: every file has two potential purposes—listening and serving as input for sampling. So, if we care about enabling "remix culture", wouldn't make sense to offer a "24/192 FLAC" option for download, push DVDA over CD, etc., anyway?

I've never seen the hype from artists about 24/192 as being about better listening experience. It's about handing their consumers a better master so as to encourage and enable more of them to be remixers.

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