Do we really need anything greater than 24/96? Opinions?
Plus, I really think the recording (studio-mastering) means more to sound quality than the actual output format/resolution. I've heard excellent recorded/mastered recordings sound killer on iTunes streaming and CD.
Opinions?
Showing 16 responses by pirad
https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html 44.1/16 is enough for any stage in the signal chain, even more so at the playback. Some oversampling at the mastering/AD/DA conversion -sure. 24 bit is because of lazy/sloppy engineers. Good recording/mastering is key. The above article by good old Monty still holds. Human ears and the the sampling theorem haven’t evolved over the past couple of years. |
Indeed there are numerous problems with this AES paper and one of them is raised in the discussion: how can one train for unknown causes? The author’s answer is not convincing to me. https://secure.aes.org/forum/pubs/journal/?ID=591 Metaresearch can also be burdened with a publication bias; the positive verifications of a hypothesis are more likely to be published than the negative ones. The author writes "The effect is perhaps small and difficult to detect". In the statistical analysis the bias can easily outweigh such observations. Finally, the microscopical population that can hear slightly above 20khz (most adults cannot above 16kHz) is easily served by the Nyquist limit of 22,05 kHz. Anything higher can exacerbate the ultrasonics intermodulation. If reason ruled, all cars should have a factory speed limit of 70mph. But this would impinge on personal liberties, right? Fortunately, in audiophile audio there is no collateral damage, other than that to the wallet and to the ears of an odd dog. |
www.2l.no has plenty of free hires and redbook samples of all kinds. It also shows the source format, almost all studio DXD. It is easy to compare the same piece of music at all sampling/bit rates. Ask somebody to assign new ABX file names (do not check file sizes) and play them as long as you like- blindly. Note your ABX test choices. This double blind self-test will tell you the truth. About the hires and/or about yourself. |
"We are probing the future generations. Unfortunately, but a lot of them have no real future. " Right, so you are AI from the future and you were after probing your future generations, so you are simply lost in time! This is 2019, and we are your past generations! So nothing is lost, just reset your PlanckTime clock and go back to the future. Or to the future past your future. Then you can fix the generations for their future future past your future. |
We've discussed the frequency range of the ear, but what about the dynamic range from the softest possible sound to the loudest possible sound? One way to define absolute dynamic range would be to look again at the absolute threshold of hearing and threshold of pain curves. The distance between the highest point on the threshold of pain curve and the lowest point on the absolute threshold of hearing curve is about 140 decibels for a young, healthy listener. That wouldn't last long though; +130dB is loud enough to damage hearing permanently in seconds to minutes. For reference purposes, a jackhammer at one meter is only about 100-110dB. The absolute threshold of hearing increases with age and hearing loss. Interestingly, the threshold of pain decreases with age rather than increasing. The hair cells of the cochlea themselves posses only a fraction of the ear's 140dB range; musculature in the ear continuously adjust the amount of sound reaching the cochlea by shifting the ossicles, much as the iris regulates the amount of light entering the eye [9]. This mechanism stiffens with age, limiting the ear's dynamic range and reducing the effectiveness of its protection mechanisms [10]. Environmental noiseFew people realize how quiet the absolute threshold of hearing really is. The very quietest perceptible sound is about -8dbSPL [11]. Using an A-weighted scale, the hum from a 100 watt incandescent light bulb one meter away is about 10dBSPL, so about 18dB louder. The bulb will be much louder on a dimmer. 20dBSPL (or 28dB louder than the quietest audible sound) is often quoted for an empty broadcasting/recording studio or sound isolation room. This is the baseline for an exceptionally quiet environment, and one reason you've probably never noticed hearing a light bulb. The dynamic range of 16 bits16 bit linear PCM has a dynamic range of 96dB according to the most common definition, which calculates dynamic range as (6*bits)dB. Many believe that 16 bit audio cannot represent arbitrary sounds quieter than -96dB. This is incorrect. I have linked to two 16 bit audio files here; one contains a 1kHz tone at 0 dB (where 0dB is the loudest possible tone) and the other a 1kHz tone at -105dB.
Above: Spectral analysis of a -105dB tone encoded as 16 bit / 48kHz PCM. 16 bit PCM is clearly deeper than 96dB, else a -105dB tone could not be represented, nor would it be audible. How is it possible to encode this signal, encode it with no distortion, and encode it well above the noise floor, when its peak amplitude is one third of a bit? Part of this puzzle is solved by proper dither, which renders quantization noise independent of the input signal. By implication, this means that dithered quantization introduces no distortion, just uncorrelated noise. That in turn implies that we can encode signals of arbitrary depth, even those with peak amplitudes much smaller than one bit [12]. However, dither doesn't change the fact that once a signal sinks below the noise floor, it should effectively disappear. How is the -105dB tone still clearly audible above a -96dB noise floor? The answer: Our -96dB noise floor figure is effectively wrong; we're using an inappropriate definition of dynamic range. (6*bits)dB gives us the RMS noise of the entire broadband signal, but each hair cell in the ear is sensitive to only a narrow fraction of the total bandwidth. As each hair cell hears only a fraction of the total noise floor energy, the noise floor at that hair cell will be much lower than the broadband figure of -96dB. Thus, 16 bit audio can go considerably deeper than 96dB. With use of shaped dither, which moves quantization noise energy into frequencies where it's harder to hear, the effective dynamic range of 16 bit audio reaches 120dB in practice [13], more than fifteen times deeper than the 96dB claim. 120dB is greater than the difference between a mosquito somewhere in the same room and a jackhammer a foot away.... or the difference between a deserted 'soundproof' room and a sound loud enough to cause hearing damage in seconds. 16 bits is enough to store all we can hear, and will be enough forever. Signal-to-noise ratioIt's worth mentioning briefly that the ear's S/N ratio is smaller than its absolute dynamic range. Within a given critical band, typical S/N is estimated to only be about 30dB. Relative S/N does not reach the full dynamic range even when considering widely spaced bands. This assures that linear 16 bit PCM offers higher resolution than is actually required. It is also worth mentioning that increasing the bit depth of the audio representation from 16 to 24 bits does not increase the perceptible resolution or 'fineness' of the audio. It only increases the dynamic range, the range between the softest possible and the loudest possible sound, by lowering the noise floor. However, a 16-bit noise floor is already below what we can hear. When does 24 bit matter?Professionals use 24 bit samples in recording and production [14] for headroom, noise floor, and convenience reasons. 16 bits is enough to span the real hearing range with room to spare. It does not span the entire possible signal range of audio equipment. The primary reason to use 24 bits when recording is to prevent mistakes; rather than being careful to center 16 bit recording-- risking clipping if you guess too high and adding noise if you guess too low-- 24 bits allows an operator to set an approximate level and not worry too much about it. Missing the optimal gain setting by a few bits has no consequences, and effects that dynamically compress the recorded range have a deep floor to work with. An engineer also requires more than 16 bits during mixing and mastering. Modern work flows may involve literally thousands of effects and operations. The quantization noise and noise floor of a 16 bit sample may be undetectable during playback, but multiplying that noise by a few thousand times eventually becomes noticeable. 24 bits keeps the accumulated noise at a very low level. Once the music is ready to distribute, there's no reason to keep more than 16 bits. https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html |
This one dedicated to the Guy From the Future (GFF) who doesn't understand our technology and believes that vinyl has an intrinsically better dynamic range. "A related myth is that when vinyl has a higher dynamic range than CD, it means the audio was sourced from a different, more dynamic master, and that the difference in dynamics will be audible. It is true that recordings on vinyl sometimes have a spikier waveform and a measurably higher dynamic range than their counterparts on CD, at least when the dynamic range is reported by crude "DR meter" tools that compare peak and RMS levels. The higher "DR value" could indeed be a result of entirely different master recordings being provided to the mastering engineers for each format, or different choices made by the engineers, as happens every time old music is remastered for a new release. But even when the same source master is used, the audio is normally further processed when mastering for the target format (be it CD or vinyl), and this often results in vinyl having a spikier waveform and higher DR measurement. There are two types of processing during vinyl mastering that can increase the DR measurements and waveform spikiness, thus reducing the RMS and increasing the basic DR measurement by perhaps several dB:
It is quite possible that these changes are entirely inaudible, despite their effect on the waveform shape and DR measurement. The dynamic range of the waveform is also affected by the vinyl playback system; different systems provide different frequency responses. Factors include cartridge, tonearm, preamp, and even the connecting cables. A vinyl rip with weak bass may well have a higher reported DR value than a rip of the same vinyl on equipment with a stronger bass response." https://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Myths_(Vinyl) |
https://www.edn.com/electronics-blogs/audio-designline-blog/4206458/Why-is-NASA-audio-so-bad- Of course there are. They read diyaudio an audiogon and pressed the agency for changes since that article above. |
Joke or no joke, Messieurs Nyquist, Shannon and Monty comment like this: The most common misconception is that sampling is fundamentally rough and lossy. A sampled signal is often depicted as a jagged, hard-cornered stair-step facsimile of the original perfectly smooth waveform. If this is how you envision sampling working, you may believe that the faster the sampling rate (and more bits per sample), the finer the stair-step and the closer the approximation will be. The digital signal would sound closer and closer to the original analog signal as sampling rate approaches infinity.However, the truth is: All signals with content entirely below the Nyquist frequency (half the sampling rate) are captured perfectly and completely by sampling; an infinite sampling rate is not required. Sampling doesn’t affect frequency response or phase. The analog signal can be reconstructed losslessly, smoothly, and with the exact timing of the original analog signal. |
I think wire directionality is key. It influences the entropy of the data and can easily corrupt it. That's why NASA orders expensive directional cables for their infrastructure. Also power cords are important. Get the best possible, cannot be too thin: https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/super-cable-2.jpg The fuses- books can be written about them. Gold reference fuses are the minimum. The least important is the room acoustics, this can be easily improved with the carpet in front of the speakers. |