pinnahertz
Headphoneus Supremus
- Joined
- Mar 11, 2016
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It doesn't matter. The recording process was 16/44.1/48/50 for the first two decades of digital audio, and it wasn't a limiting factor. The practical limiting factors in "resolution" are all outside of quantization, and way outside quantization at 24 bits. Until digital desks with adequate DSP arrived, most post was done in the analog world, then mixed back to 16/44.1.Well, my 'argument' for higher specs is from a production(including recording sessions) context, not from one of the end-listener formats. I apologize if my argument came off otherwise - a la audiophile, etc.
The one quality limiter of all PCM in the early days (technically still outside of quantization) was analog anti-aliasing and reconstruction filters, the earliest of which suffered from nonlinearities in the cutoff zone which resulted in intermodulation products being folded down into the mid-audible band. Once oversampling filters arrived, the problem was mostly mitigated. Increasing sampling frequency was initially viewed as the solution, but all that could do was relocate the problem. The real work was on the filters, and there was a cafe of exotic retrofits for every major recording device. All were compromises, trading one filter quality for another, nobody every made the perfect analog filter. You could reduce intermod, but then raise aliasing, for example. Until we got to oversampling digital filters, that was a rough spot.
24 bits couldn't help the intermod issue then, and still wouldn't.
Again, 24bits does not increase resolution or reduce distortion, it lowers quantization noise only. But system noise is already higher than LSB jitter in 24 bits by many, many dB, so it's a wash.
Oh yeah, 24 bits does provide one very significant advantage that all of us in the industry recognize: higher numbers are better, and more bits makes everyone feel warmer and fuzzier.