24bit vs 16bit, the myth exploded! - Page 65

I live in a 725 sq ft apartment and I do that with a closet of mine. I would definitely use a room for that if I had a 16 bedroom mansion. Maybe two.

 

Space well used IMO.

Do you sometimes get naked and leap into your closet like a ball pit at a Chuck E Cheese?

Not too often.

 

I also keep the boxes in there, and the truth is Amazon doesn't normally use packing peanuts but rather bagged air and/or paper. It's not very comfortable to jump into naked.

By your logic, I should not be able to tell the difference between an analoge source, a 24-bit file, or a 16-bit file. Well, sir, I have heard these, and it is quite revealing. 

 

Bits do matter, and nothing can sound like analoge. Closest thing I have heard is SACD, and that resolution is way more than 16 or 24 bit.

 

So while most do not have the equipment or the ears to hear the different, there IS a difference. I would say it is not a difference of "WOW," but the difference is there.

Analogue is easy to distinguish. Just listen for the noise or distortion.

There is no "your logic" ... but anyway. Did you compare equally mastered files? This is usually not the case when people hear differences.

 

 

SACD has a dynamic range of about 120 dB. Analogue like vinyl doesn't even come close to digital formats.

 

Here's a 1 kHz sine wave (format: 44.1/16), dithered:

 

What music/tracks are you listening to? I bet it doesn't have a minimum RMS level below -80 dBFS.

 

 

<rant>While most people have not seen aliens themselves there ARE aliens. You can talk to the people that got abducted. Their stories truly are WOW. </rant>

 

Have you heard of the scientific method? It's used to distinguish fact from fiction.

Edited by xnor - 12/17/12 at 2:57pm

I participated in a ADC shootout with a 1/2" master. All was done at 24 bit, then 16 bit. There was a clear winner in the converters.

 

After it was done, the engineer played the 1/2" master straight through, no converters. It was not a question of noise, dynamic range, etc. It was a question of clarity, depth, detail, warmth, and all those other fuzzy words to describe ultimate audio. My jaw literally dropped. It had so much more life and truly sounded like the band was in the next room. This of course was with a grammy nominated engineer as well. 

 

So I know what tech specs say, but I also know what my ears tell me. And technically there should be little difference in the 16 bit file to the analoge version, but not always. I will say that it does take a good engineer, good musicianship, and great equipment to make such music to tell the difference. It also takes better trained ears to tell the difference. I doubt my wife could tell, and I doubt a badly recorded track I could tell. JMO.

 

And yes, different masters can make a difference. Although I do remember a similar unscientific test a friend and I did with Dave Brubeck's Time Out. There are several versions and we compared a CD, to a newer 180 vinyl, to the new SACD. There was little difference in the SACD to the vinyl, but the CD was clearly from a different master and was hard to tell. So therefore, I cannot definitively say that SACD is equal to vinyl. We all know vinyl has it's own issues with mono bass below 140Hz, channel separation, RIAA curves, quality of equipment, etc. But yes, there are differences in masters.

 

It could be that the equipment used to play back the recordings somehow introduced uncontrolled coloration. I wouldn't rule out the 1/2" tape equipment. Rolling off the high frequencies can result in perceived warmth, but at the expense of fidelity.

 

It could also be that the 24 bit and 16 bit recordings where poorly or improperly re-mastered. I believe I've heard this can happen whether the engineer is/was grammy nominated or not. Dynamic range issues are more often than not a result of abusing compression.

Edited by ultrabike - 12/17/12 at 5:42pm

The 1/2" Ampex tape and source never changed. ADC's were plugged and unplugged with the same cables accordingly. A-B comparisons were done from the computer after encoding from the digital stream. Then after tests were done, source was pulgged through same input to console straight. There might have been some coloration in the DAC, but we used the best converter for that. The RME ADI-2.

 

There are things going on with the analog 1/2", but that WAS the source being converted. So it should have sounded exactly the same, but it did not.

 

And I say again, JMO. Do some tests yourself and see if you can tell the difference. If not, then be happy with 16 bit. After that session, I was forever transformed.

What Ampex model was used? AFAIK tape players are not necessarily free of coloration. These guys seem to have measured the frequency response of an ATR-102 (scroll to post #127): http://www.gearslutz.com/board/gear-shoot-outs-sound-file-comparisons-audio-tests/654876-ampex-atr-102-anamod-ats-1-uad-waves-processed-files-5.html

Without the EQ, it seems to roll of the highs a little and there seems to be some low to mid bass emphasis.

 

Might want to read the whole tread. They have some wav files comparing the HW with simulated: http://www.gearslutz.com/board/gear-shoot-outs-sound-file-comparisons-audio-tests/654876-ampex-atr-102-anamod-ats-1-uad-waves-processed-files.html

 

When making the conversions, was there any compression, equalization, or compensation algorithm when using the RME?

Edited by ultrabike - 12/17/12 at 6:18pm

It likely was the ATR-102, however, none of that stuff matters. The source for conversion was the output of the tape from the tape machine. So any EQ, emphasis, or otherwise mojo of that machine/tape, would have been encoded digitally. And yes, it was calibrated.

 

The differences were not something EQ or roll-off or spectrum filtering. It was more 3 dimensional and instruments had such amazing separation and detail.

 

 

No. None of that. It was the raw mix that was bounced to 1/2" then straight off the tape into the converter. Source did not even go to a console or patch bay. It was directly plugged in and monitored off the output of the ADC, not the input.

 

I am not trying to discredit anyone. I am just letting you know my experience. It was not a perfect or the most scientific study, but it was enough for me to realize that even 24-bit did not sound as good as the 1/2" source. When I spoke to the engineer of my dis-belief, he just says, "Now you know."

I worked with 24 track masters and fullcoat film back around the transition to digital, and the difference between digital and analogue is in the peaks. We occasionally burned a peak into the tape and the sound didn't suffer. When we took the tape to digital, we had to drop the level or it would clip very badly. Comparing digital to analogue would require careful level matching. I would bet that the tape master was a little hotter.

If you were patched direct, the analogue was definitely hotter.
Edited by bigshot - 12/17/12 at 6:54pm

Yeah, you can push tape above 0 db on the meter and get nice soft compression. Very popular and preferred for the "tape" sound and high saturation. Especially with pop and rock music.

 

I don't know what the true levels were. It was too long ago. And yes, I understand even a slight change in volume can make a difference.

Compression, clipping, level matching... That doesn't sound that unscientific at all. More like someone might not have adjusted certain parameters well in the tests.

Edited by ultrabike - 12/17/12 at 8:20pm