96/24 rips from vinyl
Jan 16, 2014 at 2:07 PM Thread Starter Post #1 of 16

vincik

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Hi, i tested 96/24 vinyl rips in flac against 44/16 flac on my fiio x3 portable player and i came to conclusion, that 96/24 rips sounds quite better. More natural sound of some instruments and less sparky/synthetic heights. But on the other side, every vinyl rip i listened was full of more or less crackling noises. On home stereo it might not be such a problem but on headphones its quite a disturbing in some parts of song. Whats your opinion about vinyl rips? Do you mind crackling when listening on headphones? Are there 96/24 rips other than vinyl?
 
Jan 16, 2014 at 2:21 PM Post #2 of 16
If your 96/24 vinyl rips sound different than your 44/16 vinyl rips, then your levels are different or you've done something wrong or your equipment is not doing what you think it's doing.
 
Jan 16, 2014 at 2:35 PM Post #3 of 16
i compared 96/24 vinyl rips vs cdrips 44/16. im just wondering if that better sound is cause of vinyl origin or cause higher resolution and if there is music out there with higher resolution without vinyl origin. right from studio without going through CDs or LPs.?
 
Jan 16, 2014 at 4:39 PM Post #4 of 16
If they sound better, it's because they are from a different (better) master. If you ripped the vinyl at 16/44, they would sound the same as the 24/96 vinyl rips, and different from the 16/44 CD rip. The differences are not due to the bitrate.
 
Jan 16, 2014 at 6:57 PM Post #5 of 16
Just a suggestion or two.  Can you try 44 at 24 bits (instead of 16 bits) to compare to 96khz?
And also how about 48khz at 24 bits to compare to 96 khz.  Don't know what you used to do AD on the rips.  If it was a computer sound card, some of those convert everything to 48 khz or 96 khz.  Which theoretically might be audible.  Of course You may have used something else.
 
As to sources for music there are a few.  HD music sells quite a number of such at higher rates.  Most are remastered.  Do note, they have been caught a number of times selling 192 or 96 stuff which clearly was sourced from a 44.1/16 master.  So your extra money is buying a remastering which may or may not be an improvement, but no higher fidelity.  Linn Music sells some modern recordings done at these higher bit rates.  There are a few others too. 
 
Jan 16, 2014 at 8:45 PM Post #6 of 16
  Hi, i tested 96/24 vinyl rips in flac against 44/16 flac on my fiio x3 portable player and i came to conclusion, that 96/24 rips sounds quite better. More natural sound of some instruments and less sparky/synthetic heights. But on the other side, every vinyl rip i listened was full of more or less crackling noises. On home stereo it might not be such a problem but on headphones its quite a disturbing in some parts of song. Whats your opinion about vinyl rips? Do you mind crackling when listening on headphones? Are there 96/24 rips other than vinyl?

 
A new pristine clean LP with a perfectly setup and quiet turntable with proper isolation and with a correctly aligned cartridge running at the correct speed will crank out an SNR of maybe 75 to 80 db and a dynamic range of about the same as an absolute but rare best case. Actually an LP will rarely get anywhere near to that figure. Owing to other physical limitations it is unlikely that there will be any significant musical content above 20 Khz that is not effectively masked by louder frequencies, though most of us cannot hear very much above 20Khz anyway.
 
A competent 16 bit and 44.1 Khz A/D sampling will very adequately capture anything up to a little over 20 Khz and with a dynamic range of approximately 90 - 93 db this is far more than enough to effectively capture any musical data found on an LP.
 
Any difference between a competent 16/44.1 rip and a competent 24/96 rip is most likely down to either some fault in the process, poor level matching, poorly controlled comparison process or imagination, I'm not being rude but humans are prone to imagining differences. You could analyze both samples and look for level differences the most likely source of a difference if one exists, you could try a DBT if you can establish the same level for both samples or you could do a comparison that involves some rapid switching so that you overcome the limits of short term memory
 
Jan 16, 2014 at 9:53 PM Post #7 of 16
My guess is that there was no preamp between the turntable and the capture device to adjust the line level. If you capture at a really low volume, then normalize everything up, you won't be getting the full quality with redbook. However you can bring up 24/96 without a problem because it has a lower noise floor.
 
Jan 16, 2014 at 11:15 PM Post #8 of 16
  Whats your opinion about vinyl rips? Do you mind crackling when listening on headphones? Are there 96/24 rips other than vinyl?


I have a couple vinyl rips that sound the same or better than CD rips, but most sound worse IMO. Mostly due to the crackling. You can get 24/96 rips of SACDs. They are relatively rare, but they are out there. Legitimate 24/96 downloads from places like HDtracks aren't vinyl rips, but I get the sense that you are talking about rips from the "dark side" LOL. 
 
Jan 17, 2014 at 12:14 AM Post #9 of 16
 
I have a couple vinyl rips that sound the same or better than CD rips, but most sound worse IMO. Mostly due to the crackling. You can get 24/96 rips of SACDs. They are relatively rare, but they are out there. Legitimate 24/96 downloads from places like HDtracks aren't vinyl rips, but I get the sense that you are talking about rips from the "dark side" LOL. 

After recording, I used the software to clean up the surface noise and all the pop and click. I also used subsonic filter and a LPF of 16 KHz (I can't hear over 16 KHz) to clean the sound up a little more. A little off topic story, a lot of the people that listen to my recording can't tell the difference except for one guy and he didn't really have any training..
  My guess is that there was no preamp between the turntable and the capture device to adjust the line level. If you capture at a really low volume, then normalize everything up, you won't be getting the full quality with redbook. However you can bring up 24/96 without a problem because it has a lower noise floor.

Recording at a low level and normalize up is what I do. I'm lazy. Doing this basically help me prevent the recording clip. As long as the noise floor is low, it shouldn't matter too much, right? There are so much other defects, noise floor should not be the dominating factor.
 
Jan 17, 2014 at 12:52 AM Post #10 of 16
Most records have a high noise floor and don't achieve more than a 40dB dynamic range. It probably doesn't matter with them. But with really good pressings, it's worth doing a careful level adjustment first if you are capturing to redbook. Or just capture higher, normalize up and then  bounce down to redbook.
 
Impulse based noise reduction is extremely effective and leaves no audible artifacts. Broadband noise reduction sucks. When it comes to EQ, it's good to leave a bed of low level high frequency even if it's noise. It prevents a recording from sounding muffled.
 
Jan 17, 2014 at 12:59 AM Post #11 of 16
The comment about there being no pre-amp got me to thinking as well. 
 
If you plugged your turntable directly into a sound card or similar device you will need to do digital RIAA correction.  That would explain the excessive crackling.  If you have a receiver or pre-amp prior to the AD then it should have already done that for you. That also would explain why 16 bit might not sound as good.  If you put a very low level signal of an LP without some amplification you definitely need 24 bit.  So again I would suggest doing a 24/48 khz rip. 
 
It would help us diagnose at a distance if you just listed the signal path from LP to AD. 
 
Jan 17, 2014 at 1:08 AM Post #12 of 16
Most turntables have lower line levels than CD players too.
 
Jan 17, 2014 at 2:41 PM Post #13 of 16

  Hi, i tested 96/24 vinyl rips in flac against 44/16 flac on my fiio x3 portable player and i came to conclusion, that 96/24 rips sounds quite better. More natural sound of some instruments and less sparky/synthetic heights. But on the other side, every vinyl rip i listened was full of more or less crackling noises. On home stereo it might not be such a problem but on headphones its quite a disturbing in some parts of song. Whats your opinion about vinyl rips? Do you mind crackling when listening on headphones? Are there 96/24 rips other than vinyl?

I like GOOD vinyl rips, but prefer listening to the actual vinyl. 
By crackling if you are referring to hiss from vinyl then it doesn't bother me, if you're speaking about distortion that shouldn't be there then yes.
Yes other rips exist.
 

 
I have a couple vinyl rips that sound the same or better than CD rips, but most sound worse IMO. Mostly due to the crackling. You can get 24/96 rips of SACDs. They are relatively rare, but they are out there. Legitimate 24/96 downloads from places like HDtracks aren't vinyl rips, but I get the sense that you are talking about rips from the "dark side" LOL. 



After recording, I used the software to clean up the surface noise and all the pop and click. I also used subsonic filter and a LPF of 16 KHz (I can't hear over 16 KHz) to clean the sound up a little more. A little off topic story, a lot of the people that listen to my recording can't tell the difference except for one guy and he didn't really have any training..
 
What are you using for an A/D? What about recording software and what settings are you using? 
What software are you using to clean the noise and pops and clicks? If you are using a bad software then that can be causing a lot of issues.
You shouldn't need to use any HPF or LPF, that will change the sound. I know you said you can't hear above 16kHz, my question is this have you actually tested this with something that can accurately play these freqs?
  My guess is that there was no preamp between the turntable and the capture device to adjust the line level. If you capture at a really low volume, then normalize everything up, you won't be getting the full quality with redbook. However you can bring up 24/96 without a problem because it has a lower noise floor.



Recording at a low level and normalize up is what I do. I'm lazy. Doing this basically help me prevent the recording clip. As long as the noise floor is low, it shouldn't matter too much, right? There are so much other defects, noise floor should not be the dominating factor.
 
There is a big issue depending on how you do it. It can add compression. You should run a hotter recording level. If the track is getting compressed at some point, the noise floor will be affected drastically.
 



 
Jan 18, 2014 at 1:55 PM Post #14 of 16
If you are doing archiving and restoration work then why not, go 24/96 for the initial A/D and processing. Once you're done cleaning up the audio all the information you'll end up with will fit into a 16 bit file at 44.1khz. You might have some high frequency content that's cut off but it'll be beyond the range of human hearing.
 
Jan 18, 2014 at 2:23 PM Post #15 of 16
I thought that doing restoration filters at a higher bitrate might help, but I experimented and found out that the only difference was that the filters took a long time to process. They weren't any more effective.
 
On an LP anything above 17kHz is most likely just noise. Redbook goes up beyond the range of human hearing, so there's no advantage to that either.
 

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