[efeuvete]

But my point is that natural musical sounds have natural instrument noise which should not be "killed"; Natural sounds are not sine wave forms; Not even perfect periodical sounds of any wave form

 

[lamode]

  But my point is that natural musical sounds have natural instrument noise which should not be "killed"; Natural sounds are not sine wave forms; Not even perfect periodical sounds of any wave form

 
The errors in a 16/44 waveform are so small that they are around -100dB, and therefore inaudible in the real world. No arguments about the nature of an instrument are relevant here.

 

[efeuvete]

"arguments about the nature of an instrument are not relevant here" sounds to me like a strange dogma in a forum about musical sounds.

 

[manbear]

1) It's irrelevant that B is non-periodic. B is still a sound and it has some kind of wave form. If it didnt, then it wouldnt be a sound at all.

3) Nyquist applies to B in the exact same way it applies to A. There is no difference. Both are sounds with frequencies in the finite range of human hearing.

 

[efeuvete]

Manbear, from my first post up to this one I had no intention of disturbing anybody but I'm afraid this idea is not correct:
 
"Nyquist applies to B in the exact same way it applies to A. There is no difference. Both are sounds with frequencies in the finite range of human hearing"

 

[FFBookman]

Of course it's audible in stereo-mixed music. You try to isolate things with mono test tones and you wonder why you can't capture it.  Sad, weird, to be a scientist with such limited tools.
 
Rent a recording studio, they need the business, and do some 24bit audio tests there. You will easily hear it in the pan steps, in the depth and clarity of reverb decay, in the presentation of the soundstage as a clear, 3D, thing. 
 
Good signal chain will reveal much, even at 16/44, that most people don't even hear. Even on cheap speakers. 
 
At 24/44 and higher sampling rates, there is more data which provides a more nuances rendering of the music. You will never capture this in the lab.
 
Science must adapt and grow to learn how to perform proper music sound quality tests. 
 
 
If you hear 24bit music played on a competent system and you come away thinking that people don't need to hear that, you are anti-music in my book.  You can be pro-music and pro-science, ya know.

 

[FFBookman]

   
The errors in a 16/44 waveform are so small that they are around -100dB, and therefore inaudible in the real world. No arguments about the nature of an instrument are relevant here.

Talking about waveform pictures are we?
 
Recorded music is all about the stereo presentation, timing cues, and the timbre of the tones. Your waveforms tell you nothing important as far as sound quality. They are a pretty side effect of your ADC or DAC chip. A visual signpost to the wrong way of thinking about sound.

 

[StanD]

 
Talking about waveform pictures are we?
 
Recorded music is all about the stereo presentation, timing cues, and the timbre of the tones. Your waveforms tell you nothing important as far as sound quality. They are a pretty side effect of your ADC or DAC chip. A visual signpost to the wrong way of thinking about sound.

The final recorded music that is played back is the sum of all instruments playing as a single value at one point in time. The deviation of 1/2 bit at 16 bits of resolution is simply below our ability to hear. Jacking that up to 24 bits does not improve the situation. This has been proven time and time again. If you wish to go hires, nobody here is stopping you, however, we need not go along the ride.

 

[FFBookman]

  The final recorded music that is played back is the sum of all instruments playing as a single value at one point in time. The deviation of 1/2 bit at 16 bits of resolution is simply below our ability to hear. Jacking that up to 24 bits does not improve the situation. This has been proven time and time again. If you wish to go hires, nobody here is stopping you, however, we need not go along the ride.

I'm not trying to take you on a ride. I'm answering the accusation that 24bit PCM audio is a "myth" or "snake oil".  It's neither. It's been used in production and in listening to classical music for a while now. You need the right DAC and analog stage to really show it's advantages, but most mid-level and up gear will render it well enough.
 
My mastering engineer says that he can use all the bits, all the extra space, to render a better sound at any resolution, so he recommends delivery in 24/192 and will immediately take it to 24/192 using his high end converters regardless of delivery format. He's also been delivering final masters to Apple's mastered for iTunes program as 24bit PCM for years now. Apple currently down samples and then sells lossy mp3 and sometimes "lossless" 16/44 alac  (Not lossless, since it's been down sampled, but hey why get accuracy in the way of marketing talk.)
 
I'm not sure it's headroom alone, I think there's something in the dithering that alters the transients and the timing cues. The soundstage suffers after dither, and the overall tone and number of "voices" you hear clearly is diminished.  None of this is measurable or can be drawn on a screen as a waveform, so it goes ignored by some, disregarded by the ignorant.

 

[FFBookman]

Can anyone here PROVE to me that dither is perfectly stereo matched?
 
Dither is fuzz. Is that fuzz exactly the same on each channel? 
 
Even if it's mathematically the same on each channel, can you prove to me that my detection of it doesn't alter either the soundstage or the timbre of the recording?
 
But "sound science" has no way to measure such things, which is why it's defeated in the practical world all the time. 24bit audio sounds better in the studio before dither is applied. Everyone knows this. It's a compromise for storage space/bandwidth.  Always has been.

 

[RRod]

 
Of course it's audible in stereo-mixed music. You try to isolate things with mono test tones and you wonder why you can't capture it.  Sad, weird, to be a scientist with such limited tools.
 
Rent a recording studio, they need the business, and do some 24bit audio tests there. You will easily hear it in the pan steps, in the depth and clarity of reverb decay, in the presentation of the soundstage as a clear, 3D, thing. 
 
Good signal chain will reveal much, even at 16/44, that most people don't even hear. Even on cheap speakers. 
 
At 24/44 and higher sampling rates, there is more data which provides a more nuances rendering of the music. You will never capture this in the lab.
 
Science must adapt and grow to learn how to perform proper music sound quality tests. 
 
 
If you hear 24bit music played on a competent system and you come away thinking that people don't need to hear that, you are anti-music in my book.  You can be pro-music and pro-science, ya know.

 
I've heard it on HD800s with a V200 and a Bifrost, and couldn't ABX 24 versus 16 on anything. In fact, I can get many older tracks down to 14 and 12 bits and still not be able to tell a difference in a blind test. Either you've done this kind of thing for yourself or you haven't. If you have, then fine; if you haven't, well there you go.

 

[StanD]

 
I'm not trying to take you on a ride. I'm answering the accusation that 24bit PCM audio is a "myth" or "snake oil".  It's neither. It's been used in production and in listening to classical music for a while now. You need the right DAC and analog stage to really show it's advantages, but most mid-level and up gear will render it well enough.
 
My mastering engineer says that he can use all the bits, all the extra space, to render a better sound at any resolution, so he recommends delivery in 24/192 and will immediately take it to 24/192 using his high end converters regardless of delivery format. He's also been delivering final masters to Apple's mastered for iTunes program as 24bit PCM for years now. Apple currently down samples and then sells lossy mp3 and sometimes "lossless" 16/44 alac  (Not lossless, since it's been down sampled, but hey why get accuracy in the way of marketing talk.)
 
I'm not sure it's headroom alone, I think there's something in the dithering that alters the transients and the timing cues. The soundstage suffers after dither, and the overall tone and number of "voices" you hear clearly is diminished.  None of this is measurable or can be drawn on a screen as a waveform, so it goes ignored by some, disregarded by the ignorant.

All unproven anecdotes. Real tests show otherwise. We can all agree that higher resolution is useful for the recording/processing/mixdown processes, however, that's where it ends. Better DACs and Amps cannot help with human limitations.

 

[FFBookman]

No one listens to me, that's cool. Who am I? Let me try to restate the crux of my argument.
 
You can't ABX test for music quality.
 
New tests, or a refined testing process, is needed to accurately reflect music sound quality.
 
ABX test is poison to the way we consume music.
 
ABX is useless for attempting to track music sound quality enjoyment because it changes the way we process our music.
 
ABX makes garbage results for music tests. They should be thrown out with the old kitty litter.
 
 We don't listen to music to compare it to a different quality.  Our emotional response to music changes immediately when trying to pick or detect a quality.
 
Our listening MODE changes the second you try to introduce such a test. We are, at that point, listening in a different way, and reacting in a different way than we do when enjoying our own music normally.
 
ABX tests tell you if people can pick something out from a rapidly changing environment.
 
It does not say which one sounds better in the long run. It doesn't track which one they would rather own if given the ability to "test drive" properly.
 
I can and have failed an ABX test trying to determine between 8bit and 16bit. I know how these things work. It's very hard to detect and very easy to confuse people's perceptions given the parameters of this wholly unsuited tests. You can play the same file 5x in a row and people will usually think they heard different versions. It's crud from the test, or more accurately, the proof that the test does not match our musical listening abilities. 
 
If you truly consider yourself a man of science you will understand these criticisms of the testing environment and method.  ABX results always show confusion so they are always used by the side that claims less quality.
 
The burden of proof is not on me to prove what I and millions more hear, the burden of proof is on your scientific principles to design a proper test to reflect (prove) reality.

 

[StanD]

I see we're heading back to mysticism.

 

[RRod]

 
If you truly consider yourself a man of science you will understand these criticisms of the testing environment and method.  ABX results always show confusion so they are always used by the side that claims less quality.
 
The burden of proof is not on me to prove what I and millions more hear, the burden of proof is on your scientific principles to design a proper test to reflect (prove) reality.

 
If you consider yourself a man of science you'd agree on the importance of blind testing. And the burden of proof is on you: there are millions more who can't hear the difference between 192k mp3s and the original wav.