[Traveller]

...It's almost as bad as politics these days... Come along with scientific reasoning and you are painted as fake news bearer. You don't have a fair chance if the majority wants to believe the other message.

"Alternative facts!!!"

 

[watchnerd]

   
Wow, even if 24bit output was possible it would mean a noise floor below the noise of the electronics, ie resistors etc.  What does 32bit offer outside the field of experimental science?

 
ESP

 

[StanD]

Oh Lord, you guys are either going to trigger a cataclysmic geological event or create some fake news.

 

[csglinux]

   
Wow, even if 24bit output was possible it would mean a noise floor below the noise of the electronics, ie resistors etc.  What does 32bit offer outside the field of experimental science?

 
I'm usually the world's biggest cynic regarding hi-res audio. There are way too many charlatans out there getting rich by exploiting the ignorant - and some of these fakers are even selling fake hi-res files!: http://www.head-fi.org/t/648932/bandcamp-promotion-thread/15#post_13283024
 
However, just for fun, I'm going to do my usual thing of playing Devil's advocate, for the very specific case of 24-bit. I made a comment on an earlier thread of Eke's, which I'll repeat here.
Imagine you have a great recording with a huge dynamic range, good headphones (obviously, or why would you be on headfi?!) and a good amp with a low noise floor. Now imagine raising the volume (dramatically, if you like) just during the quietest moment of the track. This is the audio dynamic-range equivalent of putting a hi-def picture under a microscope. Your ears still only need to cope with a limited dynamic range - you're simply using your amplifier to lower the gain during the Saturn V rocket launch and then raise it during the string quartet intro. Theoretically, you should then be able to 1) not destroy your hearing and 2) hear the difference between a 24-bit and 16-bit dithered noise floor. This is also relevant to the (rather unhelpful) single THD+N measurements given by amp/DAP manufacturers. I would not assume you won't ever be able to hear those apparently tiny differences, unless you only ever listen to 1 kHz sine waves at 80 dB.
 
I recently found the following article, which describes this more eloquently than I ever could:
 
http://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2014/09/15/audio-mythinformation-16-vs-24-bit-recordings/

 

[watchnerd]

  Oh Lord, you guys are either going to trigger a cataclysmic geological event or create some fake news.

 
In all seriousness:
 
I would love to have a DAC that could handle 32 bit or even 64 bit input so that after my DSP process up-converts to 64bit float in order to perform operations I wouldn't have to down-convert to to something S/PDIF can handle before going to the DAC.
 
Or maybe not....those would be some phat philes.

 

[StanD]

   
In all seriousness:
 
I would love to have a DAC that could handle 32 bit or even 64 bit input so that after my DSP process up-converts to 64bit float in order to perform operations I wouldn't have to down-convert to to something S/PDIF can handle before going to the DAC.
 
Or maybe not....those would be some phat philes.

So you want a DAC that does floating point conversions. The marketing department will take delight in that idea.

 

[spruce music]

   
I'm usually the world's biggest cynic regarding hi-res audio. There are way too many charlatans out there getting rich by exploiting the ignorant - and some of these fakers are even selling fake hi-res files!: http://www.head-fi.org/t/648932/bandcamp-promotion-thread/15#post_13283024
 
However, just for fun, I'm going to do my usual thing of playing Devil's advocate, for the very specific case of 24-bit. I made a comment on an earlier thread of Eke's, which I'll repeat here.
Imagine you have a great recording with a huge dynamic range, good headphones (obviously, or why would you be on headfi?!) and a good amp with a low noise floor. Now imagine raising the volume (dramatically, if you like) just during the quietest moment of the track. This is the audio dynamic-range equivalent of putting a hi-def picture under a microscope. Your ears still only need to cope with a limited dynamic range - you're simply using your amplifier to lower the gain during the Saturn V rocket launch and then raise it during the string quartet intro. Theoretically, you should then be able to 1) not destroy your hearing and 2) hear the difference between a 24-bit and 16-bit dithered noise floor. This is also relevant to the (rather unhelpful) single THD+N measurements given by amp/DAP manufacturers. I would not assume you won't ever be able to hear those apparently tiny differences, unless you only ever listen to 1 kHz sine waves at 80 dB.
 
I recently found the following article, which describes this more eloquently than I ever could:
 
http://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2014/09/15/audio-mythinformation-16-vs-24-bit-recordings/

What you are describing is gain riding.  Or in other words like compression.  Why not just compress the original 24 bit file judiciously and distribute in 16 bit?
 
Now sure you could do what you describe and perhaps detect a difference in 24 bit vs 16 bit recordings if they were done impeccably well in some of the quietest venues possible.  Yet, who would listen to music that way?
 
This is like high sample rates.  There might be some very minor benefit to some on the finest material and finest playback maybe.  Minor, now very minor very subtle very rarely.  Were it a real obvious improvement that some tout the argument against it would have died long ago.  It would be self evident to many people who also would be easily able to demonstrate under blind conditions.  If even 10% could do this it would be in no way contentious.  16 vs 24 bit is at best a supremely subtle improvement in audible terms if at all.  Not to mention that actual noise levels in gear, not to mention listening environments generally does not exceed 20 bit. 
 
The far more interesting part about greater bit depth and higher sample rates is the large percentage who say the difference is obviously self evident, yet fail over and over and over and over again to show they can hear the difference when they don't know which is which.  Such should be highly cautionary and instead the reverse is true.

 

[csglinux]

What you are describing is gain riding.  Or in other words like compression.  Why not just compress the original 24 bit file judiciously and distribute in 16 bit?

Now sure you could do what you describe and perhaps detect a difference in 24 bit vs 16 bit recordings if they were done impeccably well in some of the quietest venues possible.  Yet, who would listen to music that way?

This is like high sample rates.  There might be some very minor benefit to some on the finest material and finest playback maybe.  Minor, now very minor very subtle very rarely.  Were it a real obvious improvement that some tout the argument against it would have died long ago.  It would be self evident to many people who also would be easily able to demonstrate under blind conditions.  If even 10% could do this it would be in no way contentious.  16 vs 24 bit is at best a supremely subtle improvement in audible terms if at all.  Not to mention that actual noise levels in gear, not to mention listening environments generally does not exceed 20 bit. 

The far more interesting part about greater bit depth and higher sample rates is the large percentage who say the difference is obviously self evident, yet fail over and over and over and over again to show they can hear the difference when they don't know which is which.  Such should be highly cautionary and instead the reverse is true.

I agree with most of what you said. Let me take your argument one step further Imagine we had even just one person on this planet that could reliably A/B Redbook CD and hi-res audio. Pono or HDTracks, etc., would be all over them. That would be exactly the publicity they'd need to convince the masses. But we haven't seen this. Not even one person.

One little point we disagree on though. No - bit depth is not like high sample rates. You're on the wrong thread Bit depth relates only to the noise floor.

 

[Arnav Agharwal]

One little point we disagree on though. No - bit depth is not like high sample rates. You're on the wrong thread Bit depth relates only to the noise floor.

As a newbie, I was quite confused because often the phrases, "24-bit" and "resolution", are used together. I later learned that the bit depth is indicative of the dynamic range, and not finer-grained resolution of a static loudness range. Hopefully, we can have a thread on popular Hi-Fi misconceptions (or does one already exist?) where this nugget can be put out 

 

 

[old tech]

   
I'm usually the world's biggest cynic regarding hi-res audio. There are way too many charlatans out there getting rich by exploiting the ignorant - and some of these fakers are even selling fake hi-res files!: http://www.head-fi.org/t/648932/bandcamp-promotion-thread/15#post_13283024
 
However, just for fun, I'm going to do my usual thing of playing Devil's advocate, for the very specific case of 24-bit. I made a comment on an earlier thread of Eke's, which I'll repeat here.
Imagine you have a great recording with a huge dynamic range, good headphones (obviously, or why would you be on headfi?!) and a good amp with a low noise floor. Now imagine raising the volume (dramatically, if you like) just during the quietest moment of the track. This is the audio dynamic-range equivalent of putting a hi-def picture under a microscope. Your ears still only need to cope with a limited dynamic range - you're simply using your amplifier to lower the gain during the Saturn V rocket launch and then raise it during the string quartet intro. Theoretically, you should then be able to 1) not destroy your hearing and 2) hear the difference between a 24-bit and 16-bit dithered noise floor. This is also relevant to the (rather unhelpful) single THD+N measurements given by amp/DAP manufacturers. I would not assume you won't ever be able to hear those apparently tiny differences, unless you only ever listen to 1 kHz sine waves at 80 dB.
 
I recently found the following article, which describes this more eloquently than I ever could:
 
http://www.tonmeister.ca/wordpress/2014/09/15/audio-mythinformation-16-vs-24-bit-recordings/

Yes, as others have commented, it is possible to hear a [noise] difference between 16bits and 24bits (though it is unlikely it is 24bits, more like 20) under contrived conditions.
 
I know I can detect a difference between a 16bit file and 24bits if I turn up the volume very loud on a silent piece of track, but even then I'm not sure whether I would hear any difference if dither was not applied to the recording.  The point is that this has zero effect on listening to the actual music content.  The slightly audible hiss of 16bits is so low it is unlikely to mask anything that is musical.

 

[old tech]

  As a newbie, I was quite confused because often the phrases, "24-bit" and "resolution", are used together. I later learned that the bit depth is indicative of the dynamic range, and not finer-grained resolution of a static loudness range. Hopefully, we can have a thread on popular Hi-Fi misconceptions (or does one already exist?) where this nugget can be put out 

 

This might help explain how the concept of resolution applies (or does not apply) to digital audio.
 
http://productionadvice.co.uk/no-stair-steps-in-digital-audio/

 

[csglinux]

As a newbie, I was quite confused because often the phrases, "24-bit" and "resolution", are used together. I later learned that the bit depth is indicative of the dynamic range, and not finer-grained resolution of a static loudness range. Hopefully, we can have a thread on popular Hi-Fi misconceptions (or does one already exist?) where this nugget can be put out   

Check out Monty's blogs and videos on xiph.org. They're quite fun as well as educational. This is a good place to start:

http://xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

 

[watchnerd]

  So you want a DAC that does floating point conversions. The marketing department will take delight in that idea.

 
Floating point is the new multi-bit.

 

[StanD]

   
Floating point is the new multi-bit.

We should float that past some audiophiles and watch the excitement.

 

[RRod]

  As a newbie, I was quite confused because often the phrases, "24-bit" and "resolution", are used together. I later learned that the bit depth is indicative of the dynamic range, and not finer-grained resolution of a static loudness range. Hopefully, we can have a thread on popular Hi-Fi misconceptions (or does one already exist?) where this nugget can be put out 

 

Actually they are one in the same. Say we want to pad 16 bits with 0s to make a 24-bit file, and that B00...B15 are our 16 bits. Then you can take two approaches**:
1) 00000000 B00...B15
2) B00...B15 00000000
 
In the first approach, the extra 0s indicate the extended dynamic range of 24 bits that the 16 bits aren't using. In the second approach, the extra 0s "fill-in" the gaps between the 16-bit values. By convention a conversion from 16 to 24 bits uses the second approach so that the max level is consistent between the two files.
 
**I'm fudging this a bit because PCM integers are technically stored as two's complement.