Why 24/192 is a bad idea?

[Lee]

Amir,

I would also add that smaller files seems to be contradicted by ever cheaper digital storage.

But more importantly if one wants the best, one should as you suggest capture the highest resolution possible and then apply downrez as needed for portable devices, less-quality oriented download sites, and the like.

I'm doing hirez needledrops that sound fantastic using hirez ADC and a Sound Devices for storage. Here is photo of my rig.

 

[Lee]

Then you need a better DAC/CDP!

No, the extra musical information adds value. And we have replicated these results with a variety of gear from Benchmark to Korg to the Sound Devices we use.

 

[amirm]

Amir,

I would also add that smaller files seems to be contradicted by ever cheaper digital storage.

But more importantly if one wants the best, one should as you suggest capture the highest resolution possible and then apply downrez as needed for portable devices, less-quality oriented download sites, and the like.

That is the beauty of this situation. By some miracle of nature, music owners have decided to release their bits without copy protection. This means that as you say, we can transform their fidelity/size as needed to adapt to our needs. I do as you say in having my music at home in lossless. My car plays music from thumbdrives but won't play lossless so I put high rate lossy on that.

I'm doing hirez needledrops that sound fantastic using hirez ADC and a Sound Devices for storage. Here is photo of my rig.

Looks pretty just sitting there.

 

[Lee]

...instead of something much more measured and conservative about an audible difference, that in all of this listening, you knew exactly when you were and were not listening to what resolution. And frankly, if you say otherwise you'll just become less credible. Are there audible differences between 16/44.1 and hi res formats? Possibly. Is there the kind of drama you describe above? Absolutely not.

Well you can disagree but the violin tone is spot on with hirez and not good at all on 16/44. I'm simply giving an honest accounting of what I hear.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

I'm guessing that because you said this....



...instead of something much more measured and conservative about an audible difference, that in all of this listening, you knew exactly when you were and were not listening to what resolution. And frankly, if you say otherwise you'll just become less credible. Are there audible differences between 16/44.1 and hi res formats? Possibly. Is there the kind of drama you describe above? Absolutely not.

Tim

This was very cranky. My apologies.

Tim

 

[Lee]

Looks pretty just sitting there.

Nick and I had great fun Sunday. We needledropped the new Paul Simon Graceland album, a Traffic Mr. Fantasy on German Island pressing, and Count Basie's Chairman of the Board, 180 gram on Classic Records.

 

[Lee]

This was very cranky. My apologies.

Tim

No problem.

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I'm guessing that because you said this....



...instead of something much more measured and conservative about an audible difference, that in all of this listening, you knew exactly when you were and were not listening to what resolution. And frankly, if you say otherwise you'll just become less credible. Are there audible differences between 16/44.1 and hi res formats? Possibly. Is there the kind of drama you describe above? Absolutely not.

Tim

while i agree generally with Lee that higher bit depth and sampling rates generally/reliably sound better in various ways; 44.1/16 or even 48/16 can sound very good and it's hard to tell what depth/rate you are listening to cold. top level dacs these days do a wonderful job with Redbook. to me the sonic result always has more to do with things other than the actual PCM bit depth/sampling rate.

yes; "when all other things are equal" then bit depth and sample rate matter. and i seem to listen to PCM for longer periods when i am listening to hirez on my server than redbook. it's simply more involving. but obviously that is a very subjective thing. of course, musical enjoyment is all i care about.

OTOH dsd where the native source was analog, is relatively easy to identify cold...although not 100%.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

while i agree generally with Lee that higher bit depth and sampling rates generally/reliably sound better in various ways; 44.1/16 or even 48/16 can sound very good and it's hard to tell what depth/rate you are listening to cold. top level dacs these days do a wonderful job with Redbook. to me the sonic result always has more to do with things other than the actual PCM bit depth/sampling rate.

yes; "when all other things are equal" then bit depth and sample rate matter. and i seem to listen to PCM for longer periods when i am listening to hirez on my server than redbook. it's simply more involving. but obviously that is a very subjective thing. of course, musical enjoyment is all i care about.

OTOH dsd where the native source was analog, is relatively easy to identify cold...although not 100%.

One man's opinion -- I think everything -- format, resolution, to a point, even gear -- comes in way behind the quality of the recording and mastering. I recommended Jorma Kaukonen's Blue Country Heart the other day. I believe that's a digital recording, but it is so good I'll bet it would even sound good transferred to analog .

Tim

 

[Mike Lavigne]

One man's opinion -- I think everything -- format, resolution, to a point, even gear -- comes in way behind the quality of the recording and mastering. I recommended Jorma Kaukonen's Blue Country Heart the other day. I believe that's a digital recording, but it is so good I'll bet it would even sound good transferred to analog .

Tim

i agree that the 'music' trumps the technology. by music i mean the basics of the recording.

my recollection of top down listening to 8-Tracks in my MGB doing the coast highway during spring break in 1970 simply cannot be beat. the fidelity was almost non-existant. the musical involvement intoxicating.

even back then, no doubt my dorm room system sounded way better, and i did enjoy that in a different way.

i have the Jorma Kaukonen 'Blue Country Heart' sacd. when i had my sacd multi-channel set-up 6 years ago, that was about my favorite multi-channel sacd. wonderful music beautifully recorded....and it really was perfect in multichannel. if they would all have been like that i'd still have multichannel.

 

[Ronm1]

I recommended Jorma Kaukonen's Blue Country Heart the other day.

Tim

Fine sounding disc.

 

[Phelonious Ponk]

i agree that the 'music' trumps the technology. by music i mean the basics of the recording.

my recollection of top down listening to 8-Tracks in my MGB doing the coast highway during spring break in 1970 simply cannot be beat. the fidelity was almost non-existant. the musical involvement intoxicating.

even back then, no doubt my dorm room system sounded way better, and i did enjoy that in a different way.

i have the Jorma Kaukonen 'Blue Country Heart' sacd. when i had my sacd multi-channel set-up 6 years ago, that was about my favorite multi-channel sacd. wonderful music beautifully recorded....and it really was perfect in multichannel. if they would all have been like that i'd still have multichannel.

I've never heard it in multi-channel. Is the band playing in the round? I've heard quite a bit of multi-channel SACD. To my mind, that's the lost opportunity of SACD. Unfortunately, most of the examples out there are about as subtle as quadrophonic -- "Doooood!! The cowbell is over my left shoulder! How cool is that?!?"

If someone had, instead, mined 50 year of the best live and "live in studio" recordings and used multi-channel to create the kind of 3D ambience that we can only imagine we hear from 2-channel, and SACD would be incredibly valuable, and I'd have multi channel myself.

And it wouldn't take much: Put me in the studio with the Miles Davis Quintet during the Prestige Sessions. Put me in the Filmore with The Allman Brothers. I'd spend money like a man who has got it.

Tim

 

[xiphmont]

That is the beauty of this situation.

The beauty of being continuously offtopic, and encouraging those who agree with you to go offtopic, when those who disagree are being warned for doing the same.

The rig is very pretty indeed... and has nothing to do with this thread.

At this point, I don't see why I have any obligation to respect the moderator's warnings. Ban me if you like. [And no, that does not mean I will be flouting the 'rules' just to do so.]

 

[Ethan Winer]

I was unsure about a specific aspect of truncated (ie, non dithered) quantization noise in general.

Ah, gotcha. Yes, I used dither when I reduced the bit depth from 16 to 8, as is standard practice. I'm not convinced dither matters much when going from 24 bit down to 16, but it surely is important when reducing down to 8!

I made those files in Sound Forge, and I used their Triangular dither with High-pass Contour.

--Ethan

 

[xiphmont]

Ah, gotcha. Yes, I used dither when I reduced the bit depth from 16 to 8, as is standard practice. I'm not convinced dither matters much when going from 24 bit down to 16, but it surely is important when reducing down to 8!
I made those files in Sound Forge, and I used their Triangular dither with High-pass Contour.

--Ethan

Thanks, that explains one surprise. Now I just need to explain to myself the other surprise in the data DonH50 showed from the other thread (writing some code now). I have no reason to suspect his data is off, but the first step is reproducing the results...

 

[Ethan Winer]

I should have offered this before: I'll be glad to upload original and bit-reduced files if that makes things easier for anyone.

--Ethan

 

[Mike Lavigne]

I've never heard it in multi-channel. Is the band playing in the round? I've heard quite a bit of multi-channel SACD. To my mind, that's the lost opportunity of SACD. Unfortunately, most of the examples out there are about as subtle as quadrophonic -- "Doooood!! The cowbell is over my left shoulder! How cool is that?!?"

'Blue Country Heart' lays out as if you are row C or D center stage, with great width, depth and height. it sounded like a small hall or club. (i'm sure it's a studio recording; but just trying to explain the perspective). it sounded real. i have not heard it in multi-channel for 6 years, and not listened to it for 6 months or so, and i'm at work. so my memory is too sketchy to get very specific. other than there is only ambience behind you and the musical energy was exceptional.

]If someone had, instead, mined 50 year of the best live and "live in studio" recordings and used multi-channel to create the kind of 3D ambience that we can only imagine we hear from 2-channel, and SACD would be incredibly valuable, and I'd have multi channel myself.

And it wouldn't take much: Put me in the studio with the Miles Davis Quintet during the Prestige Sessions. Put me in the Filmore with The Allman Brothers. I'd spend money like a man who has got it.

Tim

Tim,

what you are asking for is good vinyl. i kicked out multichannel because my vinyl did the things multichannel was supposed to do....but better. and i had much more software. all the music i loved was already on vinyl.

take those Miles Davis Presitge recordings. they are mono recordings. but with the right mono cartridge they come alive and exist in space. in fact a point can be made that they are better than stereo. with that set i get lost in the music.....totally involved.

i pursued multichannel back then because it made sense logically that it could be better. but reality reared it's ugly head and clearly told me that the whole recording process got worse the more varibles you introduced. maybe just a lack of talent in the mixing room or even lack of artistic vision. it was not the technology that failed, it was the implementation.

if i had not owned high level vinyl for direct comparison maybe i would have kept the multi-channel.

show me any multi-channel digital, and i'll play my Miles Davis Presitge mono 45's. one is right, one is not.

YMMV, just my 2 cents, and all that.

 

[DonH50]

A DC offset is unconditional and can easily be disqualified as being dither. Rounding is conditional and just may be random and uncorrelated enough to count as dither.

I did not follow this, sorry...

Noise decorrelation (dither) adds random noise to the signal, typically (not always) at the lsb level, and was originally added to help mask the correlated quantization noise floor and make it sound more "analog". (I won't get into its use in other systems like radar/lidar and various telcomm.) For delta-sigma converters, particularly the early low-order designs, it also helps prevent tones induced by the digital filters when sampling d.c. or near-d.c. signals.

In my mind, the situation is opposite what you stated, so I must be off-base. D.c. is the opposite of dither since it is non-random by definition, and rounding has nothing to do with dither (again opposite since rounding correlates the lsbs better to the bit reduction), and truncation adds distortion since lsb information is lost. I suppose dither might help truncation errors by decorrelating them, that would make sense. My models start ideal and then I add artifacts as required (dither, jitter, threshold errors, etc.) For the issue I was looking at in the other thread I did not want dither.

 

[xiphmont]

I did not follow this, sorry...

Yeah, I didn't get that either.

and was originally added to help mask the correlated quantization noise floor and make it sound more "analog".

It doesn't mask it, it actually decorrelates it. The distortion peaks eliminated by dither sit well above the dither level.

BTW, is there anything special about your simulated DACs that I should know about (they look like a tone + white noise) or your quantization process? I am able to replictate the simulated DACs easily. So far I'm seeing the behavior I expected: truncation acts like rounding with a DC offset. Also, both your 24->16 conversions show background white noise levels much higher than expected at ~ -130dBFS. Was more white noise injected?

Of course, I'm still looking for any bugs that might be mine. I can up some graphs/test data if you like.

 

[NorthStar]

The beauty of being continuously offtopic, and encouraging those who agree with you to go offtopic, when those who disagree are being warned for doing the same.

The rig is very pretty indeed... and has nothing to do with this thread.

At this point, I don't see why I have any obligation to respect the moderator's warnings.
Ban me if you like. [And no, that does not mean I will be flouting the 'rules' just to do so.]

That would be very unwise IMO.

* Sorry for the short off topic comment,
but your several posts from this thread are greatly appreciated on a high level.