[bigshot]

That image was part of a video they made to promote the Pono.

 

[sonitus mirus]

 
I looked for that "graph" on the pono site; where did you find it?

 
It was originally on their Kick Starter site, but it has been replaced with a different graph.
 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/its-masters-damit

 

[castleofargh]

  I looked for that "graph" on the pono site; where did you find it?

as bigshot says. I remembered it from one of the silly videos, and just googled pono+underwater in google image hoping somebody would have done a screenshot already ^_^. 

 

[Krutsch]

   
It was originally on their Kick Starter site, but it has been replaced with a different graph.
 
http://www.innerfidelity.com/content/its-masters-damit

So, I watched that video which was interesting. Thanks for sharing.
Maybe Sound Science needs to consider replacing the ABX comparator with the head-bop test. 

 
Then, at the 5:00 minute mark, after being passionately lectured about the craft and the artistry, we have the singer from Linkin Park shrieking into a mic. And then, we get to watch Snoop Dogg wax-on all nostalgic about CDs... right, so when you're reading the lyrics, you can really understand the context of what Snoop means when rants about b-i-t-c-h-e-s and hoes.
 
I hear what my 12 year-old daughter listens to, and it's no better. I try... I've exposed her to a lot of music and I encourage her to use the 2-channel system, so it doesn't sound like crap. I bought her a nice set of Grados to replace the ear buds and sometimes she wants a copy of my graybeard stuff she's just heard for her iTunes library. But as soon as I take my hand off that steering wheel, she's back to Bruno Mars, using the speakers on her laptop.
 
Really, who on earth is the target for that marketing message?

 

[castleofargh]

  Maybe Sound Science needs to consider replacing the ABX comparator with the head-bop test. 

 

here is what busta rhymes had to say after listening to the pono in a car(because that's where you can judge real music for a portable DAP... in a car).

 

[mindbomb]

The question has come back to focus because of pono's crappy marketing, but tbh, I kinda don't mind the 24 bit. I have 3 points:
 
1. The increased dynamic range is nice since 96db on CD is arguably not enough, and you no longer have to use dithering which increases noise.
2. The size increase is only 50%. With advancements in storage, this is gonna seem like less and less of a big deal. Sizes of albums are still really small compared to good high res video or a game with high res textures.
3. Why 16 bit lossless in the first place? If you are really a miser with bits, you can get a high quality lossy file that you can't distinguish from the lossless at fraction of the bitrate. And if you encode directly from the 24 bit master, you get better dynamic range too afaik.

 

[Lespectraal]

  The question has come back to focus because of pono's crappy marketing, but tbh, I kinda don't mind the 24 bit. I have 3 points:
 
1. The increased dynamic range is nice since 96db on CD is arguably not enough, and you no longer have to use dithering which increases noise.
2. The size increase is only 50%. With advancements in storage, this is gonna seem like less and less of a big deal. Sizes of albums are still really small compared to good high res video or a game with high res textures.
3. Why 16 bit lossless in the first place? If you are really a miser with bits, you can get a high quality lossy file that you can't distinguish from the lossless at fraction of the bitrate. And if you encode directly from the 24 bit master, you get better dynamic range too afaik.

 
I am not an expert in any of the fields pertaining to audio, so there's that.
 
Now I'm going to use my knowledge I have gained so far from reading what I have researched, and

1. Music doesn't go above 60db anyways. 96db is plenty for playback.
2. The size increase is only 50%, with the sound quality increase of 0%.
3. 16bit/44.1kHz is the sweet spot for capturing what that matters for playback with transparency and fidelity.
 
Those points matters for studio use, but has no bearing at all for playback(Digital volume control does benefit from the added bits though).
 
 

 

[castleofargh]

Quote:

  The question has come back to focus because of pono's crappy marketing, but tbh, I kinda don't mind the 24 bit. I have 3 points:
 
1. The increased dynamic range is nice since 96db on CD is arguably not enough, and you no longer have to use dithering which increases noise.
2. The size increase is only 50%. With advancements in storage, this is gonna seem like less and less of a big deal. Sizes of albums are still really small compared to good high res video or a game with high res textures.
3. Why 16 bit lossless in the first place? If you are really a miser with bits, you can get a high quality lossy file that you can't distinguish from the lossless at fraction of the bitrate. And if you encode directly from the 24 bit master, you get better dynamic range too afaik.

 
1. as said more dynamic is absolutely not for the song itself, no song uses 90db, it's at best for the noise floor.
before we had even less than 16bit, like k7 tapes and vinyls. and both were cool enough for sound quality, a little too much distortion, but the most audible and obvious problem with those was the noise. so a way to push that noise down was clearly a good decision. now do we hear the dithered noise floor of a 16bit CD when we listen to our songs? no, else people wouldn't fail ABx so much. I mean if all I had to do was listen for some noise, I clearly shouldn't struggle so much to tell 16/44 apart from 24/96 in an abx. did you try that? to actually judge for yourself how low a noise you can really hear when music is playing at the same time?
so if it's not for the dynamic of the song and not for the noise, what's the point of adding bits?
 
2. I agree with you that storage isn't the reason to stay at 16bit. if it was the same price, with the same products available, I might very well have my tracks in 24bit flac on the computer. at least for archive purpose. but we clearly don't live in that world. we live in a world where there is no transparency, and you end up paying more for something you usually know nothing about.
 
3. why would encoding to mp3@320 from 24bit improve dynamic range?
 
 
 
most of us here do have some hires files, some audio DVDs some SACDs. we're not anti-hires because our religion told us to, we're really just anti BS. we know that a highres file will measure slightly better than 16/44, at least for the noise floor. we're all just saying that people should concentrate on what we actually hear, instead of buying into marketing.

 

[lamode]

  The question has come back to focus because of pono's crappy marketing, but tbh, I kinda don't mind the 24 bit. I have 3 points:
 
1. The increased dynamic range is nice since 96db on CD is arguably not enough, and you no longer have to use dithering which increases noise.
2. The size increase is only 50%. With advancements in storage, this is gonna seem like less and less of a big deal. Sizes of albums are still really small compared to good high res video or a game with high res textures.
3. Why 16 bit lossless in the first place? If you are really a miser with bits, you can get a high quality lossy file that you can't distinguish from the lossless at fraction of the bitrate. And if you encode directly from the 24 bit master, you get better dynamic range too afaik.

 
1. Really? Are you actually hearing quantization noise? You'd be lucky to have a listening room as quiet as 30dB, which means that if you were listening to music with peaks at 116dB (painful) your quantization noise would still be as quiet as the room background noise.
 
If you:
a) have exceptional hearing (very few do) AND
b) you live in an anechoic chamber (even fewer do) AND
c) you listen to music with really really quiet passages (only a few classical recordings would qualify) AND
d) you have your system turned up so loud that the peaks are painful AND
e) the master itself has a noise floor lower than 96dB
 
THEN you might hear a little quantization noise, which is still a benign hiss. (and I'm being generous here as there are techniques to achieve over 100dB DR with a CD)
 
2. True, the 50% extra data of 24 bit is not a BIG deal, but it's still wasted space and space still costs money even if it's not a lot.
 
3. You won't get an MP3 file with higher DR just because you converted from a 24 bit file.
16 bit is a good format because it is enough for any domestic listening situation (as I showed above). No-one is choosing it because they are a "miser with bits"

 

[mindbomb]

To the issue of background noise, there are IEMs that provide isolation on that order. But also, I think room noise is usually constant and can be tuned out due to habituation. And also, just because the noise is below the room noise wouldn't mean it is inaudible. For the lossy file with high dynamic range, I'm not sure about mp3, but vorbis and aac are floating point, so they could have more dynamic range than 16 bits, right?

 

[RRod]

  To the issue of background noise, there are IEMs that provide isolation on that order. But also, I think room noise is usually constant and can be tuned out due to habituation. And also, just because the noise is below the room noise wouldn't mean it is inaudible. For the lossy file with high dynamic range, I'm not sure about mp3, but vorbis and aac are floating point, so they could have more dynamic range than 16 bits, right?

 
Vorbis and AAC use floating point for their internal calculations, but the PCM signal that is recreated upon decoding will be 16bit if that was the format of the signal that went into it.

 

[mindbomb]

I'd like to add that I compared the size of some lossless 16 bit files to lossless 24 bit files, and it seemed the size difference was about 100%, rather than the 50% it is for uncompressed. I guess it is easier to compress 16 bit files. This raises the stakes beyond what I was expecting. 
 
The main thing I was trying to say by bringing up lossy is that 16 bit is an arbitrary standard. It seems to me that people in this thread treat it like an ideal value, where everything above 16 bit lossless is a pointless waste of space. What is to stop someone who listens from high quality lossy files from saying that it is the sweet spot and 16 bit lossless is a pointless waste of space? Or that 24 bit is the sweet spot, and DSD is a waste of space? Is there anything particularly special about 16 bit lossless?

 

[bigshot]

Anything beyond the line of audible transparency then.

 

[castleofargh]

  I'd like to add that I compared the size of some lossless 16 bit files to lossless 24 bit files, and it seemed the size difference was about 100%, rather than the 50% it is for uncompressed. I guess it is easier to compress 16 bit files. This raises the stakes beyond what I was expecting. 
 
The main thing I was trying to say by bringing up lossy is that 16 bit is an arbitrary standard. It seems to me that people in this thread treat it like an ideal value, where everything above 16 bit lossless is a pointless waste of space. What is to stop someone who listens from high quality lossy files from saying that it is the sweet spot and 16 bit lossless is a pointless waste of space? Or that 24 bit is the sweet spot, and DSD is a waste of space? Is there anything particularly special about 16 bit lossless?

abx!
instead of pondering about who has the most complete understanding of digital audio, just listen for yourself outside of biases like already knowing what is playing. and decide for yourself what is or isn't important with only your ears.
 
if the differences are obvious, then you may ask yourself if they are bad changes or just differences, and decide to pick one format or another depending on space, price, compatibility or just how they sound.
it's a perfectly rational decision and there is no wrong answer to it.
 
now when I fail to hear a difference in 99% of the passages I try, even on hand picked critical tracks (high dynamic, calm passages...), then I feel perfectly fine saying that more than 16 bit is a waste of space. I don't need to be reassured about my choices, because I put them to the test, heard no difference and moved on.
 
I archive in flac 16bit, because it seems logical to have a lossless archive format. it just offers more options for the future, when a new codec will come up or when I will want to hardcode some EQ and replay gain on some tracks for a particular DAP with particular IEMs. reencoding from mp3 may not be really audibly bad, but it's not ideal as time passes. so I keep those in lossless, for the same reason I don't archive my pictures in jpg.
but all my DAPs are with mp3 320 or vbrmax. because when I'm on the move or in a train, more than mp3 is a waste of space for me ^_^.
so to answer you question, nothing can stop me! nothing!!!!!! muhahahahaha

 

 

[RRod]

  I'd like to add that I compared the size of some lossless 16 bit files to lossless 24 bit files, and it seemed the size difference was about 100%, rather than the 50% it is for uncompressed. I guess it is easier to compress 16 bit files. This raises the stakes beyond what I was expecting. 
 
The main thing I was trying to say by bringing up lossy is that 16 bit is an arbitrary standard. It seems to me that people in this thread treat it like an ideal value, where everything above 16 bit lossless is a pointless waste of space. What is to stop someone who listens from high quality lossy files from saying that it is the sweet spot and 16 bit lossless is a pointless waste of space? Or that 24 bit is the sweet spot, and DSD is a waste of space? Is there anything particularly special about 16 bit lossless?

 
There's nothing special about 16bit; it just happens to be the bit-depth that gets the necessary dynamic range for the broad range of music out there. Sometimes for fun (just to show you how weird some of us are), I find the minimal PCM bit-depth and sample rate at which I cannot pass an ABX test of a track vs. the original Redbook version. I have plenty of classical tracks that work fine at 14bit, lots of non-classical tracks that can go down to 12bits, and the occasional brick-wall special that is indistinguishable at 8bits. Since I'm older than some of the folks on here (not bigshot obviously ), I can usually also down-sample to 36kHz or so without affecting quality either.
 
You can see then, perhaps, why some of us get miffed at the suggestion that people need MOAR bits and samples. If 12/36 in indistinguishable to me from 16/44.1, why on earth would I want 24/192? And if someone else says their ears are much more super than mine, then I am naturally skeptical if they haven't done the same type of experimentation I have with their own hearing. People are all happy to put in the work of buying gear and hi-res material and writing subjective reviews, but they scoff at those of us who go a step further and put in the work of *testing* these things against the limits of our own organism.