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I'd much rather a good quality production and master of a 24-bit 96kHz album, than a 24-bit 192kHz album of poor quality. Shame someone decided it was easier to sell numbers than improved quality. I would've preferred the better quality no matter what numbers were associated with the file. Maybe that's a giveaway when thinking about the relevant skills within the industry. To fall back on the public's lack of knowledge seems a bit defeatist and insecure to me. That said, I guess we do tend to believe anything we're told and spend our money accordingly. Fortunately, I have such appalling taste in music none of this probably matters a great deal anyway. |
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On Wed, 15 Jul 2015 20:56:38 +0200, John R Leddy wrote:
'Jim Lesurf[_2_ Wrote: ;94195']FWIW I've never felt that going as far as 192k/24 made much sense for home replay. 96k/24 seems a convenient 'compromise' to me given the use of decent replay equipment. But YMMV. It is perhaps worth pointing out to people that if you covert to flac you will usually find that the resulting 96k/24 file is *not* twice as big as a 48k/24 flac from the same source. In general there isn't a lot in the ultrasonic region, and the flac compression can take advantage of this. The main difference tends to be that there are more bits devoted to 'noise' in 24bit than 16bit. And flac will faithfully keep those details. I can't bring myself to allocate over a gigabyte of storage space to a single-CD album. 24-bit 96kHz albums seem to average just under a gigabyte which suits me fine. This aspect, and the fact I was willing to convert my 24-bit 192kHz files to 24-bit 96kHz, allowed me to change my first 24-bit 192kHz network audio player for one which has a maximum 24-bit 96kHz playback. Truth be told, until participating in this thread, I would've quite happily converted my files to 16-bit 48kHz if I had to and not thought any more about it. I'd much rather a good quality production and master of a 24-bit 96kHz album, than a 24-bit 192kHz album of poor quality. Shame someone decided it was easier to sell numbers than improved quality. I would've preferred the better quality no matter what numbers were associated with the file. Maybe that's a giveaway when thinking about the relevant skills within the industry. To fall back on the public's lack of knowledge seems a bit defeatist and insecure to me. That said, I guess we do tend to believe anything we're told and spend our money accordingly. Fortunately, I have such appalling taste in music none of this probably matters a great deal anyway. I've been following this discussion with a growing dismay as phrases such as "96k/24 seems a convenient 'compromise' to me" started to rear their ugly heads. A guy by the name of Monty Montgomery presented a couple of very interesting videos that nicely relate to the whole business of digital audio (and video). The links to those videos can be found on this page: http://xiph.org/video/ If you haven't already viewed them, I would say they are *well* worth the time spent in order to learn some basic truths of digital audio processing. In episode 2: "Digital Show & Tell" he refers to an article he'd written entitled, "24/192 music downloads are very silly indeed" where the feedback he got suggested the need for this "Digital Show & Tell" video. I'd never read the article before but intrigued, I paused the video so I could *hand* type "24/192 music downloads are very silly indeed" into the search box since there was no convenient link offered anywhere. This took me to: http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html I read about halfway through to the key facts - I'll read the rest later on- where he states unequivocally that 16 bit 44.1 CD audio far exceeds the capabilities of even the most superhuman of hearing abilities. IOW, once you're dealing with a finalised music performance properly committed to CD, that's it as far as 'perfection' is concerned. The only way that a 24/96 "Hi Definition" version is going to sound any better is if the final mixdown processing used to create the CD had been comprehensively buggered up. Sadly, for most popular music and 'digital re-masterings' of analogue studio recordings and professional multi-track recordings of live performances, the 'buggering up' is the result of deliberate vandalism, often in the name of 'winning the loudness wars'. Once you've watched the videos and/or read the article, you can start freeing up disk space with a clear conscience. :-) -- Johnny B Good |
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On 16/07/2015 04:22, Johnny B Good wrote:
On Wed, 15 Jul 2015 20:56:38 +0200, John R Leddy wrote: 'Jim Lesurf[_2_ Wrote: ;94195']FWIW I've never felt that going as far as 192k/24 made much sense for home replay. 96k/24 seems a convenient 'compromise' to me given the use of decent replay equipment. But YMMV. It is perhaps worth pointing out to people that if you covert to flac you will usually find that the resulting 96k/24 file is *not* twice as big as a 48k/24 flac from the same source. In general there isn't a lot in the ultrasonic region, and the flac compression can take advantage of this. The main difference tends to be that there are more bits devoted to 'noise' in 24bit than 16bit. And flac will faithfully keep those details. I can't bring myself to allocate over a gigabyte of storage space to a single-CD album. 24-bit 96kHz albums seem to average just under a gigabyte which suits me fine. This aspect, and the fact I was willing to convert my 24-bit 192kHz files to 24-bit 96kHz, allowed me to change my first 24-bit 192kHz network audio player for one which has a maximum 24-bit 96kHz playback. Truth be told, until participating in this thread, I would've quite happily converted my files to 16-bit 48kHz if I had to and not thought any more about it. I'd much rather a good quality production and master of a 24-bit 96kHz album, than a 24-bit 192kHz album of poor quality. Shame someone decided it was easier to sell numbers than improved quality. I would've preferred the better quality no matter what numbers were associated with the file. Maybe that's a giveaway when thinking about the relevant skills within the industry. To fall back on the public's lack of knowledge seems a bit defeatist and insecure to me. That said, I guess we do tend to believe anything we're told and spend our money accordingly. Fortunately, I have such appalling taste in music none of this probably matters a great deal anyway. I've been following this discussion with a growing dismay as phrases such as "96k/24 seems a convenient 'compromise' to me" started to rear their ugly heads. A guy by the name of Monty Montgomery presented a couple of very interesting videos that nicely relate to the whole business of digital audio (and video). The links to those videos can be found on this page: http://xiph.org/video/ If you haven't already viewed them, I would say they are *well* worth the time spent in order to learn some basic truths of digital audio processing. In episode 2: "Digital Show & Tell" he refers to an article he'd written entitled, "24/192 music downloads are very silly indeed" where the feedback he got suggested the need for this "Digital Show & Tell" video. I'd never read the article before but intrigued, I paused the video so I could *hand* type "24/192 music downloads are very silly indeed" into the search box since there was no convenient link offered anywhere. This took me to: http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html I read about halfway through to the key facts - I'll read the rest later on- where he states unequivocally that 16 bit 44.1 CD audio far exceeds the capabilities of even the most superhuman of hearing abilities. IOW, once you're dealing with a finalised music performance properly committed to CD, that's it as far as 'perfection' is concerned. I'm afraid that just reads like selective and biased, unevidenced and unreferenced puff and hyperbole to me. Fine if that's the sort of thing you like to read. The only way that a 24/96 "Hi Definition" version is going to sound any better is if the final mixdown processing used to create the CD had been comprehensively buggered up. Well, yes, but are you suggesting that regardless of the pre-mix source? Live, for example? Sadly, for most popular music and 'digital re-masterings' of analogue studio recordings and professional multi-track recordings of live performances, the 'buggering up' is the result of deliberate vandalism, often in the name of 'winning the loudness wars'. Once you've watched the videos and/or read the article, you can start freeing up disk space with a clear conscience. :-) I don't think you can QED just yet ;-) The point of interest for me (which I think was the thrust of this part of the thread?) is: what to do with live and (other) non-digital source material. -- Cheers, Rob |
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In article , John R Leddy
wrote: duly installed the Nyquist de-emphasis plug-in for Audacity, but so far EAC hasn't identified a CD as having pre-emphasis. In my experience it is quite rare. Also in my experience many CD players don't even bother to check for the flag and impliment it. The orginal Audio CD specs did include an option for 'four channel' halving the available duration. But so far as I know, no-one ever made such a disc or a player for them. Audio CD pre-emphasis seems to have gone the same way. And the flag may appear on occasion purely as an accident during generation of the CD image for manufacture. Jim -- Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html |
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In article , Johnny B Good
wrote: On Wed, 15 Jul 2015 20:56:38 +0200, John R Leddy wrote: 'Jim Lesurf[_2_ Wrote: ;94195']FWIW I've never felt that going as far as 192k/24 made much sense for home replay. 96k/24 seems a convenient 'compromise' to me given the use of decent replay equipment. But YMMV. It is perhaps worth pointing out to people that if you covert to flac you will usually find that the resulting 96k/24 file is *not* twice as big as a 48k/24 flac from the same source. In general there isn't a lot in the ultrasonic region, and the flac compression can take advantage of this. The main difference tends to be that there are more bits devoted to 'noise' in 24bit than 16bit. And flac will faithfully keep those details. I can't bring myself to allocate over a gigabyte of storage space to a single-CD album. 24-bit 96kHz albums seem to average just under a gigabyte which suits me fine. This aspect, and the fact I was willing to convert my 24-bit 192kHz files to 24-bit 96kHz, allowed me to change my first 24-bit 192kHz network audio player for one which has a maximum 24-bit 96kHz playback. Truth be told, until participating in this thread, I would've quite happily converted my files to 16-bit 48kHz if I had to and not thought any more about it. I'd much rather a good quality production and master of a 24-bit 96kHz album, than a 24-bit 192kHz album of poor quality. Shame someone decided it was easier to sell numbers than improved quality. I would've preferred the better quality no matter what numbers were associated with the file. Maybe that's a giveaway when thinking about the relevant skills within the industry. To fall back on the public's lack of knowledge seems a bit defeatist and insecure to me. That said, I guess we do tend to believe anything we're told and spend our money accordingly. Fortunately, I have such appalling taste in music none of this probably matters a great deal anyway. I've been following this discussion with a growing dismay as phrases such as "96k/24 seems a convenient 'compromise' to me" started to rear their ugly heads. A guy by the name of Monty Montgomery presented a couple of very interesting videos that nicely relate to the whole business of digital audio (and video). The links to those videos can be found on this page: http://xiph.org/video/ Yes, I've seen them in the past and would recommend them with one caveat. cf below. I read about halfway through to the key facts - I'll read the rest later on- where he states unequivocally that 16 bit 44.1 CD audio far exceeds the capabilities of even the most superhuman of hearing abilities. IOW, once you're dealing with a finalised music performance properly committed to CD, that's it as far as 'perfection' is concerned. The problem is that he does omit various factors that make reality different from 'perfection'. This includes the DAC used as that's the 'final' version produced by the digital chain. The key point to keep in mind for real engineers is that as a general rule *every* process or conversion in a chain can be expected to degrade or alter the information. The only way that a 24/96 "Hi Definition" version is going to sound any better is if the final mixdown processing used to create the CD had been comprehensively buggered up. Afraid that isn't an absolute truth. The reality is more complex. Even a technically perfect downconversion for the CD exposes the listener more to any imperfections in their DAC. And alas, no practical engineered system will be perfect. The point is that each stage will tend to alter the results. A perfect Audio CD is only a beermat or car scarer if you ignore the stage of being able to play it. :-) So the aim if you're concerned with quality is to keep the problems well clear of the audible result *at every stage along the way*. i.e. inc your DAC, etc. Sadly, for most popular music and 'digital re-masterings' of analogue studio recordings and professional multi-track recordings of live performances, the 'buggering up' is the result of deliberate vandalism, often in the name of 'winning the loudness wars'. Certainly true. And one of the problems with downconversion is that it tends to generate *higher* peak values in between the sampled instances. So the simple act of downconversion can lead to a clipped result if the source material was 'as loud as possible' without itself being clipped. Again, what you get out here may depend on your DAC. There is also a more basic problem people don't seem fully aware about. But which does cause them to engage in activities like 'which reconstruction filter do I like?'. 8-] The optimum choice of reconstruction filter (and resampling filters) depends on the filtering used in the ADC when the digital samples were made from the incoming audio during recording. The meaning (information payload) of the sampled data values is determined by the ADC filtering. This is a fundamental Information Theory point about which many engineers, etc, seem totally unaware. To reconstruct an analogue shape you need to know what input filer was used. Otherwise the result will be altered in ways you can't predict. Given that you usually have no idea what filter was used, and it changes from one recording to another, this is a poser for making a 'perfect' DAC. But, again, you can help shove away from audibility such issues by keeping with high rates until you get to the final DAC. Jim -- Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html |
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In article , John R Leddy
wrote: 'Jim Lesurf[_2_ Wrote: ;94198']It depends on your taste in music. But in general I hold the BBC's Radio 3 in high regard. There are slips, but their output is generally well engineered. With the Proms approaching the iplayer 320k stream is your friend. And with luck get_iplayer will continue to work during the Proms. Therein lies the problem. I like '67 to '77 pop and rock. I don't listen to the radio. I'm getting into jazz. Well, there is jazz on R3. And the BBC do plan to upgrade their other UK radio stations to 320k aac once the iplayer 'Audio Factory' changes are completed. OK, 320k aac isn't 96k/24 flac from an injuneering POV. But as other discussions (and listening) show, good 320k aac can sound a hell of a lot better than sloppy 'high rez'. What use the other BBC radio stations make of it is another issue. Their rock/pop producers may have as little clue as in the commercial sector. Jim -- Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html |
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In article , RJH
wrote: The point of interest for me (which I think was the thrust of this part of the thread?) is: what to do with live and (other) non-digital source material. For me at home I take for granted that when I make playing/cleanup digital transfers of old LPs I do this as 96k/24 with as much care as I can. But as I've said, I'm happy enough with *well made* audio CDs and R3 320k aac. I'd love the BBC to stream radio as 48k/24 flac, though. 8-] Their internal standard is 48k/24. Maybe one day, if they can survive this nasty triumphalist government. Jim -- Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me. Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html |
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On Thu, 16 Jul 2015 08:44:47 +0100, RJH wrote:
On 16/07/2015 04:22, Johnny B Good wrote: On Wed, 15 Jul 2015 20:56:38 +0200, John R Leddy wrote: 'Jim Lesurf[_2_ Wrote: ;94195']FWIW I've never felt that going as far as 192k/24 made much sense for home replay. 96k/24 seems a convenient 'compromise' to me given the use of decent replay equipment. But YMMV. It is perhaps worth pointing out to people that if you covert to flac you will usually find that the resulting 96k/24 file is *not* twice as big as a 48k/24 flac from the same source. In general there isn't a lot in the ultrasonic region, and the flac compression can take advantage of this. The main difference tends to be that there are more bits devoted to 'noise' in 24bit than 16bit. And flac will faithfully keep those details. I can't bring myself to allocate over a gigabyte of storage space to a single-CD album. 24-bit 96kHz albums seem to average just under a gigabyte which suits me fine. This aspect, and the fact I was willing to convert my 24-bit 192kHz files to 24-bit 96kHz, allowed me to change my first 24-bit 192kHz network audio player for one which has a maximum 24-bit 96kHz playback. Truth be told, until participating in this thread, I would've quite happily converted my files to 16-bit 48kHz if I had to and not thought any more about it. I'd much rather a good quality production and master of a 24-bit 96kHz album, than a 24-bit 192kHz album of poor quality. Shame someone decided it was easier to sell numbers than improved quality. I would've preferred the better quality no matter what numbers were associated with the file. Maybe that's a giveaway when thinking about the relevant skills within the industry. To fall back on the public's lack of knowledge seems a bit defeatist and insecure to me. That said, I guess we do tend to believe anything we're told and spend our money accordingly. Fortunately, I have such appalling taste in music none of this probably matters a great deal anyway. I've been following this discussion with a growing dismay as phrases such as "96k/24 seems a convenient 'compromise' to me" started to rear their ugly heads. A guy by the name of Monty Montgomery presented a couple of very interesting videos that nicely relate to the whole business of digital audio (and video). The links to those videos can be found on this page: http://xiph.org/video/ If you haven't already viewed them, I would say they are *well* worth the time spent in order to learn some basic truths of digital audio processing. In episode 2: "Digital Show & Tell" he refers to an article he'd written entitled, "24/192 music downloads are very silly indeed" where the feedback he got suggested the need for this "Digital Show & Tell" video. I'd never read the article before but intrigued, I paused the video so I could *hand* type "24/192 music downloads are very silly indeed" into the search box since there was no convenient link offered anywhere. This took me to: http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html I read about halfway through to the key facts - I'll read the rest later on- where he states unequivocally that 16 bit 44.1 CD audio far exceeds the capabilities of even the most superhuman of hearing abilities. IOW, once you're dealing with a finalised music performance properly committed to CD, that's it as far as 'perfection' is concerned. I'm afraid that just reads like selective and biased, unevidenced and unreferenced puff and hyperbole to me. Fine if that's the sort of thing you like to read. I'm not sure how you managed to come to that conclusion. :-( The only way that a 24/96 "Hi Definition" version is going to sound any better is if the final mixdown processing used to create the CD had been comprehensively buggered up. Well, yes, but are you suggesting that regardless of the pre-mix source? Live, for example? I believe I did include the phrase "and professional multi-track recordings of live performances". Yes, it's from the bit of my reply you quoted below. :-) Sadly, for most popular music and 'digital re-masterings' of analogue studio recordings and professional multi-track recordings of live performances, the 'buggering up' is the result of deliberate vandalism, often in the name of 'winning the loudness wars'. Once you've watched the videos and/or read the article, you can start freeing up disk space with a clear conscience. :-) I don't think you can QED just yet ;-) The point of interest for me (which I think was the thrust of this part of the thread?) is: what to do with live and (other) non-digital source material. In short, "The best possible job (of capturing the sound) that you can.". After that, you process the resulting audio mix (32 bit floating point/48 or 96 Kilo samples per second) to recreate a reasonable facsimile of what an ideally placed listener would have experienced at the live event in question (including the removal of any nasty transients or noises that may have been introduced by the recording equipment itself - excluding, of course, such transients as a knocked over music stand which can add to the 'atmosphere' of *that* particular performance). The point he was making was that once the final mix was down mixed and normalised to fit within the dynamic range of the CD format (with shaped dithering this is a massive 120dB, comfortably matching the widest limits between the sensitivity and pain thresholds, marked in red, of human hearing demonstrated by the Fletcher-Munson equal loudness curve plots) you had every aspect of the performance you could usefully present (and then some!) nicely encapsulated by the CD standard. As a 'final product' of any work of music or other audio event, it more than amply serves its purpose (unlike vinyl records or high quality reel to reel tapes). The only caveat being that you're placing your trust in the professionals involved in the recording and sound processing required produce a good quality Audio CD. The only remaining issue, pointed out by Jim, is the question of the quality of the DACs used to effect a flawless replay of the audio so carefully encoded into a Music CD. On a technical level at least, this is a problem that was solved over two decades ago using oversampling techniques to neatly sidestep both the demands for a 'brickwall' analogue filter and to push the aliasing/digital artefact noise an octave or more beyond the 22.05KHz region. In the very early days, it was extremely expensive to make 16 bit DACs that had an acceptable enough monotonicity[1] for mass consumer replay products. The situation today is very much better in this regard. The solution to the problem of storage and distribution of musical performances to a level comfortably exceeding the most exacting of requirements of Hi-Fi audio was developed over 35 years ago with the advent of the Compact Disc (or rather the linear 16 bit stereo PCM digital format that was at the heart of the process). Today, we're no longer limited to optical disc media for the storage of such data, computer disk drives and portable flash media now provide viable alternatives by which to store, copy ad infinitum and distribute audio files. 24 bit 96K samples per second 'Super Audio' adds nothing usable to the basic 16 bit 44.1 Kilo samples per second CD format as far as final play out of a 'produced' musical performance is concerned. [1] ie. the plot of successively increasing binary values of voltage counting in an unbroken sequence from lowest to highest would show an unwanted discontinuity in the analogue voltage output plot as the higher order bits changed state in response to all of the preceding LSBs. For example, upon the LSBs reaching the value of 1 before clocking over to all zeros to generate a carry to set the next significant bit to 1 to indicate a few millivolts larger voltage, the error in summing up the weighted bit values could produce a voltage a few millivolts *less* or more than intended. The greater the number of bits used to encode/decode, the greater the required precision of the laser trimmed resistor network used in the DAC to accurately translate binary word values into corresponding analogue voltage levels. Philips realised that they could use a 4 times oversampling technique using cheaper yet higher precision 14 bit DACs to achieve exactly the same dynamic range performance of a conventional 16 bit DAC using a times one sampling rate. Not only where they able to solve the 'monotonicity' issue at a stroke, the oversampling technique also introduced two additional benefits. The first being that the inevitable digital hash and aliasing products were all pushed into the 88KHz part of the spectrum, well clear of the problematic 22KHz region that had mandated the use of 'brickwall' analogue filtering required of the primitive methods using expensive 16 bit DACs. The second benefit being that cheaper, less ripply analogue filtering could be employed to protect the following analogue stages (and the listener) from both digital artefacts and unwanted aliasing products. Eventually, within a few short years, the manufacturing costs of high quality 16 bit DACs fell to the point whereby 2 and 4 times oversampling could be used to 'outdo' the Philips 4 times oversampled 14bit DAC response to crappy 'straight sampled' 16 bit DAC based products. The remaining issue with DACs was the analogue output stage clipping that afflicted some of the earlier products due to inadequate voltage rail provisioning derived from the "Join the dots" peak amplitude calculations by some rather naive designers who didn't fully understand the process of handling a bandwidth limited analogue signal encoded into the digital domain. The simple solution for these naive designers was to advise them that if they were going to persist in a "Join the dots" view of the analogue output stage requirements then they merely had to double the 'calculated' minimum rail voltage by a factor of two to be safe. I suppose there must be plenty of early kit out there with such (easily remedied at the design stage) flaws in the hands of 'many an audiophile' who believe their venerable CD player made by famously expensive manufacturers (Marantz et al?) must be perfection personified since digital audio recordings cannot possibly suffer the horrors of clipping, not even as a result of a 'cut and dried' replay process that, in principle at least, can only be totally perfect. Indeed there may be some, who may well have (based on auditioning tests) chosen a CD player flawed by a clippy DAC over one with a non-clipping DAC because 'it sounded brighter' or 'had more clarity'. One would hope by now that the more reputable manufacturers of CD players who subscribe to the best practices of "High Fidelity" have long since 'put this one to bed', removing any final (misplaced) criticisms of the, now venerable, CDDA format. -- Johnny B Good |
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