[nick_charles]

  8 bit isn't too far from what an LP record would be.

 
That is a bit unfair. LP can do up to 80db (13 bits)  in extremis,  more routinely you could expect 55 - 70 db ( 9 - 11) - this is fine most of the time but not for stuff like some classical music which can go from deafeningly loud to whisper quiet in the same movement.
 
My very first experience with CD was back in 1984 when I auditioned an early Marantz CD63 (Philips CD100) a modest 14 bit 2x oversampling box with a humble 90db snr and I got them to put on Solti's CSO Mahler 1 - the lack of noise on the opening bars of the 1st movement compared to my Rega Planar 3 figuratively took my breath away - that pretty much finished LP for me 

 

 

[bigshot]

In practice, LPs, even well mastered classical ones, generally have around 45-55 dB of dynamic range. Peaks may be cut in hot to go higher, but they distort, and stuff down in the quiet range below that are usually buried in surface noise. If your LP of Solti's Mahler had 70dB of dynamic range, you wouldn't have been nearly as impressed with a 90dB CD.

 

[nick_charles]

  In practice, LPs, even well mastered classical ones, generally have around 45-55 dB of dynamic range. Peaks may be cut in hot to go higher, but they distort, and stuff down in the quiet range below that are usually buried in surface noise. If your LP of Solti's Mahler had 70dB of dynamic range, you wouldn't have been nearly as impressed with a 90dB CD.

 
I have no way of knowing what the range of the LP was but I do remember the quiets parts were noisy as were all my classical LPs (in the quiet parts)  and it was not just surface noise, poor tracking, badly pressed centers, rumble,  it drove me bananas especially after plonking down what was for me back then almost a month's salary to upgrade from a Transcriptors Saturn !

 

[SharpEars]

   
That is a bit unfair. LP can do up to 80db (13 bits)  in extremis,  more routinely you could expect 55 - 70 db ( 9 - 11) - this is fine most of the time but not for stuff like some classical music which can go from deafeningly loud to whisper quiet in the same movement.
 
My very first experience with CD was back in 1984 when I auditioned an early Marantz CD63 (Philips CD100) a modest 14 bit 2x oversampling box with a humble 90db snr and I got them to put on Solti's CSO Mahler 1 - the lack of noise on the opening bars of the 1st movement compared to my Rega Planar 3 figuratively took my breath away - that pretty much finished LP for me 

 

 
After it goes below -54 dBFS it's irrelevant, classic music or any other music. To hear it (not to mention hear it loud enough to appreciate it) at that level you would have to increase the volume to such a ridiculous amount that as soon as a loud passage started you would be deafened.
 
-54 dBFS requires only 9-bits (You can add an extra bit for good measure, more room to dither, yada yada), so a 10-bit ADC / 10-bit DAC converter is transparent for music.
 
Virtually all recordings have less than 60 dB of dynamic range. It's easily measured in any good DAW on a track by track basis. Try it with the music you listen to that you consider has a higher dynamic range - you will be surprised! I am including audiophile 192/24 recordings in the mix by the way, so do mean virtually all.
 
Updated with details on how you can perform the test yourself...
 
Anybody that thinks that more than a 10-bit sample depth matters needs to watch the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BYTlN6wjcvQ starting from 45:48. Let your own ears with your own (high end) equipment be the judge.
 
Actually, if you want to do this test with complete accuracy, you can download the original .wav file used for this test at: http://ethanwiner.com/aes/bit_reduction.wav
 
I start hearing noise at around 18 seconds when playing the .wav file which equates to a 7-bit depth, when listening on Sennheiser HD650 headphones connected via a balanced cable to an OPPO HA-1 fed via asynchronous USB (i.e., I don't think anyone can call my system "low res") with the volume set quite loud in a very quiet room. Let me repeat, 7-bits is enough for this song!
 
Now if you want to do the test yourself, get the .wav file at the link I just posted, see at what second you can hear noise or any objectionable artifacts. Then play the youtube video (also linked above) starting at 46:18 for the number of seconds you played the .wav file. Then you can see from the video at what bit depth you heard the "bad audio." That my friends is the easiest way to convince yourself that 10-bits is plenty.
 
Updated again:
 
If you really want to go all the way, you can download the actual VST plug-in called +decimate that was used in the instructional youtube video and try it with your own DAW and your own music. I would love to hear the results. In fact, I've done all of the research for you.
 
Here is a link to the latest version of the VST collection that includes +decimate: http://www.soundhack.com/freeware/
 
You want to download the Delay Trio / Freesound Bundle from the top left column on that page. The actual plug-in you're looking for from the set is +decimate and can be found under VST/Effect/Sound Hack/+decimate in your DAW after it is correctly located and installed in your DAW software. On windows when I install it, it installs itself in c:\program files\common files\VST2, so I just added that redirectoy to my DAW and refreshed the VST list making it available.
 
The funny thing is that I have some music high in transients that I thought could use some major (i.e., 24) bit depth and it turned out that 5-bits was enough! I am both flabbergasted and speechless at this point. How can anyone even consider high bit depth audio again after performing this test?
 
Happy listening! I am beginning to think that this post should be linked to from the top post in this thread for all of the audiophiles that venture into these (murky) waters to get permanently "circumcised" of their (high-end) purchasing habits.

 

[castleofargh]

 

   
That is a bit unfair. LP can do up to 80db (13 bits)  in extremis,  more routinely you could expect 55 - 70 db ( 9 - 11) - this is fine most of the time but not for stuff like some classical music which can go from deafeningly loud to whisper quiet in the same movement.
 
My very first experience with CD was back in 1984 when I auditioned an early Marantz CD63 (Philips CD100) a modest 14 bit 2x oversampling box with a humble 90db snr and I got them to put on Solti's CSO Mahler 1 - the lack of noise on the opening bars of the 1st movement compared to my Rega Planar 3 figuratively took my breath away - that pretty much finished LP for me 

 

 
After it goes below -54 dBFS it's irrelevant, classic music or any other music. To hear it (not to mention hear it loud enough to appreciate it) at that level you would have to increase the volume to such a ridiculous amount that as soon as a loud passage started you would be deafened.
 
-54 dBFS requires only 9-bits (You can add an extra bit for good measure, more room to dither, yada yada), so a 10-bit ADC / 10-bit DAC converter is transparent for music.
 
Virtually all recordings have less than 60 dB of dynamic range. It's easily measured in any good DAW on a track by track basis. Try it with the music you listen to that you consider has a higher dynamic range - you will be surprised! I am including audiophile 192/24 recordings in the mix by the way, so do mean virtually all.

I wouldn't be so extreme. if you don't get more than -54 for simultaneous music, it doesn't mean that on some classical piece or other you won't have a strong part reaching 0db and a calmer part where the loudest sounds will stay below -10db or -15db. so while listening to that part, you will again get close to your 54db of usable dynamic for yourself (Steve Eddy said 60db max for average humans so your number seems to fit nicely as you said you tried the test loud). so all in all to use most of your hearing potential, the track could have a use for around -64db to -69db in that fake example.
I think the usually accepted 80db is a nice value with a safe margin for change of rhythm in a song or album.
 
but hey we were happy with tapes when our average walkman must have been also under 10bits. so to me it is mostly a problem of hiss level. at least that's why I gave up on vinyls and tapes.

 

[SharpEars]

 
I wouldn't be so extreme. if you don't get more than -54 for simultaneous music, it doesn't mean that on some classical piece or other you won't have a strong part reaching 0db and a calmer part where the loudest sounds will stay below -10db or -15db. so while listening to that part, you will again get close to your 54db of usable dynamic for yourself (Steve Eddy said 60db max for average humans so your number seems to fit nicely as you said you tried the test loud). so all in all to use most of your hearing potential, the track could have a use for around -64db to -69db in that fake example.
I think the usually accepted 80db is a nice value with a safe margin for change of rhythm in a song or album.
 
but hey we were happy with tapes when our average walkman must have been also under 10bits. so to me it is mostly a problem of hiss level. at least that's why I gave up on vinyls and tapes.

I can't hear hiss or a loss of quality even at 8-bits with the test I posted in my updated post.

 

[Krutsch]

 
You could buy a USB to SPDIF converter of good quality which will do up to 192/24 for something like $100.  Connect PC (even an older one) via USB to the device, feed the digital signal to your Yamaha or the AK100 and you have an audiophile PC.  So not so hard. 

 
Really,  $100.00 US?  Please recommend some, I am in the market to replace my NuForce u192s which has problems with drop-outs/artifacts and everything I've looked at is in the $200 - $400 range (e.g. Wyred4Sound, iFi Audio, Bel Canto - I have one of the latter, love it, but it's a little pricey).

 

[nick_charles]

   
After it goes below -54 dBFS it's irrelevant, classic music or any other music. To hear it (not to mention hear it loud enough to appreciate it) at that level you would have to increase the volume to such a ridiculous amount that as soon as a loud passage started you would be deafened.
 
-54 dBFS requires only 9-bits (You can add an extra bit for good measure, more room to dither, yada yada), so a 10-bit ADC / 10-bit DAC converter is transparent for music.
 
 

 
I re-ripped Mahler 1 1st mvt (1984 CD) and ran it through Audacity - interestingly there was less dynamic range than I had thought
 

 
Above - the opening bit - ( I trimmed the opening silence) peaks at about -39db RMS at about -50db
 
below the loudest bit - hitting the end stops - RMS about -12db
 

 
 
Then i thought I would try the 2007 reissue - which was pretty much the same
 

 
 

 
so about 39db whichever way you look at it  !
 
For fun I reripped it as MP3 v0
 

 
very similar but.... on the loud bits
 

 
Not clipping according to Audacity but right on the limit more often than with either Cd copy
 

 
 
Then I though about how quiet i could hear at normal levels - I took the Cd rip and applied a -10db amplification
 

 
This was absolutely on the limit to be able to hear all the instruments - I lowered it another 10db and could still hear something but I definitely lost some instruments

 

[bigshot]

On vinyl, a 45 to 55dB dynamic range would be a half speed mastered pressing with lots of headroom. I had a Teldec LP of the Bizet's Carmen Suite that had a bass drum wallop that was completely untrackable by even the best turntables. (On CD it didn't sound particularly out of the ordinary, but on LP it was too much bass energy too close to the center groove where tracking and resolution are at their lowest.) A normal record from the late 70s or so would be pretty close to 8 bit. particularly a record with more than 17 minutes on a side. The surfaces during the oil crisis were particularly bad. Most CDs don't exceed 55dB. The only ones I can think of that do that on a regular basis are BIS classical recordings, but those are often *too* dynamic for comfortable listening. It's easy to fall into the "bigger numbers are better" trap. But the truth is that balance in the sweet spot is much more important than the extremes.

 

[Don Hills]

  It means the wave's center is not fixed at the 0 level.  I would think it's a universal term used in electronics or audio samples as it has to do with vertical shift of the wave. ...

 
Also, if you perform spectrum analysis of a signal with DC or near DC content, you'll see the level increase at the 0 Hz end of the display. I see this quite often on commercial productions. Here's a particularly bad example:
 

 

 
It's a quite sensitive method of checking for offset. It readily shows offset that doesn't show up on a waveform display.

 

[ferday]

Also, if you perform spectrum analysis of a signal with DC or near DC content, you'll see the level increase at the 0 Hz end of the display. I see this quite often on commercial productions. Here's a particularly bad example:


It's a quite sensitive method of checking for offset. It readily shows offset that doesn't show up on a waveform display.

Informative post, thanks

I've seen probably hundreds of spectrum analysis in audacity with the 0hz peak and always wondered why but never bothered to look into it, in the waveform it always seems so close to center (and nothing audible to me).

Makes perfect sense I just never made the (now obvious) connection. I sincerely doubt it means much but it might make a fun ABX to geek out with

 

[HWTest]

   
Really,  $100.00 US?  Please recommend some, I am in the market to replace my NuForce u192s which has problems with drop-outs/artifacts and everything I've looked at is in the $200 - $400 range (e.g. Wyred4Sound, iFi Audio, Bel Canto - I have one of the latter, love it, but it's a little pricey).

Musiland Monitor 01 USD - the only downside is it is Windows only.
 
http://www.head-fi.org/t/423960/musiland-monitor-01-usd-24-192-usb-to-spdif
 
http://www.amazon.com/Musiland-01USD-Digital-Stereo-384khz/dp/B00ACG5K3O

 

[SharpEars]

   
Really,  $100.00 US?  Please recommend some, I am in the market to replace my NuForce u192s which has problems with drop-outs/artifacts and everything I've looked at is in the $200 - $400 range (e.g. Wyred4Sound, iFi Audio, Bel Canto - I have one of the latter, love it, but it's a little pricey).

 
How about this littly device for for $55:
 
http://www.amazon.com/192Khz-Coaxial-Optical-Headphone-MUSE-MiniUSBDAC-Silver/dp/B00BN39RSE

 

[esldude]

   
Really,  $100.00 US?  Please recommend some, I am in the market to replace my NuForce u192s which has problems with drop-outs/artifacts and everything I've looked at is in the $200 - $400 range (e.g. Wyred4Sound, iFi Audio, Bel Canto - I have one of the latter, love it, but it's a little pricey).

Well I guess this one is more like $149, but it is an asynchronous converter.  I had the other Peachtree in mind, and it is $99, but it isn't asynchronous.  So a bit of confusion on my part.  My experience has been the asynch models generally have no problems with drop outs or other glitches.  Other approaches used sometimes work fine and sometimes don't with the few I have used or known about.   Of course your NuForce I believe is asynch itself.  Unusual that it would suffer drop outs.
 
http://www.crutchfield.com/p_731X1/Peachtree-Audio-X1.html?tp=60317
 
Also if you look a bit you can find 2nd hand Music Fidelity V-links which were asynchronous USB.  I know people with those and they don't have problems with dropouts or other issues.  Work with Mac, Windows or Linux.

 

[Krutsch]

^^^ thanks, everyone, for the helpful suggestions.  Food for thought...