[bigshot]

well, if you believe this:
1. decreased noisefloor doesnt matter (also useful for digital volume attenuation, tho as long the processing happens in 24 bit this doesnt matter much)
2. dac filters dont benefit from higher samplerates
3. there are sometimes different masters for 24 and 16 bit, so it also depends on taste

We need to send you back to the original post for some remedial reading because:

1) 16 bit has plenty of room for digital audio attenuation.
2) A higher sample rate has absolutely nothing to do with bit rate, and DACs oversample anyway.
3.) Mastering is mastering. HD audio can sound better, or it can sound worse. Mastering also has nothing to do with bit rate.

 

[gregorio]

1. decreased noisefloor doesnt matter
2. dac filters dont benefit from higher samplerates
3. there are sometimes different masters for 24 and 16 bit, so it also depends on taste

1. But it doesn’t decrease noise floor, the noise floor of the recording is the same regardless of whether you use 24bit for playback or 16bit. What 24bit does is lower the digital noise floor, NOT the noise floor of the recording, so of course it doesn’t matter.
2. As bigshot stated, DACs (and ADCs) oversample and what has sample rates got to do with 16 or 24 bit depth anyway? So obvious this doesn’t matter.
3. Different masters depends on taste, 16 or 24 bit doesn’t. If there is a 24bit master you like, that master could be distributed in 16bit with no audible difference! So again, obviously this doesn’t matter either.

i think these three are the biggest benefits, also objectively "backed up" in theory

What “theory”? If you’re talking about a theory/idea you’ve just made up yourself, how is it “objectively” backed-up?

tho in the end like i said sometime earlier everyone should listen and decide for themself

How can you decide for yourself by listening to an inaudible difference? How exactly should someone listen to something inaudible?

One thing that is forgotten too, 24bit give you a dynamic range of 144db.

Something we have to be careful of here: 24bit does not give you a dynamic range of 144dB, it provides the potential of 144dB dynamic range. In practice, the dynamic range is limited by the self-noise of mics+mic pre-amps and the acoustic noise floor of the recording environment. The dynamic range of most recordings is 40-50dB, in some cases it can be as much as 60dB, in a tiny number of cases it might reach as much as around 70dB.

G

 

[bigshot]

One little note on mastering... At one time, CDs were often hot mastered. This was because people would rip the CD to MP3s and put them on shuffle play. Having them hot made songs all play at a high level- on shuffle, a loud song wouldn't be followed by a very quiet one. This isn't the case any more. Now people listen to streaming primarily. Physical media sales have dropped in most demographics *except* people who care about sound quality and those who play an album all the way through- not on shuffle. So for the past five or six years, CDs have been well-mastered with a decent dynamic range. Hot mastering has become a thing of the past. However a lot of CDs produced in the era of hot mastering are still in print, so you have to do a little research to figure out what albums have good sound and which ones don't. But newly released CDs should sound as good as HD versions, so a glance at the release date should give you a good idea.

 

[Ghoostknight]

that master could be distributed in 16bit with no audible difference! So again, obviously this doesn’t matter either.

yes but some/most of them arent, so it "matters" if you go with 16 bit only

What 24bit does is lower the digital noise floor, NOT the noise floor of the recording, so of course it doesn’t matter.

true, thats why also said it

What “theory”? If you’re talking about a theory/idea you’ve just made up yourself, how is it “objectively” backed-up?

well just take a minimum phase filter which would be the easiest example since it suffers from phaseshift, take a higher samplerate and the phaseshift is truely outside the audible range, not so much with 16 bit 44,1khz, but yea the audibility of phaseshift is debateable, imo its audible

same goes for early slope filters, or filters that start so late that there is aliasing which might be audible

How can you decide for yourself by listening to an inaudible difference? How exactly should someone listen to something inaudible?

the effects of masters/dac filters are not inaudible, tho there is room to argue if the audible sideeffects of dac filters matter "that much"

 

[bigshot]

There isn't much point to sharing info with you. You don't really understand what we say, and you've already made up your mind to be wrong.

 

[Ghoostknight]

There isn't much point to sharing info with you. You don't really understand what we say, and you've already made up your mind to be wrong.

i understand what you guys say but your "facts" of inaudibility are sometimes simply wrong..

 

[bigshot]

You wouldn't know that because you've never done a controlled listening test to determine audibility.

 

[Ghoostknight]

You wouldn't know that because you've never done a controlled listening test to determine audibility.

because the change is obvious if you know what to listen for, for example between linear and minimum phase

 

[bigshot]

The only way you could know that as a fact is to do a controlled listening test. You haven't done that. You're just guessing. Your unwarranted pride in your ability to hear is a clear indication that you're subject to bias.

The fact that phase has nothing to do with bit rate just makes you sound like you don't know what you're talking about. I imagine your fancy (bogus) claims might earn you some sort of respect among audiophools. All you have to do is throw some fancy words around and be insistent that you can hear things they can't. But around here, it just gets you dismissed.

 

[Vamp898]

i understand what you guys say but your "facts" of inaudibility are sometimes simply wrong..

I posted the difference between an 16bit and 24bit file. Its >=20kHz -85db loud white noise.

I give you 1 Million $ in Cash if you can hear that

 

[bigshot]

Be careful you specify no gain riding on fade outs. There's one golden eared "expert" who finally had to admit that he was looping and cranking the volume on the ends of fadeouts to hear what he claimed he had trained with Hindu Shamen to be able to hear. (I'm exaggerating a little, but not much.)

 

[gregorio]

yes but some/most of them arent, so it "matters" if you go with 16 bit only

What you’re describing is a marketing issue, not a difference between 16 and 24 bit. Sometimes, a somewhat different master is created for 24bit release to the 16bit release, in order to justify a higher price for the so called “hi-res” version. This would not exist if audiophiles were not so easily fooled by such a simple marketing trick and it’s easy to demonstrate it’s just a marketing ploy rather than an actual audible difference between 16 and 24bit by dithering that 24bit master down to 16bit and noting the lack of any audible difference.

[1] well just take a minimum phase filter which would be the easiest example since it suffers from phaseshift, take a higher samplerate and the phaseshift is truely outside the audible range, not so much with 16 bit 44,1khz … [2] same goes for early slope filters, or filters that start so late that there is aliasing which might be audible

1. Again, we do “take a higher sample rate and the phase shift is truly outside the audible range” and that is with 16/44! You don’t seem to have heard of oversampling despite it having been around since digital audio was first released to the public and it being explained to you!
2. That’s nonsense as there are no converters with an “early slope filter, or filters that start so late” that could cause audible aliasing!

The actual “Digital Audio Theory” calls for a Whittaker-Shannon Interpolation Filter. The “theory” you’ve quoted is simply a (mistaken) idea you’ve come up with. So contrary to your (FALSE) assertion, the theory does NOT backup your assertion, the only thing that does is the “incorrect idea” that you yourself have invented!

the effects of masters/dac filters are not inaudible

The effects of an anti-alias filter that maybe applied during mastering are completely inaudible. Have you even tested any mastering anti-alias filters? And so are the anti-imaging filters in DACs, unless for some bizarre marketing reason they’ve been deliberately designed to be audible.

because the change is obvious if you know what to listen for, for example between linear and minimum phase

Knowing what to listen for is easy. For example, it’s trivially easy to hear the pre-ringing of a linear phase high-pass filter set at say 200Hz with a near full-scale transient peaking at 200Hz. However, hearing that effect/difference with a low-pass filter, at a far lower level and at 22kHz is NOT. In fact, just it’s far lower level alone renders it virtually inaudible, let alone that it occurs at 22kHz which is outside of human audibility anyway.

i understand what you guys say but your "facts" of inaudibility are sometimes simply wrong..

It’s not “our facts” of inaudibility, it’s the facts proven (and re-proven) by science over the course of a century or more! Human hearing extends to around 20kHz in the case of children (with perfect hearing), around 16kHz in the case of adults and lower in the case of older adults. To prove that an effect not only at 22kHz but at a very low level is audible, you’re going to need some extremely robust, reliable evidence. Without this, your claim the we/science is “simply wrong”, is just another BS claim! And just in case it’s not already painfully obvious, marketing and/or impressions from sighted listening tests are pretty much the exact opposite of robust, reliable evidence.

G

 

[Ryokan]

It's generally accepted you can't hear a difference between 24 and 16 bit but going from 24 to 16bit introduces noise from the quantization so you need dither to smooth the sound and make it sound less harsh. So without dither 24bit would sound superior to 16bit?

 

[Vamp898]

It's generally accepted you can't hear a difference between 24 and 16 bit but going from 24 to 16bit introduces noise from the quantization so you need dither to smooth the sound and make it sound less harsh. So without dither 24bit would sound superior to 16bit?

That is a very good point.

I did the exact same process again, converting 24bit to 16bit disabling all dither and changing from best quality (slowest) to worst quality) fastest and surprisingly, the result was lower.

With using dither and highest quality, the difference was -90db white noise below 20kHz and -85db white noise above 20kHz

Without dither and lowest quality, the difference is -110db white noise equally spread over the whole spectrum. So the quality is actually higher without dithering...

 

[71 dB]

because the change is obvious if you know what to listen for, for example between linear and minimum phase

Some changes in audio are very audible. If I move my speakers one feet, I am going to hear the difference in sound easily. If I truncate (using dither or not) 16 bit audio to just 8 bits, I am going to hear the difference easily. However, if I instead truncate to 9 bits, I can still hear the difference, but it is much harder (easier with dynamic classical music than with DR6 pop music). Going to 10 bits makes hearing differences even harder and at 11 bit it takes a real effort if I can do it at all! That's because the difference (noise floor) is 18 dB lower with 11 bit than it was with 8 bit. If 11 bit audio can offer so much fidelity I struggle to hear the noise floor, 16 bit (30 dB lower noise floor) must be overkill and it is! That's why 24 bit is nonsensical in consumer audio and 16 bit is enough and then some.

Maybe you are a genetic freak with superhuman hearing. Maybe you just assume you can hear things other people can't. I don't know what your hearing capabilities are, but the latter is much much more probable.