Why 24 bit audio and anything over 48k is not only worthless, but bad for music.

ralphp@optonline said:

  If the music actually had a dynamic range of greater than 96db then it would not matter whether the digital audio recording of it was 16 bit or 24 bit since no home audio system would be capable of playing it because of the massive amount of power required to reproduce it, which is just another valid reason why 24bit is not necessary for proper playback.

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I've heard the 16 bit noise floor using my sound isolating Senn hd280 headphones. Would I have wanted a 3 kHz 0dB single to come blaring through my headphones immediately after it? No. Would I have wanted a -30 dB single to come through my headphones immediately after it? Probably not.
 
But it is incorrect to say that >96 dB is impossible with audio equipment. Most competently designed amplifiers can achieve 100dB signal-to-noise.
 
You can't make absolutist statements that are demonstrably false. This is how audiophile zealots can make counter arguments that make it look like their position is more reasonable. You need to refute their points with rigorous arguments.
 
Cheers

What is a noise floor?

kraken2109 said:

 
Nobody in a modern recording environment would be recording something at -44dB, let alone the final master being anywhere near that level. Most professional recording is done at 24bit, and that makes sense since it allows levels to be changed without any (no matter how small) negative impacts on the final CD (16bit) version.
The point we're making is that for playback, 16bit is more than enough.

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Please take a look at this sample of one of my favorite King Crimson tracks, 'Lizard," which was on their aptly named album, "Lizard":
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/711374/does-frequency-response-or-csd-entirely-determine-sound-quality/15#post_10395918
 
Here, I walk you through the math to calculate the different recorded amplitudes at different points in the music. there are parts at -44dB FS. One of the things I really like about this track is it's dynamic range. And pretty much  everything else about it .
 
Not all music must be a live recording nor does it have to be dynamic rangeless uber-compressed in the studio.
 
Just because rooms might be a bit noisy at ~30dB SPL, doesn't mean that the inside of a good pair of isolating headphones is. It's one of the things I like about my headphones vs my speakers.
 
Cheers

steve eddy said:

Fine. But again, this goes back to accusing people of making false claims when sharing their subjective experiences.

I guess some just don't seem to grasp what it is I'm trying to say so I'll just move on.

se

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This is one of those arguments that have been going on since the early days of digital audio. We're trying to explain that the dynamic range of 24-bits is enough for the music and that the frequency response above 44.1 kHz is out human audibility... but nobody listens. They ask us where our scientific evidence is even though countless tests and measurements have gone on for probably 20 years. It's just getting old. Then people pull the argument that frequencies outside of the audible range "psychologically affect the listening through psycho-acoustics," which believe me does not happen, I can only hear up to 14 kHz strongly and 15 kHz barely and it drops straight off after that. If something is outside of hearing threshold, it's all the way out... there's no "sort of hearing it."
 
I'm not saying someone's subjective experience is wrong, everyone can experience something differently, in fact there's huge differences between the hearing of average people (which probably results in our preferences in sound signature). But this is really something that is definitive and can't be argued. Unless the DAC is processing 24-bit audio differently than 16-bit or the recordings aren't identical, it is impossible to hear the difference between the two. It's been proven in many papers over the history of digital audio. 24-bit exists to lower the noise floor during recording. The audio engineers designing consumer digital audio chose 16-bit/44.1 kHz because it can reproduce audio perfectly during playback. They didn't simply settle for what existed at the time, they wanted to stomp tape out of existence in the consumer's eyes. Their salaries, well-being, and family depended on digital audio performing as expected... they weren't goofing off the entire time they were developing these standards.

That's it, I'm buying a Victrola!!  

steve eddy said:

You're saying their subjective experience isn't true? That they're subjectively experiencing something other than what they're reporting to be experiencing?
se

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The reporting of their subjective impression may be accurate, but that doesn't make the claim true.

ab initio said:

   
Please take a look at this sample of one of my favorite King Crimson tracks, 'Lizard," which was on their aptly named album, "Lizard":
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/711374/does-frequency-response-or-csd-entirely-determine-sound-quality/15#post_10395918
 
Here, I walk you through the math to calculate the different recorded amplitudes at different points in the music. there are parts at -44dB FS. One of the things I really like about this track is it's dynamic range. And pretty much  everything else about it

.
 
Not all music must be a live recording nor does it have to be dynamic rangeless uber-compressed in the studio.
 
Just because rooms might be a bit noisy at ~30dB SPL, doesn't mean that the inside of a good pair of isolating headphones is. It's one of the things I like about my headphones vs my speakers.
 
Cheers

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This is certainly an interesting example. Unfortunately I don't own the track and I can't exactly analyse it through youtube. The question is, are you hearing the noise floor of 16bit digital audio or are you hearing the noise floor or the studio it was recorded in or perhaps the noise floor of the microphones or other recording equipment used? I'm not sure how we'd find out.
With modern dither the noise floor of 16bit audio is even lower, so I wonder what it would sound like if that track was recorded today.
 
Out of interest, I used Audacity to generate a 30 second 16bit WAV of silence. I'm not sure whether Audacity applied dither to this, and if so I don't know whether the dither in Audacity is a good one anyway, but I thought i'd share the file for those interested.
 
https://www.dropbox.com/s/de46xlmsjx9arr6/30%20seconds%20of%20silence.wav
 
Playing this file on my Denon receiver and AKG headphones, I have to turn the amp up to -10dB before I can just about hear noise. However, I can't tell you whether that noise is the noise floor of the track or the noise floor of something else in my system. I'd be interested to see how this track sounds to others.
 
What I can say though is I tried listening to that king crimson track (sadly through youtube) at that volume level and it while the quiet opening was listenable (fairly loud), the louder sections were almost painful.
 
EDIT: In an attempt to see if the noise was my system or 16bit, I generated another 30 seconds of silence and exported in 24bit. Even at 0dB on my receiver I can't hear noise with this one.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uen66lni39xvo1j/24bit%20silence.wav

steve eddy said:

That's called marketing. The context of this particular discussion was an individual simply describing their subjective experience. Specifically to the accusation by others that such people are making false claims. se

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The false claim there is attributing the subjective experience to the difference in sound quality between redbook and high bit rate audio. It clearly wasn't due to that.

ab initio said:

   
Please take a look at this sample of one of my favorite King Crimson tracks, 'Lizard," which was on their aptly named album, "Lizard":
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/711374/does-frequency-response-or-csd-entirely-determine-sound-quality/15#post_10395918
 
Here, I walk you through the math to calculate the different recorded amplitudes at different points in the music. there are parts at -44dB FS. One of the things I really like about this track is it's dynamic range. And pretty much  everything else about it

.
 
Not all music must be a live recording nor does it have to be dynamic rangeless uber-compressed in the studio.
 
Just because rooms might be a bit noisy at ~30dB SPL, doesn't mean that the inside of a good pair of isolating headphones is. It's one of the things I like about my headphones vs my speakers.
 
Cheers

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Either I'm confused, you're confused or we are both confused.
 
Based on the link you provided I think that you are mistaking volume for dynamic range. Dynamic range is the difference between the lowest volume level and the highest volume level. So if you have a musical piece with the lowest volume being 1 db above total, dead silence (which is really not possible except out in space) and the loudest volume being 90 db above total, dead silence than the dynamic range of that musical piece would be 89db (90db - 1 db). Now if you raised the volume of the quietest passages to be audible in the real world, to say 30db, then the loudest parts would shifted to 120 db but the dynamic range would still be 89 db, even though the loud parts wold now be 30db above their previous peak of 90db. So I repeat, there is no music that humans can listen to without permanent hearing damage that needs more than 16 bits of dynamic range.

ab initio said:

You're making blanket statements. Artistic experession might lead an artist to put large swings in dynamic range in their music. Who are you to say otherwise?
Cheers

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96dB isn't just a wide dynamic range. It's a range that puts a sizeable chunk of the info across the line into inaudibility at any tolerable listening volume... not just comfortable, but tolerable.

Even if you were listening in a room with absolutely no noise, your ears and blood pulsing through them would create a noise floor... like the sound you hear when you're in a cave. Redbook audio in practice has to be boosted over its maximum range in order to hear everything... which pushes it up to the threshold of pain.

It doesn't really matter though, because even the most dynamic music doesn't exceed 40-50dB. Redbook has room to spare.

bigshot said:

The reporting of their subjective impression may be accurate, but that doesn't make the claim true.

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If the only claim is their subjective experience, how can it be anything other than true unless you've got a bunch of people running around lying about what their subjective experience is?

se

kraken2109 said:

Playing this file on my Denon receiver and AKG headphones, I have to turn the amp up to -10dB before I can just about hear noise. However, I can't tell you whether that noise is the noise floor of the track or the noise floor of something else in my system. I'd be interested to see how this track sounds to others.

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On my speaker rig, the noise from cranking the amp way up is probably in the same area as the noise floor of redbook. 90dB is a hell of a lot.

steve eddy said:

If the only claim is their subjective experience, how can it be anything other than true unless you've got a bunch of people running around lying about what their subjective experience is?

se

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It depends on how they state it. If they say, "High bitrate sounded better to me.", they're not drawing any conclusion; but "I see ghosts." and "High bitrate sounds better than CD." contain conclusions that are false. For some reason claims in audiophile press and advertising ALWAYS points straight at the conclusion.

steve eddy said:

If the only claim is their subjective experience, how can it be anything other than true unless you've got a bunch of people running around lying about what their subjective experience is?

se

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And where do we draw the line when purely subjective experience is being used as a marketing tool?
 
If I believe that my audio system sounds 100 times better (remember it's purely subjective so I can assign a subjective numerical value to just how much better my audio system sounds) after I coat all the contact points in Wonder Coat (a proprietary mixture that I developed, but which is actually just plain tap water mixed with some liquid soap) that would be fine so long I am not trying to sell anyone else some Wonder Coat.
 
Now what if I now am trying to sell Wonder Coat and the only proof can I offer is my purely subjective experience - again not a problem so long as everyone knows that Wonder Coat's magic is purely subjective.
 
And finally, what if I am now trying to sell Wonder Coat and instead of clearly stating that Wonder Coat's magic is purely subjective I frame it so that it appears that Wonder Coat's magic is based on hard science (similar to the HDTracks marketing that was quoted earlier) - would this be okay? And I'm not referring to whether or not it would be morally or legally okay but to whether or not someone else has the right to call bulls*#t on my claims.
 
In other words it is the turning of what is purely an individual's subjective experience/belief into a marketing tool (complete with quasi-scientific mumbo-jumbo - think any cable advertisement copy) that I believe we should be able to call BS on and rightfully demand hard, scientifically valid and repeatable proof.
 
And guess what? There is no hard, scientifically valid and repeatable proof that 24 bit audio and sampling rates over 48k offers anything other than purely subjective improvements, which is why I am calling BS on HDTracks and their paid friends in the publishing world.

ralphp@optonline said:

And where do we draw the line when purely subjective experience is being used as a marketing tool?

If I believe that my audio system sounds 100 times better (remember it's purely subjective so I can assign a subjective numerical value to just how much better my audio system sounds) after I coat all the contact points in Wonder Coat (a proprietary mixture that I developed, but which is actually just plain tap water mixed with some liquid soap) that would be fine so long I am not trying to sell anyone else some Wonder Coat.

Now what if I now am trying to sell Wonder Coat and the only proof can I offer is my purely subjective experience - again not a problem so long as everyone knows that Wonder Coat's magic is purely subjective.

And finally, what if I am now trying to sell Wonder Coat and instead of clearly stating that Wonder Coat's magic is purely subjective I frame it so that it appears that Wonder Coat's magic is based on hard science (similar to the HDTracks marketing that was quoted earlier) - would this be okay? And I'm not referring to whether or not it would be morally or legally okay but to whether or not someone else has the right to call bulls*#t on my claims.

In other words it is the turning of what is purely an individual's subjective experience/belief into a marketing tool (complete with quasi-scientific mumbo-jumbo - think any cable advertisement copy) that I believe we should be able to call BS on and rightfully demand hard, scientifically valid and repeatable proof.

And guess what? There is no hard, scientifically valid and repeatable proof that 24 bit audio and sampling rates over 48k offers anything other than purely subjective improvements, which is why I am calling BS on HDTracks and their paid friends in the publishing world.

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PM sent, willing to buy some wondercoat, how much would a bottle cost?