Amirm will reject that idea with his argument that we can still get audible cues below noise under the right conditions. we can't really make a point so long as he can argue with extreme circumstances.
I believe we can make such an argument/point. We can easily make this point with reference to real life, practical application but the difficulty is making the point with science alone, not because science disproves the point but because there isn't, as far as I'm aware, published science which covers all of the required factors.
To hear beyond the limits of 16bit requires ALL the following to occur simultaneously:
1. A recording with a noise floor lower than -120dBFS. AND, 2. A DAC, an amp, headphones/speakers and a listening environment, the noise of which COMBINED does not exceed 0dBSPL and which are ALL also capable of >120dSPL peaks. AND finally, 3. The desire to listen to your music at >120dBSPL peaks AND the ability to actually hear a 0dBSPL noise floor after such peak levels.
1. In theory it wouldn't be impossible to achieve this with a combination of a low noise floor recording environment, an ADC with greater than 120dB dynamic range, the use of mics with a very large dynamic range and very close mic'ing techniques. In practice this does NOT occur though, we require headroom when recording because we do not know in advance what the peaks are going to be, typically this would be anywhere from 6dB to about 18dB. When we normalise the recording, bring the peaks close to 0dBFS, the noise floor of the recording will also obviously increase by around 6-18dB, so even with the very quietest ADC's available, this would still bring our peak to noise floor ratio to within or well within 120dB. Additionally, if we do use mics with a very high dynamic range and close mic'ing then we also always apply significant compression. In real life, as
@amirm data does not disprove, the highest peak performance levels occur where we also have the highest noise levels, rock/pop or club gigs for example, resulting in peak to noise level of probably no more than 60dB or so. Where we find the highest peak levels vs noise floor is almost certainly at a symphony concerts, where the audience is actively trying to be as quiet as possible but, we do not use close mic'ing techniques when recording an orchestra, as amirm's quoted photo also demonstrates. We choose mics based on artistic requirements, NOT on dynamic range performance and even that quiet audience and/or quiet musicians are not achieving a 0dBSPL noise floor. We cannot however prove any of this with published science because, AFAIK, science has not published anything in this regard; how do you measure the noise floor of a concert venue with musicians and an audience WHILE the musicians are playing? The mistake being made is to argue purely on what science has published, completely ignore the real life factors science hasn't studied/published and to call the resultant conclusions "real life". It's akin to arguing that the published data on car fuel economy, before the time of more applicable/appropriate methods of measuring fuel usage, was accurate "real life" figures and those arguing against them were ignoring the science. Today, we have other published "scientific" fuel economy figures which are more appropriate because they account for real life factors which the previous tests did not, real roads, air resistance and real driving conditions for example.
The only potential to encounter such a dynamic range on a recording is after the musicians have stopped playing, for example, during a fade out applied by the engineers at the end of some pieces.
2. Very rare but possible.
3. Exceedingly rare to have both and even if there are such people, it's certainly inadvisable as the published science demonstrates that MUSIC peaks above 120dBSPL are potentially dangerous/damaging and that's with a significantly higher than 0dBSPL noise floor!
if the argument is that 16bit forces the master to cut or compress realistic dynamic ranges within an album, how many 24bit albums show more than 90dB of dynamic within the signal?
That argument holds no water, dynamic ranges are routinely compressed but due to other limiting factors, not the dynamic range limitations of 16bit. The argument has been made that on those almost non-existent occasions where close mic'ing has been employed with very wide dynamic range mics, not to normalise or apply compression. The problem with this argument is that it effectively means not actually mixing or mastering the originally recorded channels or specifically making a recording with huge dynamic range rather than artistry as the goal and for a very tiny number of potential consumers who fulfil all the above requirements and are willing to potentially damage their hearing. There is no precedent for such commercial content, certainly no precedent for such content to make any money and if anyone did make such content, they could potentially open themselves up to law suits!
I think the argument is that you can't guarantee that the engineers will use shaping in the end, though I would assume that these days all of this is pretty automatic.
It is the recommended practise but it is not always applied. The reason why it's not always applied had been deliberately avoided by amirm, despite being asked a number of times. I know some mastering engineers who do not apply any sort of dither, on the basis that on a particular track/group of tracks they cannot hear any truncation error and that if they can't hear any in their mastering studio with their experienced hearing then it's not going to affect consumers, with their lesser environments and hearing. It is expected that those occasions when the recording is faded out, that it fades out into the consumer's noise floor, not into the dither, noise-shaped dither or truncation noise of the recording. Obviously, we are not accounting for the likes of amirm, people with years of specific training to detect errors/noise, specific equipment to isolate environmental noise and using that equipment in a non-recommended (and potentially damaging) way to make the noise on recordings far more noticeable. It's typically not possible or desirable to account for such an extremity, economics dictate a limited amount of time to create a recording and accounting for such an extremity would grind each of the recording, mixing and mastering phases virtually to a standstill! If we
were to account for such people, we could still do so with 16bit, if we chose, which allows us to have a dynamic range of up to 150dB in the critical band. The fact that we rarely choose such a potential dynamic range is a choice, not a limitation of 16bit.
Amirm has chosen to interpret my OP as a rant against higher than 16bit. That is an INCORRECT interpretation! I've been professionally recording EXCLUSIVELY in greater than 16bit since 1992. My OP was not designed to argue against 24bit, it was designed to expose the myth that 24bit as a consumer distribution format provides higher resolution than 16bit. It doesn't, it provides exactly same resolution but with a theoretically lower noise floor which in practise (real life) is either not employable or discernible ONLY if one were to playback recordings significantly differently to how the artists intended AND/or at potentially dangerous or very dangerous levels!!
G
